Unreasonable Impact Asia Pacific 2023

Global unemployment is projected to reach 208 million in 2023. This is 22 million more than in 2019 before the COVID-19 pandemic began, further disrupting economic activities around the world. Meanwhile, as the division of labor shifts from humans to machines, it’s estimated that 85 million jobs may be displaced by 2025. Something has to change.

Barclays and Unreasonable believe one way to help alleviate this massive challenge lies in supporting and scaling high-growth entrepreneurs as job creators in the green economy. Together they’ve created Unreasonable Impact – an innovative multi-year and multi-geographic partnership. Since 2016, Unreasonable Impact has supported participating entrepreneurs at a pivotal stage of their growth journey with the resources, mentorship, and global network needed to help them rapidly scale, create jobs, and address key global issues.

Unreasonable and Barclays are proud to showcase the 13 entrepreneurs that have been identified as critical drivers of social and environmental change in the Asia Pacific. These innovators are providing solutions to the future of food, clean transportation, renewable energy, and more. Together, they’ve raised more than $268M in financing and operate in more than 20 countries.

Unreasonable Impact is the world’s first international network focused on scaling socially impactful solutions that will help build a more inclusive economy and create a cleaner future.

70/30 Food Tech

70/30 Food Tech develops mycelium and plant-based products that offer meat substitutes with a healthy nutritional profile. The company uses fermentation technology to create ready meals and proteinreplacement options that allow consumers to enjoy tasty comfort food while providing functional health benefits like sustainable weight loss, increased muscle mass, and improved blood sugar levels. Headquartered in Shanghai, 70/30 Food Tech is the first and only functional readymeal company in China that is 100% plant-based—and will be the first to introduce mycelium protein food technology to the Chinese market. The company has recently completed its seed round and plans to leverage partnerships to expand nationwide. ENTREPRENEUR

Eve is the Founder and CEO of 70/30 Food Tech, a company that makes plant and fungi-based functional foods headquartered in Shanghai, China. In addition, she founded Plant Based Consulting China, a social enterprise that has helped build the profiles of domestic and international alternative protein companies. She is also the brains behind MEATFEST, a festival dedicated to plant-based meat suppliers in China. She has over a decade of experience in chemical engineering and is a graduate of Imperial College London. At 70/30, she drives tech and innovation for fungi-based protein development, leveraging her background in process design to move products toward mass production.

Ace Green Recycling

Deploying the world’s cleanest battery recycling technology.

SECTOR

Energy Technology

ACE Green Recycling is building an integrated recycling process and supply chain platform for battery materials. Its proprietary hydrometallurgical technology recycles batteries without any Scope 1 greenhouse gas emissions, providing sustainable end-of-life solutions and a closed-loop supply chain for critical materials. ACE works with players across the battery ecosystem to develop localized, circular supply chains to ensure critical battery materials remain within the boundaries of the countries generating battery waste. The company has advanced several recycling projects in key markets and has a rapidly expanding global supply chain network. ACE is incorporated in the United States with dual headquarters in Houston and Singapore.

REGION

India, Singapore, Taiwan, UK, and US

ENTREPRENEUR

Siddharth

Roy TITLE

Co-Founder & Business Director

Siddharth is the Business Director for ACE Green Recycling, an innovative recycling platform for battery materials. Through his work with ACE, he collaborates with stakeholders across the battery ecosystem to create sustainable, localized, circular solutions for critical battery materials, ensuring a green transition to global electrification. Based in Singapore, Siddharth is responsible for building and maintaining ACE’s portfolio of global partnerships and strategic agreements with industry players. He holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Electronic and Electrical Engineering from Rajiv Gandhi Technical University and a Master of Business Administration degree in Marketing and Finance from Nirma University’s Institute of Management.

Alchemy Foodtech

Empowering healthier foods without compromising on taste.

SECTOR

Food Technology REGION

China, Indonesia, Philippines, Singapore, South Korea, Thailand, and US

Alchemy Foodtech is a food innovation company with a mission to “Make Carbs Good” by helping to reduce the incidence—and improve the management—of chronic diseases such as diabetes and obesity. Their patented fiber technology, Alchemy Fibre™, combines food science and biochemistry to improve taste profiles while enabling key enhancements to nutrition: reduced carbohydrates and sugars, increased fiber and prebiotics, and decreased glycemic index scores. Headquartered in Singapore, Alchemy Foodtech has collaborated with food manufacturers like Subway—helping to reduce sugar in their chocolate chip cookies by 50% while maintaining taste and texture—and Dingdong Maicai, the largest e-commerce grocer in China, launching a sugar-free, lower-carb bread toast for their house brand, Bao Bakery.

