The B2B marketplace for sustainable, innovative ingredients and packaging, Novi Connect, raises $40 million in new funding, bringing Novi's total funding to over $51 million.

WHO: Novi Connect was founded in 2019 by MIT graduate and Air Force veteran Kimberly Shenk as an enterprise SaaS platform focused on ingredient assessments beyond regulatory and certification checks and looking at data for human health, environmental sustainability, social impact, and animal welfare. The platform has evolved into a B2B data-rich network of suppliers, manufacturers, retailers, and brands experiencing rapid growth as brands look to easily formulate, discover, sample, and purchase innovative ingredients and sustainable packaging as they build new products.

WHY: Novi plans to deploy its new capital to build additional technology for both sides of the marketplace to comply with evolving sustainability claims, grow its selection of ingredients, fragrances, and packaging, as well as expand into new verticals like home care and food—segments where Novi is already seeing organic traction.

IN THEIR OWN WORDS: "Pre-Novi, brands would spend weeks hunting down materials and interpreting disparate material documentation to determine if they met complex industry standards," says Kimberly Shenk, CEO and founder. "Novi collects, digests, and digitizes all of this data, ensuring real-time accuracy against ever-changing standards and claims, which allow our users to make procurement decisions around sustainability more efficiently and with confidence."

“Novi has become the clear front-runner in terms of innovative sourcing platforms. Every week we are getting new Indie leads from Novi for customers who want to formulate with our sustainable ingredients,'' said Donna Petretti, Head of North American Marketing at Croda. "This type of platform delivers true transparency and is the future of the beauty industry. We are so excited to be part of this great journey.”

“Consumer demand continues to grow for greater transparency in the sustainability and health impacts of everyday products," said Griffin Schroeder, Partner, Tiger Global. "Novi has built a unique data-driven sourcing platform for brands, suppliers, manufacturers, and retailers to easily identify sustainable ingredients in their products and packaging.”

DETAILS:

• Novi Connect raised $40 million in new funding led by Tiger Global with follow-on investments from Defy.vc and Greylock.
• Novi has raised over $51 million in total funding to date.
• The start-up boasts 9x growth in consumer brands in 2021, with users from Smashbox to Seventh Generation to Unilever.
• This increasing demand from brands looking to discover and source trusted materials independently vetted by Novi against 100+ sustainability standards led to significant growth in supplier partners in 2021, including Dow, Croda, and APC Packaging.
• Further fueling brand growth, partnerships with retailers like Credo and Grove Collaborative brought indie-focused brands to Novi alongside early champions Sephora and Target.
• Novi launched a publicly available ingredient screening tool that enables ingredients to be instantly vetted against complex data-dense standards including Certified Vegan, Clean at Sephora, and EWG Verified to make sustainability more accessible to SMB brands.
• In September 2021, Novi raised $10.3 million in a Series A funding round led by Greylock with participation from Defy Partners, angel investors, and Yannis Skoufalos.
• In March 2020, Novi raised $1.5 million in seed funding from investors including Defy, a leading Silicon Valley venture capital firm, along with prominent angel investors such as Kevin Hartz, Eventbrite co-founder and Chairman of the Board, and Julia Hartz, Eventbrite co-founder and CEO, along with Cowboy Ventures, Felicis Ventures, Khosla Ventures, Maveron, Polaris Ventures, and Slow Ventures.