Press Release
Silicon Valley Veterans Launch pulsESG™—an Integrated SaaS Platform for Enterprise ESG Analysis with $8.5M in Seed Funding from Impact-Driven Investors
SAN FRANCISCO, Calif. — (BUSINESS WIRE) — Oct 20, 2021 —
pulsESG™ today announced the launch of its enterprise environmental, social, and governance (ESG) software as a service (SaaS) platform backed by $8.5 million in seed funding from leading impact-driven investors and led by two Silicon Valley enterprise software veterans. The platform distinguishes itself in the marketplace through features such as model-driven architecture and full integration with both internal sources of data and external investor-facing systems, empowering companies to track and derive insights for ESG compliance and improvement based on stakeholder requirements. The company emerged from stealth mode today and the product is expected to be made generally available in Q1 2022.
Led by tech veterans and co-founders Murat Sönmez and Inderjeet Singh, the pulsESG™ platform is designed to take a different approach to ESG analysis than what currently exists in the marketplace by providing comprehensive, auditable, and accurate deep analytics that can be integrated with both the source and destination ESG systems of customers. This new level of information empowers enterprises to make more informed ESG decisions using a platform that also provides end-users the flexibility to modify it based on changes in the ESG regulatory landscape and according to their stakeholder needs.
“Amidst changing impact benchmarks at national and global levels, accurate and reliable ESG analysis is moving from ‘nice-to-have’ to ‘must-have’ for enterprises worldwide, so we sought to develop a platform to help customers navigate this fluid landscape,” explained Co-founder, President, and CTO Inderjeet Singh. “The pulsESG™ platform was designed to raise the bar on quality and timeliness, allowing customers to respond to changes in the ESG models themselves, not just data points within current data models.”
“Simply put, pulsESG™ offers an integrated, comprehensive, and flexible SaaS platform for enterprises to define, capture, analyze, derive insight, and improve their ESG footprint,” added Murat Sönmez, Co-founder and CEO.
While private equity firms, their investors, and other stakeholders increasingly take ESG impacts and risk into account, the measurement tools and benchmarks for each continue to evolve—both across sectors and jurisdictions. Sönmez and Singh saw the opportunity to leverage their experience with SaaS platforms, integration, business processes, analytics, and master data management to create a system to help enterprises navigate and respond to this inherent fluidity in ESG analysis. The result of their vision is the pulsESG™ platform.
Sönmez and Singh have found early backing from leading investors in the impact-driven investment space, including FINTOP Capital, Aligned Climate Capital, SOMPO Holdings (Japan), Builders VC, eLab Ventures, and individual investors including Alberto Cribiore and André Borschberg.
Prior to co-founding pulsESG™, Murat Sönmez was a member of the founding team at TIBCO Software and led it past the billion-dollar revenue mark as the head of its customer facing operations. Sönmez later joined the Managing Board of the World Economic Forum in Switzerland, leading its global business community engagement efforts, and subsequently established and led its global technology policy network out of San Francisco.
pulsESG™ Co-founder Inderjeet Singh was most recently responsible for Oracle’s middleware and cloud platform and previously for TIBCO’s infrastructure products. Inderjeet joined TIBCO Software through the acquisition of Velosel—a leading master data management platform—where he was part of the founding team and led all product functions.
Investor Statements
“ESG reporting is quickly becoming standard practice for companies and investors worldwide. As an investor that cares deeply about ESG, we are excited about pulsESG™’s ability to ensure that analysis and reporting is more real, reliable, and reportable.”
— Peter W. Davidson, CEO, Aligned Climate Capital
“As one of the world’s largest economies, Japan faces pressure from an aging society with social impact and other ESG considerations steering business decisions more than ever. SOMPO has been working to address these issues in innovative ways and utilizing digital technologies to accurately measure our impact, so are excited to have found a partner in pulsESG™—an integrated and comprehensive platform with the potential to accelerate SOMPO’s impact for society.”
— Kengo Sakurada, Group CEO, Director, President and Representative Executive Officer, SOMPO Holdings, Inc.
