Shedding light on the supply chain: Pi Labs’ investment in Responsibly

We are happy to announce that we have co-led Responsibly’s $2.4m seed round, alongside Hambro Perks.

Background to our investment

Since the advent of the shipping container in the 70s, supply chains have become more and more global, and with that, complex. This has raised challenges around ensuring ethical practices and sustainability across an intricate web of suppliers around the globe.

Alongside cultural pushed to increase transparency in the supply chain (think QR codes on jeans letting you track their journey from the raw materials to you) ensuring compliance with environmental standards is increasingly front of mind. Indeed, reporting on scope 3 emissions (indirect emissions in a company’s value chain, including suppliers), is gaining importance.

In theory, gathering this information sounds simple enough. In practice, it involves suppliers being inundated by data requests. With each supplier having many customers (and indeed their own global suppliers), smaller customers with less bargaining power will have a harder time receiving responses. Even when they do, the results will be static, and soon out of date.

Responsibly has simplified this process, both for manufacturers and suppliers. Using AI, they are able to automatically aggregate information about a supplier across a range of ESG criteria, making compliance instantly visible. If needed, suppliers can engage on the platform to supplement further information. Where complex and opaque supply chains make it hard to take action, Responsibly makes it easy to track who is acting responsibly, in turn enabling manufacturers to take action accordingly.

How the investment came about

At Pi Labs, we’ve been spending a lot of time on sustainability, as it underpins so many of our investment themes. When we were introduced to the team, Responsibly’s implications across a range of industries — be it real estate development or product manufacturing — immediately transpired.

🇩🇰 The team is based in Copenhagen, marking Pi Lab’s first investment in Denmark.

🤝 Source of introduction: Hambro Perks — an investor in our network.

Overview of the company

• Industry: Sustainability
• Location: Copenhagen, Denmark
• Founded: February 2021
• Problem: No digital or dynamic way to understand scope 3 emissions and make decisions on supply chains
• Solution: Responsibly makes it simple for manufacturers to upload a list of suppliers and quickly see what they are doing across a wide range of metrics, to ensure their supplier are acting compliant

Why we invested

Team: Thomas Buch Andersson, Responsibly’s CEO, brings in expertise and a strong skill set as a second time founder, having previously co-founded a company in Australia. He has built a fantastic and competent team around him.

Product differentiation: whilst Responsibly isn’t the first tool to enter this space, we found it to be an order of magnitude better than anything else we have seen. Bringing together both manufacturers’ and suppliers’ needs within one platform particularly underpins this, with the use of AI reducing the need for suppliers to input information themselves.

Market: the solution cuts across several sustainability factors, enabling real action to be taken. Especially as requirements for scope 3 emissions increase, we expect the demand for this to increase, rippling across industries.

What’s next

Responsibly has raised this round to grow the team and build out several core features of their product. We’re excited to be part of this journey and can’t wait to see what comes next!