ENTREPRENEUR

Alan Phua TITLE

Co-Founder & CEO

Alan is the Co-Founder and CEO of Alchemy Foodtech, a food innovation company that improves the health benefits of food without compromising on taste. He co-founded the company in 2015 to put an end to the global diabetes epidemic by maximizing the nutritional content of everyday foods. While leading Alchemy, Alan has forged strategic partnerships with market leaders in the food space, strategic investors and venture capital funds, and even the government of Singapore. In 2010, Alan received his degree in Business Management and Finance from Singapore Management University. He believes strongly in the value of humility, groundedness, and open-mindedness.

BluSmart Mobility

BluSmart Mobility is building India’s first all-electric ridehailing service. Plagued by massive surge pricing, substandard cars, safety concerns, and increased waiting times, ride-hailing in India has become cumbersome for drivers and customers. Overworked drivers often must own their vehicles and frequently hop between platforms in search of a higher-paying rider. Frustrated customers experience unexpected price surges and unreliable service. BluSmart Mobility disrupts this traditional ridehailing model by offering 3,200 EVs—the largest EV fleet in India—alongside an ever-growing charging infrastructure. The company offers drivers a finance-free, flexible working model and gives customers market-leading customer service, including freedom from surge pricing and ride denials. BluSmart has grown tremendously and plans to expand its fleet and charging infrastructure, enabling the company to reach profitability.

Punit is a serial entrepreneur in the clean energy space, founding three renewable energy startups and investing $150 million in solar power plants and solar panel manufacturing from 2008 to 2018. He co-founded BluSmart in 2018 to decarbonize mobility in India. BluSmart has raised $130 million and operates India’s largest EV ride-hailing service and charging superhub infrastructure. For his contributions to the clean mobility and clean energy infrastructure spaces, Punit was named one of the “India UK 75 at 75 Achievers” by the UK Government, British Council, and NISAU UK and was granted an honorary Doctorate in Business Administration by Aston University, UK.

Carnot Fleet

Providing technologydriven, sustainable, and affordable means for cold-storage transport on all forms of mobility.

SECTOR

Logistics & Transportation

REGION

Hong Kong, Indonesia, Philippines, South Korea, and Thailand

ENTREPRENEUR

Co-Founder & Co-CEO

Carnot Fleet has developed a plug-and-play cold chain system that provides temperature control for transport and logistics. The company’s products and services can be installed in existing non-refrigerated vehicles, turning them into temperature-controlled units in minutes with no upfront cost. Their technology leverages both hardware and software, de-risking the cold chain and minimizing the business and environmental impacts of loss due to human error. Headquartered in Singapore, Carnot Fleet’s products live at the nexus of commercial benefits—convenience, efficiency, and cost savings—but boast many sustainability benefits, as well: preventing food loss, pharmaceuticals, perishables, and more without increasing carbon emissions from refrigeration.

Arvind is a Co-Founder and Co-CEO of Carnot Fleet. He is a published, best-selling author and was an award-winning Product Manager at Microsoft. He has led executive strategy teams and product engineering teams across the cloud-computing, AI, automation, data infrastructure, open source, and cybersecurity spaces. He also serves on the board for New York Edge, a non-profit focusing on STEM education and empowerment. Arvind graduated from Cornell University with five degrees, ranging from Computer Science to Business. In his spare time, you can find him at a tennis court or traveling the world for the next great gastronomic or oenological destination.

ENTREPRENEUR

Elephantech is making the world more sustainable through novel manufacturing technologies. The company uses a proprietary inkjet-additive manufacturing process that prints metals onto circuit boards. Printed circuit boards (PCBs) perform essential functions in electronic devices—including displays and sensors— but the traditional manufacturing process requires significant energy and generates substantial liquid waste. Elephantech has developed an eco-friendly PCB called P-Flex that reduces carbon emissions by 75% and water consumption by 95%. The company has raised $55M to date, built its factory in Japan, and is manufacturing for global electronics manufacturers. Elephantech is currently the only company that provides a low-carbon alternative to existing electronic circuits.

Shinya is an enthusiastic scientist and entrepreneur who believes science is the way. At age 16, he designed and built his first CPU from logic gate ICs, and later won first place in the Chemistry Olympic Japan competition. While at the University of Toyko, he worked as an engineer on a Formula SAE team and earned a master of information technology with his research on new speech recognition algorithms. After school, Shinya joined McKinsey and Company and worked for global manufacturing companies. After leaving McKinsey, he started Elephantech to provide a sustainable alternative to electric circuits. He has raised $55M to date and built a factory in Japan to massproduce low-carbon electric circuits.

