Hara Enters the ECA Software Market with a Bang

What an impressive entrance! In May of this year, startup Hara was still in “stealth mode” and few had heard of Hara or its Environmental and Energy Management Software, which helps organizations track and manage environmental sustainability (carbon, water, waste) and energy data. Fast forward five short months and Hara has announced securing $20mm in venture capital financing, launching of production-read version of its software product (with its third version released in late August), and landing corporate (Coke, Aerojet, and Brocade) and government (San Jose, CA and Palo Alto, CA) customers.

Last week Hara announced an impressive round of financing. Capturing such a large amount (US $14mm) so soon after its first round and during the summer of an extremely deep recession is remarkable. We are aware of no other carbon-orientated software startups which have raised anything close to $20mm. Executives at Hara told us closing the round was due in part to the great early success they have had in closing customer contracts and in investor optimism for future demand for software tools to help track, manage and report carbon and energy information (an area we call Enterprise Carbon Accounting). Kleiner is clearly investing heavily for market dominance.

In our May report of 51 ECA vendors, we noted that new vendors were entering the market and we named 7 Emerging Leaders (Hara was not included in the report as the company and its offerings were still not public). Hara’s recently sales wins, strong balance sheet, and very credible SaaS-based software offering make it the most exciting new entrant this year. Companies considering investment in software to automate the error- and labor-prone process of tracking carbon and energy with spreadsheets will do well to evaluate this promising new vendor. Hara will undoubtedly challenge the 7 other Emerging Leaders for market leadership in 2010.

Here is screen shot of software: