Unreasonable Impact UK and Europe 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 labour 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 for the Unreasonable Impact UK and Europe 2023 programme. These innovators are providing solutions to the future of food, clean transportation, renewable energy, and more. Together, they’ve raised more than $286M+ 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.

Bundlee

Bundlee is the UK’s first rental subscription service for childrenswear. The company is on a mission to transform the wasteful childrenswear industry and to create a better future for little ones to grow into. Families join the subscription service and rent a set of clothes, then conveniently swap as their little one grows. Bundlee professionally cleans, and Ozone sanitizes clothes, before sharing them with the next renting families. Bundlee offers an environmentally friendly, affordable, and convenient service. They have partnered with brands including Patagonia, MORI, Mini Rodini and Stella McCartney Kids. Bundlee was awarded a grant from Innovate UK for their innovative inventory management system and was on the Climate KIC accelerator. Bundlee was listed by Drapers as ‘One To Watch’ and has been featured in Vogue, The Guardian and The Times.

Eve Kekeh is the Founder of Bundlee, the UK’s first rental subscription service for childrenswear. Eve is on a mission to transform the wasteful childrenswear industry and help to create a better future for little ones to grow into. Eve is passionate about the circular economy, reducing waste and extending the lifespan of products. She holds a Masters in Enterprise from the University of Manchester and has been listed on Forbes 30 Under 30 & Drapers 30 Under 30 and was awarded Sustainability Entrepreneur of the Year for London at the Great British Entrepreneurs Awards.

SECTOR

Epishine AB

REGION

18 countries including the UK, US, and China

Epishine is a developer of energy-harvesting technology optimized for low-light conditions indoors. The company’s technology is eco-friendly, functional in low-light settings, and can power indoor wireless devices, enabling users to have an alternative to disposable batteries. Their first product is a unique, organic solar cell, optimized for harvesting ambient indoor light that is easily integrated into small, low-power electronics. These organic solar cells are third-generation photovoltaic cells with the unique qualities of being semitransparent, lightweight, and 100% organic resulting in a very low energy payback time. Epishine was founded on 30+ years of research in organic electronics, photovoltaics, and breakthrough manufacturing processes which unlocks unparalleled scalability at one tenth of the cost of traditional solar cells.

Anna has great experiences with global industrial companies of varied sizes, with diversified challenges which have generated broad knowledge and learnings, such as footprint optimization, leading entities in China and Switzerland, and working in a multicultural environment. As an engineer she is passionate about innovation and product development, finding new applications with the ability to open up new markets. One of her clear strengths is to see the whole picture and understand how different areas interact to drive change and improvements. She loves working in a structure of strong self-driven teams that share the same vision and passion for creating a more sustainable future for our coming generations. She also believes that a company needs to develop its processes to secure an efficient way of collaboration and communication.

Foodsteps

Making it easy to measure and reduce the environmental impacts of food

REGION

Hong Kong, Portugal, Spain, UK, and US

Founded in 2019, Foodsteps is a technology company that calculates, labels, and reduces the environmental impact of food. The company offers environmental calculations, carbon footprint, and environmental health labels for various food items, making it easy for food producers to measure and reduce their environmental impacts. The food industry is responsible for 26% of global greenhouse gas emissions and is a leading driver of deforestation and biodiversity loss. However, food companies lack the data and tools to achieve the pace of change required to solve this problem through informed decisions. To do this, Foodsteps validates 3.5K (and growing) food items with one of the largest food emission datasets in the world, based on 50K+ farm-level data points and 40K+ post-farm processes. Foodsteps has large foodservice restaurants as primary customers. Longer term, it plans to expand its catalogue of food and the accuracy of data points before growing internationally.

