Emerging Munich-based start-up Tanso Technologies aims to tackle a particularly pressing problem in sustainability management: ensuring data is available to calculate and prepare the environmental impact of manufacturing companies as a next step.
Just in September, Tanso closed a $1.9 million pre-seed funding round led by UVC Partners with participation from early-stage investors Picus Capital, Possible Ventures (formerly Inventures) and notable business angels.
We spoke with the team at Tanso about their ambitious innovation.
Why is it so hard for companies to achieve carbon neutrality?
Before companies can reduce their emissions, they first have to basically figure out which areas of the company emit how much and create a sustainability balance sheet. Here, it is primarily structural barriers and data availability in the complex international supply chains that make this task complicated. In many companies, internal capacities are not sufficient to collect this data manually, which is why external consulting firms are often hired. However, this is not a solution in the medium to long term, as repetitive processes lead to high manual effort. To create real business value with sustainability management, automating data collection and calculation can save a lot of time, reduce compliance risks, and shift the focus back to action implementation.
How can your innovation improve the situation?
We aim to solve the most basic problem of sustainability management: Ensuring data availability as the first step in the complex process of calculating and reporting environmental impacts from the production of physical goods. We focus primarily on mid-sized manufacturing companies that produce globally and are often subject to complex supply chains and requirements. With our software platform, sustainability data can be collected from different data sources in order to derive clear data-driven measures and thus create real economic added value. The goal is to make sustainability management and accounting as transparent, integrated and traceable as financial accounting.
What challenges did you face in planning and implementing your technology?
Companies in our target group are global organizations with international supply chains and production sites. This creates challenges in terms of data availability and disparate data sources that are brought together in our system. On the other hand, companies find it difficult to meet all the requirements imposed by buyers and regulation, such as in the EU Sustainability Reporting Directive (EU CSRD). This is precisely where our strengths lie, as we prepare this data and make the processes towards greater sustainability simple and comprehensible for employees and companies.
What has changed for you personally since you became a successful start-up?
We are still at the beginning of our journey, but of course we are aware that becoming a successful company brings challenges. We only see ourselves as successful when we can enable companies to make a real contribution to climate protection and embed sustainability at the core of their corporate strategy. Sustainability also creates great opportunities for companies to future-proof their business model - only when we enable this transition with Tanso will we have achieved an intermediate goal towards a more sustainable economy.
What milestones have you already accomplished and where are you at right now?
The recently completed financing with UVC Partners, Picus Capital and other business angels was an important milestone. It's important for us to provide long-term support to our development partners and clientele in the complex world of sustainability management. Especially with regard to the integration of data sources and regulation, we therefore work very closely with our partner companies to develop the best solution for manufacturing companies and to get to the root of the challenges.
What's next after your financing round?
We are very grateful for the trust placed in us by our capital providers and see the financing round as a mandate to develop real technical solutions for more sustainability in the industry. After the funding round, we can fully invest the capital in product development and strong expansion of our teams on the product and development side.
How could and can UnternehmerTUM support you on your journey?
The support from UnternehmerTUM has already helped us in numerous areas: Starting with the funding round by UVC Partners, to the XPRENEURS program, we are very grateful for this broad support. Currently, we are also working in the Munich Urban Colab, where we have the optimal infrastructure to build our company. Particularly important for us is also the strong network of UnternehmerTUM, which promotes active exchange between established companies and young start-ups, thus enabling synergies.
Thank you very much for the interview!
