Company Background

Clearly is a software business that enables fleet administrators to manage sustainability-associated operational and funding challenges across the supply chain. Clearly helps businesses and financial institutions transition fleets to net zero emissions by providing precision-measuring, real-time alerts, simulated insights, and ongoing emission management. The software allows this by fusing data from multiple sources, including at vehicle/GPS level and fuel/energy level. Underpinned by regulations and framework, Clearly ensures that fleet managers and their companies are on a steady path to hit their emissions targets and play a role in decarbonization.

The start-up was recently selected as Europe’s Hottest Mobility Tech Startup at The Europas Tech Startup Awards 2022! Previous winners include Spotify, Wise, Soundcloud to name a few.

The co-founding team consists of Danielle Walsh and Dr. Pedro Baiz. Walsh is a Cambridge graduate who represented HSBC on $17bn tech spend: she built Future Cities & New Industries, advising public/private sectors globally, and was a governing board member of REEEP. Baiz is an Imperial graduate who served as data lead at HSBC, an honorary senior research fellow at Imperial, and the ESG Fintech Lead at International Standards (ISO TC 322 TAG1). They got to know and trust each other during their time at HSBC.

Fleet Transition Market

Factors that play a major role in the CO2 increase in our atmosphere are the growing use of energy, increasing mobility, and transportation needs. The global road freight sector will need to cut its CO2 emissions by 60% by 2050 to meet the targets set out by the Paris Agreement. With penalties in place for non-compliance, radical changes and associated funding are needed for most industries to be compliant in the future.

The annual spend to reach net zero targets is around $6tn, of which $2tn is needed on transportation infrastructure alone and for which over $1tn is for road transport. We are currently nowhere near these spending amounts and need to find cost-efficient solutions to tackle one of the most polluting contributors to climate change: the transport industry (CPI).

Climate Policy Initiative: Global Landscape of Climate Finance 2021

Transport has the highest reliance on fossil fuels of any sector and accounted for 37% of CO2 emissions from all end‐use sectors in 2021 (IEA). 75% of these transport emissions come from road transport, of which 45% are for passenger purposes (cars, motorcycles, buses, taxis) and 30% are freight (trucks and lorries) (ICCT).

What’s worrying is that these numbers are on the rise. In fact, research shows that road freight emissions could jump a staggering 60% by 2050 — if the current trajectory persists, with demand expected to grow across the world in the coming decades as the global population increases, incomes rise, and more people can afford cars, trains, and flights.

Global CO2 emissions from transport by sub-sector in the Net Zero Scenario, 2000–2030

Major technological innovations can help offset this rise in demand. As the world shifts towards lower-carbon electricity sources, the rise of electric vehicles offers a viable option to reduce emissions from road vehicles — however, notably only mostly for small+medium vehicles. Passenger road vehicles and rail are assumed to phase out emissions by 2040–2050, but road freight is not set to phase out before 2060. The need to find cost-efficient solutions to bring emissions from road fleets down is clear.

Clearly Product & Positioning

Clearly‘s predictive software and certification system for decarbonising fleets, reducing costs and saving energy is of crystal clear need, but sees an underserved supply in the industry. It is only recently that fleet managers have started to shift away from pen-and-paper filing to digital fleet operation tools (think supercharged excel). Such players tend to focus on intrinsic fleet management challenges, allowing fleet operators to gain visibility of their fleet operation, increase cost efficiency and ensure compliance standards are met. However, these solutions tend to act as workflow tools to improve operational control, not operational sustainability. For operational sustainability to materialise, further variables such as package data, energy grid data, climate filings, and regulation need to be taken into account, which status quo solutions do not have the capacity to account for.

Clearly fuses datasets currently gathered and processed in a siloed manner, leading to inaccuracies and time- and cost-inefficiencies. Instead, Clearly’s vertically integrated business intelligence platform enables visibility to know when, where and how to decarbonise fleets. It fuses and displays:

• Trip-level mobility of things data;

• Operational transport & logistics data;

• In-house high resolution forecasting scenario models (planning & operations); and

• Mobility TCO (total cost of ownership) intelligence.

These are taken from a variety of sources, including at vehicle / GPS level (fleet manager), operations / shipments level (operations manager), and fuel / energy level ( energy manager). Tied with underpinned regulations and frameworks, Clearly is the one-stop shop that allows this industry to facilitate its decarbonisation journey.

The Future

The market demand for Clearly‘s solution is evident. Large fleet operators need to comply with emission thresholds and regulatory levels. While making the shift to more sustainable practices, they need to ensure the commercial viability of changes, which Clearly supports. We are very excited by Clearly’s early signs of success and are confident that market demand and governmental changes will further incentivize traction and meaningful partnerships.

Clearly‘s current innovation areas include their data mesh and trip level emissions allocation machine learning technology. We are excited by how this technology develops and learns as more users come onboard and provide a richness of useful data insights. Beyond data innovation, we cannot wait for Clearly to unleash their potential together with other transport and energy stakeholders to reach the transport industry’s net zero targets.

Above all, Clearly founders aim to leverage the financial experience by working closely with a wide range of financial stakeholders to help unlock billions of dollars of needed funding via a range of innovative financial products (including Carbon Credits, Insetting or KPI Linked Bonds).

Investors

We are happy to share the cap table with other mission-aligned andinvestors, including NextGear Fund, Mobilion VC (both automotive and mobility experts), and fantastic angels. Very proud to be backing this company which clearly solves a great climate-challenge that needs to be addressed!