About Manna Tree Partners

Manna Tree is a US-based private equity firm investing in companies in the nutritional health and food supply chain sectors. They are on a mission to improve human health by supporting and scaling companies that innovate the health industry and improve the way that people live.

The Challenge

Manna Tree’s portfolio companies have always had strong ESG values at the core of their operations, however they had no standardised metrics in place to measure ESG data across the portfolio. Manna was looking to implement a simple solution which would allow them to assess the ESG performance of their portfolio companies in a more uniform and structured way. They wanted to find a “common language” in which they could communicate with their investors on ESG, without adding complexity and friction to the communication lines between themselves and their portfolio companies.

Manna Tree invests in young and fast-growing businesses, all with limited time and resources available to manage ESG reporting. They require a centralized software solution to simplify and streamline portfolio ESG data collection, metric calculation and reporting.

KEY ESG’s Solution

Manna Tree made the decision to use KEY ESG following product demos which demonstrated that the platform is intuitive to use for business users and simplifies ESG reporting processes significantly. During the introductory onboarding calls, KEY ESG’s sector specialists guided Manna Tree through the initial metric selection process in their centralized Fund Manager Platform. They chose to measure the ESG Data Convergence Initiative’s (EDCI) metrics as a starting point, with a view to expanding and focusing on selected target areas once the solution was established. KEY ESG’s partnership with the EDCI supports EDCI data collection and enables companies to share their data with the EDCI project through a specialized API. This saved Manna Tree significant time and allowed them to access the EDCI’s unique private sector ESG database of more than 3,000 companies.

Our Customer Support team onboarded Manna Tree’s portfolio companies to the Company Platform with informal group seminars or 1-1 sessions according to their requirements. The portfolio companies responded very well to KEY ESG’s intuitive dashboard which streamlines and automates the data collection process. The dashboard also gives portfolio companies autonomy over which metrics they want to track as well as the required EDCI metrics, thereby giving them full ownership of their ESG narrative.

Gabrielle Rubenstein, Co-founder and Managing Partner of Manna Tree said:

“KEY ESG enabled our whole portfolio to participate in the EDCI benchmark process. The rapid onboarding allowed all our companies to collect and report on the required EDCI data within one month."

We could not have moved this fast without KEY ESG. Our portfolio companies love how easy to use the platform is and have already mentioned they want to use it for their own internal ESG processes.”

Manna Tree was able to use KEY ESG to facilitate a data-driven conversation around ESG, not just with investors but also its portfolio companies.

What’s Next?

Manna Tree is a fast-growing and agile business and the ability to streamline workflows and make operational improvements is key to their value creation strategy. Implementing KEY ESG has been one such streamlining opportunity and has enabled them to communicate across portfolio companies and investors in a simplified way. Going forward, Manna Tree’s portfolio companies will look to use their KEY ESG company platforms, not just for Manna’s reporting but also for their own ESG improvement purposes.

“KEY ESG stood out for their ability to move quickly, provide the right level of support and ease of use for our portfolio companies. We wanted to make sure that we invest in a tool that makes our ESG processes more efficient and effective, KEY ESG has delivered on that promise.”

Ross Iverson, Co-founder and Managing Partner

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