Novo, a Berlin-based proptech startup, has announced a €1 million pre-seed funding round to speed up the decarbonization of real estate at scale. The round was led by Citizen Capital, one of the most prominent impact investors in France. This deal marks their first investment into a German company. Co-lead was 2bX, the early-stage investor specializing in urban tech. Novo has also secured investment from Antler, one of the most active early-stage global VC firms. A number of prominent angel investors have also participated in the pre-seed round, including proptech-angel Franz De Waal, and Atomico angel investor Kerstin Bock.
When trying to make their building more energy-efficient, owners are confronted with a complex system of rules and subsidies. Novo is building technology designed to automate and speed up the complex process of analysis, planning and financing of energy renovation. Novo’s service does this in three steps – by analyzing the status quo of the building, providing a comprehensive energy renovation plan for owners and connecting to subsidies and loans to reduce renovation costs. Novo is the first to offer this service directly embedded into their partners’ systems like banks and energy providers.
Mona Hornung, Co-Founder of Novo, commented: “Buildings start to be political, as reducing their carbon emissions will be the most massive use case of our century. Novo is uniquely placed to bring digital disruption to the sector of energy renovation. We see building sustainability being a major trend in Europe. Having the support of investors with both an impact and urban tech expertise is a perfect combination to tackle this challenge.”
Novo currently collaborates closely with TU Berlin to ensure high-quality results of its technology. The funding will be used to further invest in Novo’s technology and speed up automation. The German proptech is also already working with large and influential partners such as financial institutions and energy providers to reach building owners at scale. By way of portfolio analysis, Novo enables partners to easily identify, categorize and prioritize buildings in need of renovation. Partnerships are currently running in Germany with the likes of DZ Bank and RheinEnergie, representing a volume of over 7 million buildings.
Olivier Mougenot, Partner at Citizen Capital, said: “We’re thrilled to back NOVO’s mission to provide simpler and faster access to much-needed home energy renovation. The drive of the founding team to speed up real estate’s climate action across Europe struck us and made supporting Novo an obvious choice”.
While the EU has set the ambitious goal of renovating 15% of its building stock until 2030, this will require a much larger speed than the current renovation rate of 1% of buildings in Germany. The automation that Novo provides increases the speed of planning for building owners and subsequently a seamless execution of the renovation. Thus, enabling 35 million buildings in need of energy renovation in the next 6 years to save up to 80% of today’s carbon emissions.
Katharina Lind, Partner at 2bX, added: “The energy transition in the building sector will be the dominant topic in the coming years – both the real estate sector as well as politics will have no choice but to act on energetic renovation to meet EU-wide regulations. In Novo we found the team and product that offers innovation at the first point of contact with the topic – for us, this marks an impactful as well as most promising investment in the sustainable renovation of EU’s building stock.”