Essmart

Enabling rural shops to grow their business through sustainable livelihood solutions.

SECTOR

Agricultural Technology

Essmart distributes life-improving products to build a network of rural retailers selling socially impactful agriculture, clean tech, and energy efficiency products. 15M small retailers—88% of India’s $950B in retail spending—are not digitized or equipped to sell durable agricultural products due to constraints in working capital, space, customer service, and product maintenance. Essmart de-risks these high-value products for shop owners to act as agents of change in their communities— and as active selling points of innovative, impactful products. Essmart has over 5,000 active shops on its platform and is well poised for growth with a revamped, scalable model. The company generated $2M of revenue in 2022 and is on pace to generate $3.5M in 2023.

REGION

India

ENTREPRENEUR

Venkataramana

TITLE

Co-Founder & CEO

Prashanth holds a Master’s Degree in Engineering for Sustainable Development from the University of Cambridge and a Bachelor’s Degree in Mechanical Engineering from Anna University, Chennai. He started his career with Saint Gobain as a Design Engineer and later moved to the International Business Unit as Project Manager for the Middle East, East Africa, and South Asia regions, developing deep expertise in sustainability and green buildings. He co-founded Essmart in 2012 and has helped grow the business to its current operations over the past ten years. Prashanth has a deep interest in agriculture and renewable energy and firmly believes in using science and technology to achieve development goals in rural India.

Goanna Ag

Goanna Ag is an Australian AgTech company providing the next generation of smart-farming practices to optimize water-use efficiency. To support an increasing global population, farmers need to grow more crops with fewer inputs. Goanna Ag has developed a powerful platform called “GoField” that uses hardware and software to identify, manage and forecast crop stress. That insight allows farmers to optimize irrigation timing and further enable sustainable farming. Once GoField is deployed on a farm, farmers see an increased crop yield of 10–40% while also saving 35% of water usage. Ultimately, Goanna Ag costs $25/hectare while delivering a value of $260/hectare back to the farmer.

Alicia began as a software engineer in her family company Agrecon, which developed crop and weather forecasting models. She sold the company in 2010 to Grain Growers Limited, where she was eventually promoted to CEO. As CEO, Alicia delivered a refined strategy and operating plan. During her tenure, Grain Growers was appointed the Representative Organisation for the grains industry by Australia’s Minister for Agriculture. She also conducted a complete review and reallocation of a $100M investment portfolio and acquired a technical services company to deliver a sustainable business model. In 2016 Alicia left Grain Growers to establish Goanna Ag with Delta Agribusiness. She holds a degree in Computer Science and a deferred degree in Mechatronic Engineering.

Happy Moonday

Happy Moonday provides holistic services and products around women’s health to help more women live healthier lives. The company regards the menstrual cycle as one of the essential vital signs of women’s health and a good starting point for healthcare. In addition to providing highquality female healthcare products, they maintain a mobile app, Heymoon, that manages menstrual health, offers various health products—from sanitary pads, tampons, and menstrual cups to health supplements and light therapy lamps—and provides informative content. Heymoon has surpassed 1.9M downloads, with almost 30% of women in South Korea between 15–24 yrs old signing up. The company has raised $12M in fundraising and wants to expand internationally in 2023. ENTREPRENEUR

Dojin is the CEO and Founder of Happy Moonday, a leader in women’s healthcare that helps more women to live healthier lives. She believes that the menstrual cycle is a key signifier of overall health, compelling her to found the company in 2017. Since then, she has led its growth from high-quality female health products to mobile and web services and health content. Today, she is responsible for setting the company’s strategic direction. Forbes recognized Dojin as one of the “30 Under 30 Asia” in 2021. Since 2023, she has sat on the board of Impact Alliance. Dojin has BAs in Business and Anthropology from Seoul National University.

16 countries

Invisible Company

Founded in 2020, Invisible Company fights against the use of conventional plastic. Their #INVISIBLEBAG is entirely water-soluble, compostable, landfill biodegradable, and non-toxic, providing a sustainable alternative for brands to replace traditional plastic packaging. In addition to its current product, the company is actively engaged in R&D to develop new sustainable materials. They actively promote “Eco With Attitude” to brands, consumers, and the community, inspiring them to adopt sustainable living practices. Invisible Company aims to build a community based on authenticity and fairness, centered around their sustainable and innovative products, which can educate, inspire, and spearhead environmental change. The Invisible community is committed to achieving SDGs 1, 4, and 12, making a significant sustainable impact.

