Vilnius-based green investment platform FOROS has raised a €1.2m round from angels and VCs, led by Iron Wolf Capital, 70 Ventures, and CoInvest Capital, and doubled the team size.

Founded in 2017, the company has ambitions to become the global green investment platform. With the first outside funding and the freshly hired developer team FOROS accelerates the development of its forest investment and management products, and grows in Lithuania, Latvia, and will expand to Estonian and Finnish markets.

The platform already offers features that allow estimating the value of the forest, buying and selling of the forest land via digital forest auctions, and ordering of the sustainable forest management service called Foros Grow which ensures that trees can grow healthier, bigger, and taller through selective logging to weed out the weak ones and give more sunlight for others to grow. The new investment will allow creating new platform features such as the forest carbon impact calculator.

Investors commended the idea and the team

Tomas Martūnas, Iron Wolf Capital partner, explained that “The reasons that helped us to decide to invest in Foros were, first of all, a fast-growing and talented team, also the ambition to change old habits, and the competencies required to take on new markets – all encompassed by the vision to digitize forest management and make it transparent and convenient.”

Gytenis Galkis, 70 Ventures partner, said that they decided to invest in Foros because of experienced founders, initial validation in the local market, and the sustainable future vision. “We firmly believe that Foros will implement their promise to make the forestry industry more transparent, provide increased liquidity in forest trade and help transition the forest management to the 21st century.”

The company expects strong growth in the forestry industry due to the fact that forests are a great hedge against inflation and due to a strong demand for timber. The EU has launched ambitious plans to expand and accelerate timber construction for public sector spaces.

“The funding and the expansion of the team of developers was a strategic decision following the last three years of hard work and dedication from the entire team,” said Foros co-founder and the CEO Justas Kaveckas. “We have grown from a forest auction house to a green fintech with customers in Lithuania and Latvia – markets known for their fast innovation adoption. All the while challenging the status quo of the forestry industry, establishing ourselves as a reputable player in the market, and winning people’s trust. We’re the very first of our kind in the Nordics to offer an all-in-one solution for investing in forests and sustainable forest management.”

North-bound expansion

The Nordic market consists of 27 million people and is the home of the most stable economies in the world, with some of the wealthiest and tech-savvy populations on the planet. The market is known for being hard to crack for new entrants due to the culture and language barriers, regulations on environment protection, and timber logging that varies greatly from country to country.

Foros has chosen to focus its efforts on the Nordics in the first stage. “Unlike other green fintechs that have chosen to expand vertically, Foros decided to go deep in and create a 100% digital, innovative and transparent alternative to the traditional forestry industry. We aim to open up sustainable forest investments and management for wider groups of people and to allow them to see their climate impact from their forest portfolio,” said Justas Kaveckas, CEO. “We mean it when we say that the goal is to change the status quo of the forestry industry and to be the #1 green investment platform”.

“The future belongs to those who offer the best user experience, and it’s our ambition to be the leading green investment platform in the Nordics and beyond,” added Justas Kaveckas, CEO. “We already offer users the control of their entire forest portfolio, providing them a forest market value, estimated timber volume, market timber prices, and a simplified forest buying and selling process. The plan going forward is to collaborate with those who offer the most sustainable forest management solutions out there and tie the whole thing together into the Foros platform.”

About FOROS

The green investment platform FOROS is managed by the company Foros Global, founded by Justas Kaveckas ir Tadas Palaima. The company also manages a forest auction portal in Lithuania, where the total value of forest land deals has exceeded €20m.