Unreasonable Impact, a strategic partnership between Unreasonable Group and Barclays, has announced the latest ventures to join its UK and Europe programme, as it looks to contribute towards a more inclusive and greener future.
During the programme, the selected firms will work alongside specialists to break down barriers they have experienced. This includes a week in residence with industry deep dives, masterclasses, investor guidance, as well as mentorship.
Following the programme, each of the ventures will receive continued access to specialist advice from over 1,700 investors and 1,000 mentors, many of whom are Barclays colleagues, through the Unreasonable community.
Deborah Goldfarb, global head of citizenship at Barclays, commented: “Barclays is providing expertise to nurture climate tech and other sustainability-focused ventures at each stage of their journey as they scale from idea to IPO. Through our partnership with Unreasonable Group, we are giving entrepreneurs access to our ecosystem, mentors, and investors to help tackle key social and environmental challenges.”
This year’s ventures offer solutions ranging from food waste-reducing AI to compostable packaging.
Creating a positive impact
Over half of 2024’s UK & Europe cohort are female or from a diverse background. Collectively, they have raised over $400million (£300million) to date and generated $47million (£37million) in revenues in 2023.
The Unreasonable Impact ventures, having collectively raised over $11billion since their inception, now employ more than 25,000 people. These ventures have also collectively reported preventing the release of 89 million metric tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions due to their products and services. In 2023, ventures reported diverting three million metric tonnes of waste through prevention and reduction.
Daniel Epstein, CEO of Unreasonable Group, commented: “In collaboration with Barclays, Unreasonable Impact is dedicated to empowering 13 visionary entrepreneurs with scalable solutions to address pressing global challenges. By providing essential resources, mentorship, and access to a global network, we aim to catalyse impactful change, tackling societal and environmental issues while fostering job creation.”
After achieving their goal to support 250 ventures by the end of 2022, Barclays and Unreasonable aim to support an additional 200 entrepreneurs over five years through the Unreasonable Impact programme.
Since the programme started in 2016, it has supported over 300 ventures, some of which are used in Barclays’ own operations today, while some have also been supported through Barclays’ Sustainable Impact Capital mandate.
Contributing ‘meaningfully to addressing critical global challenges’
One of the 13 firms getting involved is constellr, a thermal data startup, which looks to enable insights into our planet’s water, energy, and carbon cycles. For example, vegetation and soil monitoring can support food security and prevent crop failure. Max Gulde, CEO of constellr, boasts over a decade of experience in research across various fields and is passionate about tackling food security and climate change.
Gulde also revealed his enthusiasm for joining the initiative: “I’m excited about constellr joining Unreasonable Impact UK & Europe; our space-based temperature monitoring to enhance food security aligns seamlessly with the programme’s mission.
“We aim to empower efficient resource management to support 10 billion people by 2050 amidst a changing climate. I look forward to collaborating with industry experts, mentors, and fellow entrepreneurs. Together, we can not only scale constellr’s growth but also contribute meaningfully to addressing critical global challenges.”
Joining ventures
The twelve other ventures also joining the programme are:
- Agricarbon, which provides affordable soil carbon measurement to verify carbon removals, enabling regenerative agriculture.
- Better Dairy, which produces dairy products in a way that doesn’t rely on animals and is low in greenhouse gas emissions.
- Chatterbox, which offers students and professionals a language-learning platform using the language skills of marginalised talent.
- Enough, which produces a sustainable protein called ABUNDA using fungi and natural sugars from grains.
- Land Life, which specialises in sustainable reforestation by employing innovative technology to restore degraded land at scale.
- Mimbly, which designs products focused on laundry to enable optimal water use through recycling, filtration, and connectivity.
- Nuada, which builds energy-efficient carbon capture machines to reduce hard-to-abate industrial emissions.
- Plend, an open banking lender on a mission to unlock more lives with accessible and low-cost credit.
- Qualis Flow, which provides construction teams with the data to track and manage cost, quality, and carbon.
- Shellworks, which produces a new generation of materials and packaging that are like plastic in performance but zero-waste wherever they end up.
- Vertical Future, which designs, manufactures and deploys autonomous indoor vertical farms focused on improving the health of people and the planet.
- Winnow, which employs AI to identify and reduce food waste in the kitchen, offering actionable insights for the hospitality industry.