Devana co-founded Invisible Company with her husband after they became disheartened by the amount of trash they saw on Hong Kong’s trails. They aimed to create a solution that would preserve nature’s beauty, leading to the birth of Invisible in May 2020. The #INVISIBLEBAG, which is water-soluble, compostable, landfill biodegradable, non-toxic, and environmentally friendly, is an alternative to traditional plastic packaging. Devana and the Invisible Team are also working to develop other sustainable packaging options. Devana firmly believes in the importance of education in promoting sustainability and actively advocates for sustainable practices through daily action. She has built a community that regularly organizes hike cleanup activities and engages other brand owners who share Invisible’s “Eco With Attitude” passion for sustainability.

Semaai

Semaai is a “farmer-first” company building a full-stack agri-tech solution. Using a mix of hardware and software, they help farmers and rural micro, small, and mediumsized businesses to maximize their earning potential and revitalize rural agricultural communities in Indonesia. They offer their services through their growing network of Semaai Tani Centers in partnership with Toko Tanis (agri retailers). Semaai has grown 27x in the last year with over 8,000 Toko Tanis on its platform, impacting the lives of over 100,000 farmers. Since the company’s founding in 2021, they’ve raised over $3M from some of the world’s most renowned technology investors. ENTREPRENEUR

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Yoga began his career as an oil and gas engineer. He went to Germany to get his Master’s and then worked as a researcher. After some time, he decided to go home to Indonesia to pursue his entrepreneurial aspirations: helping smallholder farmers in Indonesia find solutions to increase their livelihood. Yoga then joined a waste treatment company, PT Biokonversi Indonesia, where he worked as an engineer and helped the marketing team sell 10M in organic fertilizer in under two years. While doing this work, he learned the complicacy of the Indonesian agri space and the opportunities to improve. He then quit the company to start his own, which, in 2021, would become Semaai.

Strawcture Eco

Producing carbonnegative building materials from local agricultural waste.

SECTOR

Strawcture Eco produces bio-based, drywall building materials made from agri-residue, like straw, that reduces the carbon footprint in the built environment. Their core product is the AgriBioPanel, a panel used for drywall, doors, flooring, ceiling, and furniture applications. Its products have comparable—and often superior— performance with competing building materials and are carbon negative. With its core product validated and in the market with expansive distribution channels, Strawcture is focused on improving its distribution presence in India and overseas. The company is also building new product lines and exploring alternate natural fibers to make a bio-based insulation and framing system that could replace steel and aluminum.

REGION India

ENTREPRENEUR

Shriti is a civil engineer and construction management professional. She received her Master of Science in construction management from New York University. After graduating in 2016, she spent a life-changing year in a village in central India, where she witnessed stubble burning for the first time. This experience led to the inception of Strawcture Eco in 2018. Shriti has won many national and international accolades. She is a TEDx Speaker and a recipient of the United Nations Social Impact Challenge Award. She has also been recognized as an Acumen Fellow, an Echoing Green Fellow, and one of the Forbes “30 under 30 Asia” in 2021.

Zypp Electric

Zypp Electric offers a disruptive e-bike and e-scooter sharing technology platform created to solve last-mile mobility sustainably. Their platform allows customers, individual consumers, and large e-commerce businesses to rent vehicles easily, access Zypp’s charging infrastructure, and capture valuable data insights related to last-mile logistics. Headquartered in India, the company has grown exponentially over the past two years, with over 10,000 vehicles deployed on the ground—a 5x increase since early 2022. In addition, they have raised $35M to date and recently closed a $25M Series B. In 2023, the Zypp team has grown to more than 700 people across six cities throughout India.

Akash is the Co-Founder and CEO of Zypp, India’s Largest EV-as-a-service startup. He brings over a decade of executive-level leadership experience in marketing, team-building, and rapidly scaling up tech and tech-assisted businesses. In addition, Akash is a thought leader and avid speaker, participating in numerous electric mobility, startup, and marketing events. Before founding Zypp, Akash was the Vice President and Head of Marketing at MobiKwik and was instrumental in positioning the company among the leading fintech startups in India. Before that, Akash was the Head of Acquisitions and Alliances for Mobile Marketing at Snapdeal and worked as an analyst and software engineer for tech companies like Dell and Infosys.