ENTREPRENEUR

foodsteps.earth

Before Anya started Foodsteps, she completed her degree and postgraduate research at the University of Cambridge, where she won prizes in Ecological Sciences and Food Security. Recognising the severe impacts of the food system on the planet, Anya founded Foodsteps in 2019 to enable food businesses to accurately measure and reduce the environmental impacts of their products and supply chains. Foodsteps has since grown to a team of 30 people, received over $5m in venture funding, and counts well-loved companies such as Pizza Express, Gousto, and Sky as early adopters. Outside of Foodsteps, Anya is a trustee and advisor at two charities; Youngwilders, a charity she co-founded with university friends, connects young people with ecological restoration projects in the UK, while the charity Haller works with smallholder farmers in Kenya to improve sustainable agriculture practices.

Hydrogen Vehicle Systems

Hydrogen Vehicle Systems is a manufacturer and designer of hydrogen-electric vehicles for the commercial vehicle market. The company’s products include hydrogenpowered medium commercial vehicles (MCV) and heavy goods vehicles (HGV), providing clients with highperformance efficiency and options for decarbonisation. The company is focusing on producing three different types of vehicles – a medium commercial vehicle (delivery van) and two types of heavy goods vehicles (equivalent to a tractor and a bin lorry). The company has built an experienced team, established a focused vehicle production programme with a clear roadmap, completed its first demonstration vehicle, and has built an ecosystem of partners, suppliers, and technology providers to support its scale-up journey.

1980s innovations such as the Walkman and personal computers inspired Abdul when he was growing up. So when he learned H₂O was more than just a fancy name for water, he knew hydrogen would fuel the future and began his research. In 2017 he shared his hydrogen vision with propulsion engineer Emil Rangelov, and Hydrogen Vehicle Systems was born. By 2020, they were a systems-integration company with a first-to-market plan. But risk-averse grant funders and investors required USP. A unique selling point. He took on the Chief Innovation Officer role and devised the HVS Intellectual Property Strategy. Now their flagship patent pending SEMAS ® proprietary hydrogen fuelsaving technology is here. The result? Lower fleet operation costs make their vehicles cheaper to operate than competitors. Their strategic partner Euro Garages has over 4,000 filling stations across UK & Europe.

Developing sustainable energy infrastructure in low-income countries

Mandulis Energy

REGION

UK, Botswana, Kenya, South Africa, South Sudan, Tanzania, Uganda, and Zambia

Mandulis deploys new technologies to deliver energy that is affordable, reliable and sustainable. It aims to drive both rural and urban economic development while holistically supporting biodiversity wherever it works. With operational projects in Uganda, Mandulis provides an alternative to traditional utilities and installs energy projects that generate electricity alongside clean cooking fuel in hard-to-reach agricultural regions. It delivers the highest quality renewable energy at the lowest costs possible, using a circular economy zero-waste approach. Mandulis provides clean energy security via affordable and sustainable electricity to communities in energy poverty; while also providing economic opportunities for rural farmers to gain more income. By-products of the company’s projects include organic bio-fertilizer & biochar, which promote climatesmart agriculture; and sustainable solutions to replace coal and other fossil fuels.

ENTREPRENEUR

TITLE

Peter co-founded Mandulis Energy, focused on new approaches to deliver energy that is affordable and sustainable, and capable of driving economic development, in urban and rural communities, alongside holistic synergies in support of biodiversity in nearby conservation ecosystems. He leads Mandulis’ development of Africa’s largest grid-tied biomass gasification power plant, as well as the off-grid REPARLE and BEPeARL Projects.

BEPeARL (Bio-Energy Powering Agriculture and Rural Livelihoods) won the DFCD Scalable Climate Solutions Challenge at COP26, and is listed in ESI Africa’s Top African Power & Energy projects 2022.

Peter is an Aerospace Engineering alumnus of Bristol and Cranfield Universities. A ballroom dancer, equestrian and thespian, Peter speaks Acholi, Arabic, French and Spanish.

