Highgate Tech Fund 2 closes third EIS investment

13 January 2012, 8:08pm

The Highgate EIS Tech Fund announces an investment in Ecometrica, a leading provider of Greenhouse Gas Accounting and Ecosystem Mapping Solutions

London, 11th January 2012 – The Highgate Tech Fund today announced that, after several months of detailed due diligence, agreement has been reached to close the third investment in Fund 2. Highgate Tech Fund (HGTF) has invested in Edinburgh-based company Ecometrica, a leading Greenhouse Gas Accounting and Ecosystem Mapping business providing Software as Service (SaaS) applications. Ecometrica are a team of leading greenhouse gas experts and the solution is already being used by some of the largest companies globally, including RSA, BP and Petkim (Turkey’s largest petrochemical company). The Ecometrica solution, named ‘Our Impacts’, is a Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP) accredited web platform and is built on extensive research and content. ‘Our Impacts’ provides an easy to use carbon accounting system for all businesses that automates the calculation of greenhouse gas impact and enables them to identify areas for action or accurately calculate carbon offset.

Carbon accounting is rapidly becoming a requirement for many large and mid-sized companies around the world and is a pre-requisite for most Corporate Social Responsibility programmes. This trend was boosted by the recent Durban Agreement (12/2011), in which 190 countries committed for the first time to cut carbon emissions (individual country targets are yet to be agreed). This means that countries will need to impose reductions in carbon emissions on businesses within their country. One of the keys to cutting is to know how much carbon each business is emitting, ‘you cannot manage what you can’t measure’, is the famous quote (attributed to a number of people including Peter Drucker) or perhaps more accurately ‘what gets measured, gets done’ (attributed to Tom Peters). ‘Our Impacts’ enables businesses to measure their carbon impact and use accurate information to put strategies in place to reduce carbon output, or where reduction is not possible, offset their carbon impacts.

Ecometrica started life as a consultancy business in 2008 to provide GHG accounting and ecosystem monitoring services to FTSE 100, Fortune 500 businesses and governments globally. Recognising that this business model was not a scalable one, Ecometrica has developed a cloud-based solution that embeds many years of consulting expertise and knowledge, plus unrivalled data quality. The Highgate Tech Fund investment is part of a round of funding that will be deployed to grow global sales and marketing and for further product development.

Andrew Muir, Fund Co-Chair, said: “We are delighted to have made this investment. Ecometrica is a perfect company for our fund, with solid intellectual property, operating in a high growth market, demonstrating a clear proof of concept and some early stage, big brand customers already paying to use the product. We have identified Ecometrica as having the best potential to become a market leader in this space. Success will come from growing the customer base globally and adding new SaaS products to the portfolio.”

Richard Tipper, CEO Ecometrica, added: “We were impressed by the Highgate Tech Fund team, they have all succeeded in the software and technology space and the expertise that they bring to the table in addition to the investment gives us the confidence to accelerate the business to success.”

Highgate will take an active role in Ecometrica via a board seat and will use the inherent expertise of the fund team to work alongside the business to support success on an on-going basis. Highgate expects to make at least one more investment in Fund 2 before closing this fund to investors in April 2012.

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