OnePlanet Capital closes tranche 3 of its Climate Change fund and invests into Diode.

OnePlanetCapital has successfully closed tranche 3 of its climate change fund with 100% growth in investor funds year on year. Its first investment from this tranche has been into EV suitability platform Diode.

About the business

Diode is a software platform that allows consumers, employees, or fleet managers to get an instant EV readiness assessment for their circumstances – advising on cost savings, running costs, individual fuel and tax savings and infrastructure requirements across larger fleets.

Market background

With the UK banning new sales of petrol and diesel from 2030 and most of Europe following suit, major organisations are grappling with the logistics of rapid EV roll out. However, the problems can be complex – impacting the employee remuneration, tax, energy bills and infrastructure requirements of many businesses and fleets. Diode takes a lot of the pain and risk out of this scenario and as a result has an exciting pipeline of major car groups and European fleets ready to onboard with the platform. 

OPC verdict

What we like about this business is that it has the rapid scale that is possible with B2B/B2C SaaS businesses. Due to the global structure of the fleet industry being dominated by very large players it is possible for Diode to achieve real scale very quickly via key accounts. As with most of our investment portfolio there is huge regulatory pressure intensifying the corporate demand for solutions in the EV space.

At this stage Diode is unique in the European market, has ongoing pipeline discussions with most of the major industry players and has the opportunity to grow very quickly over the next few years in Europe and beyond.

From an environmental point of view businesses such as Diode turbo charge the change to a low carbon economy by accelerating the transition for large corporations and fleet owners.