Net Purpose

Net Purpose is an impact data aggregation platform that makes impact measurement effortless for investors. The company provides raw, quantitative data on the social and environmental outcomes of publicly listed companies and investment portfolios. It enables investors to monitor their portfolios, instantly align with evolving ESG regulations, and reduce the time and cost required to develop a sustainable investing strategy. Net Purpose covers globally listed equities (including emerging markets) and fixed-income securities and provides relevant metrics against the SDG goals to help investors know the exact impact of each investment. For each equity/security, Net Purpose provides relevant metrics against the SDG goals to help investors know the exact impact of each investment. It has recently closed its Series A, grew its sales and customers more than 3x in the last 12 months, and is ready to further scale for growth

Sam is the Founder and CEO of Net Purpose. Net Purpose is backed by clients with over $5 trillion in assets under management, and leading investors like ETF Partners, Illuminate Financial, and former Chair of Goldman Sachs Asset Management, Jim O’Neill. Net Purpose cleans, standardized, and structures data on the social and environmental outcomes of companies and investment portfolios. Clients of Net Purpose can instantly report their impact in line with all global standards and goals and can invest to create a more sustainable world. Sam was previously Head of Impact at LeapFrog Investments, a specialist investor in emerging markets whose portfolio companies reach over 160 million underserved people with financial services and healthcare, across 33 countries. Sam has held senior impact investing advisory positions with B Lab, UN PRI, the IFC, and the Impact Management Project. Sam started her career at Goldman Sachs and is a graduate of the University of Queensland and the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies.

RideTandem

Providing sustainable workplace and community transport

SECTOR

Information and Communications Technology

RideTandem provides shared transportation services to build next-generation mobility for towns and small cities. The company turns existing taxi, minibus, and coach fleets into smart, shared shuttles and allows individuals to book and pay for their seats through an easy-to-use application, enabling passengers to get to work and school easily. RideTandem operates in places where public transport often isn’t a viable option. It acts as the intermediary between transport suppliers, passengers, and their employers and schools, and provides the digital infrastructure and operations that organizes rides via driver and passenger apps, and a B2B client dashboard. The company provides over 50,000 individual passenger rides per month in the UK today with gross revenue of £4.4M in 2022. Longer term, RideTandem aims to expand into new European geographies.

ENTREPRENEUR

Tatseng

Chiam TITLE

Co-Founder & COO

Tatseng is Co-Founder and COO of RideTandem, which is on a mission to enable sustainable commuting for all, especially those living outside big cities. Prior to RideTandem, Tatseng was an Investment Director and employee number six at the Global Innovation Fund, a leading social impact investment fund based in London. Tatseng helped to set up several key processes and led multiple investments across Sub-Saharan Africa and Asia deploying grant, debt, and equity financing instruments. Prior to that, he held roles in management consulting at Monitor Deloitte and renewable energy investment banking at Credit Suisse. Tatseng holds a BA Honours degree from the University of Oxford, an MBA from the Wharton School, and an MPA from Harvard University.

SaveMoneyCutCarbon

Helping businesses and homeowners take practical steps to be more sustainable

SaveMoneyCutCarbon is the UK’s leading platform for money-saving through sustainability. The platform is a one-stop shop of educational content, and useful tools, combined with a team of highly skilled experts covering all elements of reducing energy, water, plastic, and carbon emissions for homes and businesses. To deliver this, SaveMoneyCutCarbon aggregates innovative, proven, and efficient products and solutions from respected manufacturers. Consumers and smaller businesses can use tools like their award-winning app to learn about sustainable swaps and then purchase products through the company’s e-commerce shops. Larger customers can use SaveMoneyCutCarbon to understand their SBT’s emissions baseline and what they need to do to move towards net zero. The company can then finance and deliver the associated projects. The company has over 5,000 five-star reviews and is regularly featured on TV and radio.

Mark has been described more than once, as a ‘disruptive entrepreneur,’ as much of his experience is in identifying and starting businesses that simplify fragmented markets, to help move new technologies or solutions into the mainstream. SaveMoneyCutCarbon is his latest venture, the company is now recognized as the go-to people for homes and organizations that want to reduce their energy, water, and carbon all while saving money. The business has enjoyed rapid growth and now delivers its customers millions of pounds in savings per year, through its UK-wide project management and installation teams, and through its website, app, and platform offering.

