Banyan, an investment facilitator for sustainable infrastructure headquartered in San Francisco, has confirmed a USD $8.2m Series A round led by VoLo Earth Ventures with several notable venture capital firms joining the round
Just 18 months since its initial product launch, Banyan’s Series A round reaffirms the considerable industry interest currently surrounding the innovative platform. Led by VoLo Earth Ventures, with additional investment from Ulu Ventures, Vista Verde Capital, Nomadic Venture Partners and Industrious Ventures, the round puts Banyan in the perfect position to achieve its goal of digitizing and onboarding sustainable infrastructure investments and l**** with higher velocity, standardization, and transparency.
Despite the advances in availability of asset and financial data, investing in sustainable infrastructure remains a largely manual and inefficient set of processes relying heavily on spreadsheets and disconnected systems. Banyan’s platform tackles this issue head-on. By providing dynamic online checklists and scorecards, approval-based workflow automation, APIs to existing data sources, a centralized data vault to complement existing virtual datarooms, and a self-service client portal, the company provides a platform purpose-built for project finance and sustainable infrastructure teams.
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Since its inception, Banyan has helped to deploy and manage over USD $1bn of capital towards sustainable infrastructure developments. However, set against the backdrop of rising climate concerns, as well as a more concerted global effort by major institutions and nation states to address environmental challenges, the demand for such projects continues to rise. Thanks to its Series A raise, Banyan can help its customers meet this growing demand faster and more effectively by simplifying and optimizing the mechanisms needed to finance the switch to low carbon infrastructure. In meeting this demand, Banyan brings real technology to bear and helps to tackle the cost of capital, whilst still accelerating the deployment of necessary sustainable infrastructure globally.
Speaking on the raise, Will Greene, Founder and CEO at Banyan commented: “The face of infrastructure projects is changing. While the era of megaprojects is far from over, developments are generally becoming smaller and cheaper. However, the cost and complexity of lending or investing has hardly changed. In response, infrastructure companies are increasingly interested in solutions to help manage growing pipelines and portfolios and take advantage of this market opportunity.
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“Thankfully, by automating contractual compliance and synthesizing key insights, Banyan offers the ideal system for addressing this challenge. Now, with our Series A raise, we’re able to take this offering to the next level. More than ever, customers can rely on our solution to proactively mitigate risks by providing greater transparency across all counterparties. In short, our tech-first platform is helping to provide l**** and investments originated at a higher velocity, serviced at a lower cost, and syndicated with greater liquidity.”
Alongside the raise, Kareem Dabbagh, Co-Founder and Managing Partner at VoLo Earth Ventures will join Banyan’s Board of Directors. Kareem is a solar industry veteran, with considerable experience pursuing soft cost reductions on sustainable infrastructure projects by prioritizing innovation, quality control, and process improvement. As such, he represents the ideal addition to the company’s growing employee ranks, and will bring several key skills, which are integral to Banyan’s core business mission.
Speaking on his involvement in the raise, alongside his appointment to the company’s board, Kareem told us: “Banyan is an exciting business that is helping to reshape the world of sustainable infrastructure. By working with direct lenders, banks and project owners, the company can deliver a service that is long overdue, with a value proposition to save clients money and provide actionable insights into sustainable assets. What’s more, by offering this service through a SaaS distribution model, Banyan is helping to make its solution as accessible as possible, allowing it to benefit the largest number of people while accelerating deployment in the sector.”
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