This startup helps McDonald's and Starbucks cut down on food waste and energy use. Here's the 12-slide pitch deck Therma used to raise $19 million.

Therma CEO Manik Suri
Therma CEO Manik Suri. Therma
  • Therma helps restaurants like McDonald's reduce food and energy waste via fridge management. 
  • The startup turns "dumb" fridges and freezers into smart devices to automate their temperatures.
  • Check out the pitch deck it used to secure $19 million from New York firm Zero Infinity Partners. 

A startup helping restaurants like McDonalds and Starbucks save money on food and energy waste has just raised $19 million in a Series A round.

San Francisco-based Therma, which was founded in 2019, uses IoT devices to turn "dumb" fridges and freezers into smart devices where temperature management can be automated. The company's tech can also monitor for any issues that could lead to food waste, which could be as simple as someone leaving the door open for an extended period.

Therma has built an AI platform that draws on data from sensors, which can be retrofitted onto existing equipment, to track energy use and optimize it for off-peak hours. A cooler can essentially be "charged" at a colder temperature overnight, when power is cheap, and turned up through the day because it can hold its temperature, according to Therma cofounder and CEO Manik Suri.

"You can take advantage of the fact that the fridge or freezer can hold energy as cold product," he said. 

Suri, a former Obama administration policy adviser, and his cofounder Aaron Cohen, a serial entrepreneur and NYU professor, were spurred into action after seeing a report by Project Drawdown. The nonprofit, which champions carbon reduction, listed the most impactful solutions to climate change and reducing food waste ranked first for its potential carbon dioxide or equivalent removed or reduced, and refrigerant management came fourth.  

Heating and cooling accounts for up to 15% of global emissions, according to the World Economic Forum. Meanwhile food waste is responsible for 10%, per WWF.

Therma's platform has built-in parameters so temperatures never fall outside of any quality or safety requirements for food. For example, for those in areas that regularly suffer blackouts or experience them as a result of extreme weather events, Therma will alert customers when food is at risk of spoiling if it isn't moved. 

With a more dynamic approach to power use, the company hopes to transform cooling equipment into "virtual power plants" while cutting energy bills and food wastage. Energy optimization, where the company's focus currently lies, is about moving usage to when it's cheap and when the grid is powered by renewables instead of fossil fuels.

The company is already applying its tech to air conditioning but plans to also broaden this out with heating management part of its long-term plans.

Some of the fresh capital will be channeled into marketing and customer acquisition, with headcount growing from its current total of 65.

"There are 90 billion commercial refrigerators in the world. We're in 15,000 of them today, so we're just getting started." Suri said.

It is currently focused on the US market but is seeing interest from "pretty much every region in the world," he added. Therma counts brands like McDonalds, Starbucks, and Taco Bell franchisees as customers. 

The round was led by New York firm Zero Infinity Partners, with participation from Deciens Capital, CityRock Venture Partners, Homecoming Capital, Ananta Capital, Kindergarten Ventures, Collaborative Fund, and Govtech Fund. It was oversubscribed, Suri said, as he initially targeted $15 million. 

It brings Therma's total raised to around $32 million.

Check out the 12-slide redacted pitch deck below.

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