Mark is increasingly known as the goto person for pragmatic commentary on the UK’s sustainability, carbon reduction, and more recently, the UK’s energy bill crisis, and regularly contributes to TV and radio.

Combating climate change with robots and seaweed

Seaweed Generation

Seaweed Generation is a robotics company that develops technology to harness the power of seaweed for longterm carbon dioxide removal (CDR) and large-scale industrial use cases. For CDR, the company takes an invasive type of seaweed called Sargassum that is building up on a massive scale as a result of climate change.

SECTOR

Seaweed Generation’s first proprietary robot ‘AlgaRay’ captures and deposits Sargassum into the deep oceans, piloting in 2023. In 2024, Seaweed Generation will move to a fully commercial operation sinking 5K tons of CO2 (roughly 50K tons of Sargassum) into the deep oceans. The company is making an early start on seaweed cultivation, with its second robot, the AlgaVator, designed to remotely monitor and autonomously manage offshore cultivation.

REGION

TITLE

Paddy (Patricia) Estridge is CEO of Seaweed Generation, which builds automated robotics to harness the incredible potential of seaweed for CDR and climate change mitigation. A software engineer by training, she loves building and working with teams of passionate nerds. She started Seaweed Generation after first hearing about the many unrealized industrial use cases for seaweed (which include cosmetics, food, biofuels, fertilizer, animal feed, bioplastics, carbon dioxide removal, and much much more). Originally from the UK, Paddy moved to the Middle East to join Google after graduating from Exeter University. She then moved to New York and Silicon Valley to join the startup world, before returning to the UK and founding Seaweed Generation.

Skyroom

Developing air space to solve the affordable housing crises

SECTOR

Skyroom is a technology, design, and airspace development company. It helps major landowners maximize their portfolio’s economic, social, and environmental value. They do so by originating, designing, and delivering homes in the airspace above existing buildings. The company is a development manager, a joint venture partner, and a trusted advisor to some of the UK’s largest landowners. Skyroom has developed several proprietary technologies, such as geospatial mapping technology, Podium System, and precision manufactured modules.

REGION

Italy, Philippines, Saudi Arabia, UAE, UK, and US

ENTREPRENEUR

TITLE

skyroom.london

Arthur Kay is an urban designer and entrepreneur building solutions to create sustainable cities. Arthur is the Founder and CEO of Skyroom, the design, technology, and development company that provides key workers with beautiful, affordable, sustainable homes near where they work. He is the Founder and Chair of the £100m Key Worker Homes Fund; Founder and Chair of the think-tank Fast Forward 2030; and Founder and Chair of the clean technology company, Bio-bean. In addition, Arthur is a Trustee of the Museum of the Home and Entrepreneur in Residence at UCL’s Institute for Global Prosperity. He is a Visiting Lecturer in technology, design, and entrepreneurship at both Imperial College London and UCL. Arthur studied architecture at The Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL, and entrepreneurship at The Stanford Graduate School of Business.

Solaris Offgrid

Enabling companies to deliver clean energy technology to the next billion people

REGION

Kenya, Nigeria, Tanzania, United Republic of Uganda

Solaris Offgrid is a software provider enabling Pay-asyou-go (Paygo) business models for distributors providing products on credit in Africa. The software provides critical loan management infrastructure integrated with mobile money and SMS services to automate payment, reconciliation, and process workflows. The Paygo models allow unbanked customers without access to conventional loans to finance essential products such as solar home systems to provide light and energy, or clean cooking stoves, thus aiding communities to shift away from fossil fuel dependence. Solaris Offgrid has 60 B2B clients on its platform with over 3m people impacted. It has recently hit profitability and is planning to introduce ancillary products such as a loan purchasing product to help with the financing capabilities of the client, as well as a more enduser-friendly app.

