Mott MacDonald Ventures, the investment arm of global management, engineering and consultancy Mott MacDonald, has announced it has made an equity investment in Oneplanet.com, whose software encourages collaboration for organisations implementing sustainability plans. The investment will see Mott MacDonald take a 7.5 per cent stake in the company.
Developed over two and half years and incorporated in March 2019, Oneplanet.com has created highly innovative, visual and user-friendly software that enables cities, organisations, and individuals to: define their desired outcomes, develop clear action plans and measure their effectiveness using sets of indicators. It will support different ways of visualising the same data, including frameworks such as One Planet Living® and the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
Dr Jon Rains, Mott MacDonald Ventures investment director, commented: “Individuals and businesses have a crucial part to play if we’re going to achieve a better and more sustainable future for all. The UN SDGs address society’s greatest challenges, from poverty and inequality to biodiversity loss and climate change and offer a blueprint for a better and more inclusive world. Oneplanet.com’s innovative software enables users to understand and develop a plan to help achieve the 17 goals and 169 targets by 2030.”
Based at the Bedzed sustainable housing project in South London, UK, Oneplanet.com aims to reinvent people’s relationship with the natural world through the power of technology. The company helps cities and local government, communities and real-estate companies, schools and universities to collaborate and connect plans. The latest version uses graph database technology to create a ‘satnav for sustainability’, providing a simple and clear picture of connected outcomes, such as how the use of renewable energy relates to supporting local communities.
Launched in 2019, Mott MacDonald Ventures provides all the benefits of a traditional venture capital firm and the broad value-add of a strategic venture capital company. It invests in early stage companies focused on delivering enhanced economic, social and environmental outcomes to improve infrastructure through enhanced technology. By drawing on the domain and digital expertise of the wider company, Mott MacDonald Ventures works together with start ups to tackle some of the world’s most challenging problems, including urbanisation, climate change and environmental degradation.
Pooran Desai, Oneplanet CEO said: “It’s important that large companies like Mott MacDonald invest in start ups. I think that’s a two-way process – it’s great for us and it will be fantastic for Mott MacDonald as it gets new ideas into a large organisation. We look forward to benefiting from the domain expertise of Mott MacDonald.”
Future plans include co-creation of new products, as part of Mott MacDonald’s Moata digital twin platform, and the introduction of Oneplanet.com into the company’s global client base.
Dr Jon Rains continued: “We will add our technical and domain expertise drawn from our 16,000 people to help develop Oneplanet.com’s business. Their software offers a new way for our clients to demonstrate progress on connected sustainability outcomes.”