Barclays and Unreasonable Group continue commitment to scaling up entrepreneurial solutions helping employ thousands globally while solving some of the world’s most pressing environmental and societal challenges
TRENDE Inc., a renewable energy retailer in Japan, has been selected to join 11 other ground breaking growth stage ventures at the 2020 Unreasonable Impact Asia Pacific program.
With the global pandemic continuing to have an enormous impact on all aspects of life, including the global workforce, migration, and the environment, supporting entrepreneurial solutions addressing these challenges is critical. Unreasonable Impact, a unique partnership between Barclays and Unreasonable Group is focused on supporting and scaling up high-growth ventures within the green economy, ensuring that their impactful solutions reach new markets, transform even more lives and create thousands more jobs in the process.
After a rigorous selection process involving hundreds of world-class companies, Jeffrey Char, TRENDE’s co-founder and Chairman, has been invited to join 11 other leading entrepreneurs from across Asia Pacific for the first ever virtual iteration of the Unreasonable Impact Asia Pacific program, which aims to accelerate the growth of their companies.
Impacting the future of food, energy, sustainable living and supply chains, each entrepreneur is selected to participate based on their potential to address key social and environmental issues and to create at least 500 jobs within the next five years.
The program connects the entrepreneurs to a global community of power-house mentors and industry specialists, including experts from across Barclays through tried and tested methodologies and approaches.
“We founded TRENDE as a response to the climate crisis and the Japan’s heavy reliance on fossil fuels. Our mission is to accelerate the widespread adoption of renewable energy and redefine the energy ecosystem in Japan,” said Char. “We are excited to join the Unreasonable Impact Asia Pacific program and leverage their community to amplify our positive impact.”
Lars Aagaard, Head of M&A and Head of Financial Sponsors, Asia Pacific at Barclays, said, “We are delighted to welcome the latest cohort of ventures onto our first virtual Unreasonable Impact program here in Asia Pacific. Tackling some of today’s greatest challenges, the entrepreneurs are developing groundbreaking solutions and, in partnership with Unreasonable Group, we look forward to supporting them on their journey to scale.”
Daniel Epstein, Founder and CEO of Unreasonable Group, added, “We are committed to the idea that doing well and doing good are not mutually exclusive and Unreasonable Impact’s success to date demonstrates the growing appetite for purpose and profit driven businesses. Our now highly curated virtual programs provide a space to share wisdom, build a lasting community of support and deep dive into critical conversations, empowering our entrepreneurs towards transformative impact and growth. We are so excited to welcome TRENDE into our global community and look forward to supporting Jeffrey Char along with our partners Barclays, to scale and in the process accelerate the creation of thousands of new jobs.”
Cumulatively, the twelve ventures have generated more than USD $76.28 million in revenue, raised USD $114.48 million in funding and are operating in 26 countries.
To date, the ventures that comprise the Unreasonable Impact community have positively impacted more than 220 million people, reduced greenhouse gas emissions by 55 million tons, and generated more than 37,000 net new jobs. The companies have also raised more than USD $3 billion in funding. TRENDE joins this notable global network in its shared effort to create thousands of jobs on the frontier of the green economy. For more information, visit www.unreasonableimpact.com
The participating companies include:
– Canopy Power: Deploying reliable, renewable electricity supply for remote businesses and communities across Asia Pacific. https://www.canopypower.com/
– DeHaat: Building AI-enabled technologies to revolutionize supply chain and production efficiency in the farm sector. https://agrevolution.in/
– Frontier Markets: Alleviating poverty by investing in rural households, and especially women. https://frontiermkts.com/
– gFlow+: Providing electric, solid-state water meters and smart metering solutions for a more water-efficient future. http://www.gflowplus.com/
– Jumbotail: Organizing the food and grocery ecosystem in India using technology, data science, and design. https://jumbotail.com/
– Maeko: Turning organic waste into fertilizer in just 24 hours with cutting-edge compost machines. https://www.maeko.com.my/
– Mobi-Air: Delivering breakthrough low-energy, low-cost, competitive air filtration technology. https://mobiair.technology/
– MOVUS: Delivering an all-in-one equipment monitoring solution for smarter and more efficient machinery. https://www.movus.com.au/
– Shiok Meats: Transforming the food industry in Asia with cell-based, clean meat and seafood. https://shiokmeats.com/
– TRENDE: Providing Japan affordable, renewable, and local energy through rooftop solar. https://trende.jp/
– Tridi Oasis Group: Recycling locally-sourced plastic waste into high quality raw materials. https://www.tridi-oasis.com/
– TurtleTree Labs: Recreating the full composition, functionality and taste of milk using the latest cutting-edge innovation in biotech. https://turtletreelabs.com/
About TRENDE
TRENDE Inc. is an online renewable energy retailer selling electricity to residential customers in Japan via its Hot Denki (https://hotdenki.jp) and Ashita Denki (https://ashita-denki.jp/) service websites. TRENDE’s mission is to accelerate the widespread adoption of renewable energy and redefine the energy ecosystem in Japan with a customer-centric business model and innovative P2P platform. The company’s investors include Tokyo Electric Power, Itochu, Idemitsu and Dubai Electricity and Water Authority. For more information, please visit http://trende.jp/.
About Unreasonable Impact, created with Barclays
Unreasonable Impact is an innovative multi-year multi-geographic partnership between Barclays and Unreasonable Group to launch the world’s first global network focused on scaling up entrepreneurial solutions that will help employ thousands worldwide in the emerging green economy. To date, the more than 150 ventures that comprise the global cohort operate in more than 180 countries, have raised over $3bn USD in funding, have generated over $2.8bn USD in revenue, and have created more than 37,000 net new jobs since joining Unreasonable Impact. For more information, please visit www.unreasonableimpact.com
About Barclays
Barclays is a British universal bank. We are diversified by business, by different types of customer and client, and by geography. Our businesses include consumer banking and payments operations around the world, as well as a top tier, full service, global corporate and investment bank. Our purpose is creating opportunities to rise. For over 325 years we have funded progress, and today we remain committed to helping make our world more sustainable, more inclusive and more connected. For further information about Barclays, please visit www.home.barclays.
Barclays in Asia Pacific
Barclays has been in Asia Pacific for over 50 years and primarily supports corporations and financial institutions across the Asia region, catering to their cross-border Corporate and Investment banking needs and connecting them to the capital markets of Europe and the Americas. In Asia Pacific, Barclays International has a presence in Hong Kong/ mainland China, Japan, Singapore, India and Australia.
About Unreasonable Group
Bringing together a global network of entrepreneurs, investors, creatives and business leaders, Unreasonable acts as a catalytic platform for entrepreneurs tackling some of the world’s most pressing challenges facing us today. From designing highly curated immersive programs, facilitating access to a global network of mentors to operating a private equity fund and providing advanced storytelling and media activities, Unreasonable operates at the highest intersection of business and impact. It is uniquely positioned to support growth stage entrepreneurs solving key global environment and social challenges to scale up through the deployment of knowledge, networks and capital. For more information about Unreasonable, please visit www.unreasonablegroup.com.