Siten Mandalia is the CEO and Co-Founder of Solaris Offgrid and has worked on finance and technology solutions for the off-grid and unbanked populations for the last 10 years. Before this, Siten graduated from Imperial College London in Mechanical Engineering and started his career working on the financing of grid-tied rooftop solar projects before taking initial energy access solutions through the Imperial Business School MBA program. Solaris Offgrid’s flagship product is a B2B SaaS called PaygOps - a fintech/IoT platform that connects vital products (such as solar home systems) and mobile payment methods to a central CRM and ERP. This allows the efficient management of credit and distribution of such life-changing products for the 1.7bn unbanked population.

Revolutionizing sustainable bio-based manufacturing

uFraction8

SECTOR

Biotechnology

REGION

UK, Poland

uFraction8 enables the global transition to sustainable biomanufacturing. To achieve this, uFraction8 builds the most efficient and scalable filtration solutions to solve sticky problems with harvesting and processing microbial cell cultures. uFraction8 builds products around a disruptive liquid particle processing technology that uses microfluidics-based filter systems to help biomanufacturers harvest their products with better energy efficiency and scale. Their technology offers up to 15% better yields and 75% energy savings against the main three liquid processing technologies; filtration, flow centrifugation, and flocculation. Following the co-founders’ world-leading research and confirming results with customers through paid demonstrations, their technology is set to scale as they embark on mass manufacturing to meet customer demand.

ENTREPRENEUR

TITLE

CEO

ufraction8.com

Dr. Monika Tomecka is the CEO of uFraction8 and holds a Biomedical Science Ph.D. from The University of Sheffield, UK, and A*STAR, Singapore, and over 7 years of experience in small companies development and financing. She is one of the most dynamic and prolific business leaders in life sciences in Scotland. Since founding uFraction8 Monika was listed in the Top 20 Women to Watch in Scotland by Insider, and the Top 10 of European Women Who Tech. She is a passionate advocate for Women in STEM, and actively supports fellow female founders. As a very active person, Monika loves to keep track of innovations arising in several fields of her interest, including synthetic biology, biotechnology, and biomedical science. She often takes part in seminars, talks, meetups, and conferences, and her personal goal is to learn something new every day.

What The Future

Disrupting conventional manufacturing with novel 3D printing and thermoforming technology

SECTOR

Manufacturing and Supply Chain

Netherlands,  US

What the Future creates breakthrough batch-to-mass manufacturing technologies with a focus on accelerating the transition to sustainability at an industrial scale. It reinvents existing processes with breakthrough perspectives, helping manufacturers realize the untapped possibilities of engineering, digital design, and 3D technology to minimize production cost, business risk, and environmental impact. The company’s technology is currently utilized in two commercial applications, custom confections (ice pops, chocolate, gummies) and circular footwear production. With a long value chain, traditional manufacturing takes a long time to market new products. It is costly and complex for brands to ramp up or scale down mass production, making it more difficult to meet customer demand. With their patent-protected and breakthrough manufacturing technology, What The Future enables localized manufacturing that is more sustainable, cheaper, and more agile. In doing so, they are remaking the future — of our products, our industries, and our planet.

ENTREPRENEUR

Kickstarted by her passion for the sea through sport and pleasure, Carolyn spent 7 years as a seven-time World Champion sailor, competing in the Olympics. Then, a previous sponsor of her Olympics campaign – an equipment maker – asked her to run the brand. During this 8-year growth period with the company, she realized the inefficiencies and polluting strategies of fashion and brands. This fuelled her to look further into what she could do in her lifetime to make a change. She was determined to use her resources and energy to help move the needle forward. To protect our planet and hope that our children’s children can freely swim in our lakes and oceans and that businesses are responsible for their environmental impact. Now, she is on a mission to rethink how products are made so that they ultimately do not end up in the ocean. This work spans multiple industries but with the same key goals: Minimize waste, upcycle, and recycle and demand accountability for all businesses and individuals.