“In a crowded field of ESG platforms, Murat and Inderjeet stand apart with the completeness of their vision, passion for impact, and unparalleled combined experience in successfully scaling startups, developing mission-driven software platforms, and executing strategic engagement with top level leadership in organizations worldwide. We are pleased to lead the investment and look forward to an impactful journey together.”
— Rick Kushel, Co-founder and General Partner of FINTOP Capital
About pulsESG™
Founded in 2021, pulsESG™, Inc. is a public benefit corporation dedicated to empowering purpose-driven enterprises to manage and improve their ESG footprint with an integrated and comprehensive SaaS platform built for compliance tracking and insight.
For more information: www.pulsESG.com
LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/company/pulsESG
Media Contact:
Murat Sönmez
CEO, pulsESG, Inc.
murat@pulsesg.com
+1 650-575-5255
Leadership
Darayush Mistry
Prior to that Darayush was a product leader at Uber and his team built from the ground up Uber’s first omnichannel content authoring platform that allows highly personalized interactions across channels like email, push, in-app, SMS at planet scale.
Earlier in his career, Darayush was a product leader at cloud platform companies like Salesforce, Coupa, and NetSuite. At Salesforce, his team built and launched Salesforce’s first no-code digital content management platform called site.com that became the underlying experience platform for Community Cloud and successfully propelled its launch into the community and collaboration market.
Darayush is also an advisor to startups both individually and through accelerators like Berkeley Skydeck. Darayush grew up in Mumbai, India, and studied Computer Engineering and then received his MBA in Marketing with distinction both from the University of Pune, India.
Nicole Peerless
Head of Business Engagement
Prior to pulsESG™, Nicole was the Head of Investors Industries at the World Economic Forum where she was responsible for overseeing the Forum’s global community of asset owners and fund managers. She worked with senior leadership of the Investors Industries partners, alongside government officials from across the globe, on issues regarding ESG, stakeholder capitalism, private vs public markets and long-term investing, as well as providing strategic guidance on initiatives involving public-private cooperation.
Previously, Nicole was Head of Investors Relations and Fundraising at Zouk Capital, a London based private equity and infrastructure fund manager, investing in the clean and efficient economy. She began her career as a consultant at Accenture UK. She earned her MBA at the International School of Business in Paris France, and BA at Concordia University in Montreal Canada.
Jessica Sanderson
Head of ESG Product Management
Jessica is an ESG professional with nearly twenty years experience focused on the intersection of business and positive social impact. Prior to joining pulsESG™, Jessica was Director of Sustainability at Novelis, the world’s leader in aluminum rolling and recycling and worked in the areas of sustainability and product safety at USG Corporation, a leading building materials manufacturer. During this time, Jessica progressed industry wide ESG objectives through several regional and global industry associations, certification bodies and NGOs including serving as a standards committee member of the Aluminum Stewardship Initiative. Jessica earned her MBA at DePaul University, Masters of Public Health at Tulane University and graduated from Tulane undergraduate in Cell and Molecular Biology.
Reddy Shivampet
Head of Engineering
Inderjeet Singh
Murat Sönmez
CEO & Co-Founder
Murat is the CEO of pulsESG™. As a co-founder of TIBCO Software in 1997, he led its growth to over a billion dollars as a public company as the head of its customer facing operations. In 2014, Murat was invited to join the Managing Board of the World Economic Forum in Geneva where he was responsible for global business engagement. In 2017 he moved to San Francisco as the founding head of its technology policy arm, the Centre for the Fourth Industrial Revolution Network based in San Francisco now operational in more than 13 countries with hundreds of companies engaged. Murat holds a BS degree in Industrial Engineering from Bosphorus University in Istanbul, Turkey, and an MS degree in Industrial Engineering and Operations Research from Virginia Tech.
Board of Directors
Peter Davidson
Pamela Gill-Alabaster
Global Head of Sustainability, Mattel
Prior to joining Mattel, Pam was Chief Marketing and Communications Officer for Centric Brands, the leading apparel and accessories licensing company in North America. Before that, she served as Senior Advisor at Carol Cone On Purpose, a consultancy whose mission is to move social purpose to the center of business and brand strategy, and Managing Partner of the Gill-Alabaster Group, a strategic sustainability consulting firm serving consumer-facing and business to business clients across a variety of sectors including food and beverage, hospitality, food service, fashion, beauty and personal care, health and nutrition.
