The future of sustainable retail starts with tracking carbon faster and smarter. Vaayu, the world’s first automated software helping the retail world track and cut environmental impact in real time, is making big steps in helping brands lower their carbon footprint at scale.
Transforming Retail’s Environmental Impact
Retail is responsible for a huge 25% of global carbon emissions, with fashion alone set to create 2.1 billion metric tons of carbon emissions by 2030. With this in mind, Berlin-based Vaayu has become a key solution, using artificial intelligence and machine learning to fill data gaps in the industry’s complex supply chains.
Namrata Sandhu, CEO and co-founder of Vaayu, recently spoke about the urgency of the situation. “We have just nine years to meet the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals and as one of the industries with the largest global carbon footprint, the retail sector is facing mounting pressure from all sides,” she said in a previous statement. “If the sector continues to grow at its current rate, modest predictions suggest that emissions will surge by more than 50% by 2030.”
Technology and Real-Time Impact Reduction
Vaayu stands out for its full approach to measuring sustainability. The company’s Kria AI Impact Modeling Engine, powered by the retail industry’s largest dedicated Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) database with over 600,000 data points, creates digital twins that copy the complexity of real supply chains.
The technology works smoothly with retailers’ current systems, like point-of-sale, PLM, PIM, and ERP. This lets it automatically calculate impacts from raw materials to last-mile delivery.
Namrata Sandhu commented on the technology revolution, ”before Vaayu, there was limited life cycle assessment (LCA) data available for retail verticals outside of fashion, but we continue to expand Kria to cover diverse retail verticals comprising fashion, footwear, jewellery, beauty, electronics, fintech, and more, enabling broader adoption and supporting industry-wide impact reduction.”
Industry Recognition and Growing Impact
Vaayu’s new approach has earned major recognition. The company was named one of TIME’s 2022 Best Inventions and Fast Company’s 2022 Next Big Things in Tech. Vaayu also won the Europas 2022 Hottest Climate Tech/Sustainability Startup Award and the German Innovation Award 2023 for Excellence in B2B.
The company’s growth is seen in its client base of over 50 global brands, including Klarna, Wunderman Thompson Commerce, and many fashion retailers. Through partnerships with companies like Vinted and Otrium, Vaayu has shown the big environmental benefits of circular business models.
Financial Backing Supports Ambitious Goals
Vaayu’s potential has attracted strong investment. The company has raised $13 million in total seed funding, with the latest $11.5 million round led by Atomico. The round also included Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian’s Seven Seven Six and other well-known investors.
Terese Hougaard, Atomico Partner, expressed confidence in Vaayu’s mission. “Retailers’ ability to quickly and confidently respond to the climate crisis has to date been hampered by low-quality data that takes a long time to compile, and even longer to action, but with Vaayu the retail industry as a whole is now able to make considerable reductions to its carbon footprint,” she said.
Future Vision: One Gigaton Impact Goal
Looking ahead, Vaayu has set a big goal to help retailers cut one gigaton of carbon emissions by 2030. This goal shows the company’s drive to make a real environmental impact worldwide.
The company keeps growing its abilities, recently working with partners like The Detox Market to measure the footprint of over 1,400 beauty products, showing the technology’s flexibility across retail types.
As the retail industry faces more pressure from rules, shoppers, and stakeholders to lower environmental impact, Vaayu’s automated, real-time carbon tracking is a key tool for brands serious about sustainable change.
