New e-commerce platform aims to provide easy access to sustainable and low-emissions brands and products. Flora is a San Francisco based, technology-driven sustainable shopping platform that announces it has raised $9 million in seed funding from prominent Silicon Valley Investors like Lux Capital, Correlation Ventures, Climate Capital and Gokul Rajaram.
Flora acquires, reinvents and grows sustainable brands with a mission to revolutionize the e-commerce space by providing low-emissions products at affordable prices. According to the company, its brands serve over 300 000 customers and save 10 000 tons of CO2 emissions annually compared to conventional alternatives.
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“Climate change is the biggest challenge of our time. Flora is addressing it by launching the first technology-driven sustainable e-commerce marketplace in Q4 2022,” said Co-CEO Mithat Can Ulubay, who founded Flora out of Stanford GSB.
He also shares that traditional consumer packaged goods and e-commerce platforms have made little progress in calculating their environmental impact, so eco-conscious consumers are finding it hard to switch to low-emissions products.
Flora aims to change that by helping customers measure, own and reduce their carbon footprint by shopping high-quality sustainable products from a wide-selection of independent mission-driven brands curated by the platform.
The e-commerce marketplace uses an algorithm to identify sustainable brands and evaluate their operational and financial performance, sustainability impact and value creation opportunities. Then, Flora integrates them into the platform.
According to Co-CEO Ugur Kaya, Flora attracts mission-driven entrepreneurs who lack time or capital to unlock the full potential of their sustainable brands. “ We will deploy hundreds of millions of dollars to provide a lucrative exit for these entrepreneurs and help their brands flourish globally,” he adds.
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Flora has also built a proprietary Lifecycle Assessment tool to calculate the environmental impact of all of its products to provide information to customers. According to its founder Mr Ulubay, the company aims to build a community of creators, influencers and non-profits to live a sustainable lifestyle.
Platforms like Flora are solving an important issue as millions of consumers are trying to reduce the carbon footprint of their shopping but don’t know where or how to find the products they need. All industries would need to revolutionize the way they operate to join the net zero movement and transform the current business-as-usual status quo.