Recognized by TriplePundt and Forbes as among the Top Women in Sustainability/CSR, Pam creates organizational value through the lens of sustainability/CSR and delivers results by identifying opportunities and managing risks through ethical/responsible sourcing and human rights, product design, stewardship and innovation, efficient operations, energy/GHG emission strategy, waste management, water stewardship, ESG reporting, stakeholder/activist engagement, brand purpose and social impact programs.
Pam previously served as Senior Vice President, Corporate Communications, Public Affairs and CSR at Revlon, Inc. where she was charged with building enterprise reputation with key stakeholders through strategic communications, engagement, corporate sustainability, and brand purpose programs. Before joining Revlon, Pam was VP Global Corporate Responsibility at The Estée Lauder Companies, with the
mandate to develop a three-year sustainability strategy with goals, time-bound targets, and initiatives to advance the company’s practice and produce the first corporate responsibility report.
With a successful 20 year + career at L’Oréal, prior to joining the Estée Lauder Companies, Pam held various executive and leadership marketing, communications and corporate affairs roles of increasing responsibility at L’Oréal Paris, Lancôme and served as Senior Vice President Corporate Communications, Public Affairs & Sustainable Development for L’Oréal USA. Pam began her marketing career at Philip Morris on Marlboro and before attending graduate school, worked in magazine publishing.
Pam has two master’s degrees, an MS in Sustainability Management from Columbia University and an MBA in Marketing from New York University Stern School of Business. She was awarded a BA in Journalism from Pepperdine University. Pam is a Governing Board Member of the ICTI Ethical Toy Program, a former member of Board of Directors for the Natural Resources Stewardship Circle, the Revlon Charitable Foundation, Sustainable Brands Corporate Advisory Board, Fashion Group International, the Personal Care Products Council, and is a member of Cosmetic Executive Women (CEW), New York Women in Communications, and the Public Relations Society of America (PRSA).
Rick Kushel
Co-Founder and General Partner, FINTOP Capital
Rick leads FINTOP Capital’s investments in and sits on the board of directors at Decusoft, Cobalt Software, BipSync, Honcho, and GAN Integrity. Rick previously led investments for FINTOP Capital at DealCloud (acquired by Intapp) and Solovis (acquired by NASDAQ).
Rick has extensive experience founding new companies, spinning out products, and overseeing hyper growth. Throughout his career Rick has raised capital from Blackstone, The Carlyle Group, Hamilton Lane, Edison Ventures, NJTC Venture Fund, Duff & Phelps, and also served as a strategic advisor to the Innovations portfolio at The Blackstone Group.
Prior to co-founding FINTOP Capital, Rick was the CEO of DealCloud (acquired by Intapp in 2018), Founder and CEO of iLevel Solutions (acquired by Ipreo in 2015), and Founder, Chairman and CEO of Archive Systems (acquired by Access Information Management in 2015).
Rick is a frequent public speaker and guest lecturer on venture capital and entrepreneurship. He received a B.S. in Chemistry and Business from James Madison University, and serves on the board of JMI.
Inderjeet Singh
President, CTO & Co-Founder, pulsESG™
Murat Sönmez
Murat is the CEO of pulsESG™. As a co-founder of TIBCO Software in 1997, he led its growth to over a billion dollars as a public company as the head of its customer facing operations. In 2014, Murat was invited to join the Managing Board of the World Economic Forum in Geneva where he was responsible for global business engagement. In 2017 he moved to San Francisco as the founding head of its technology policy arm, the Centre for the Fourth Industrial Revolution Network based in San Francisco now operational in more than 13 countries with hundreds of companies engaged. Murat holds a BS degree in Industrial Engineering from Bosphorus University in Istanbul, Turkey, and an MS degree in Industrial Engineering and Operations Research from Virginia Tech.
Advisors
Dr. Todd Cort
His most recent book, Values at Work, Sustainable Investing and ESG Reporting, is a must read for anyone who is passionate about systemic impact.
Investors
Individual Investors
André Borschberg
Alberto Cribiore
Paul Polman
Vivek Ranadivé
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