Lucro Plastecycle selected to join the Unreasonable Impact Asia Pacific 2021 cohort of high-growth entrepreneurs addressing our world's most significant challenges

Barclays and Unreasonable continue commitment to supporting high-impact ventures solving critical global problems and generating thousands of new jobs.

Unreasonable Impact welcomes 14 new companies into its global network

18 June 2021  –  Lucro Plastecycle has been selected to join the 2021 Unreasonable Impact Asia Pacific program, a partnership between Barclays and Unreasonable, committed to scale high-growth ventures addressing key global challenges while strengthening the global workforce, and moving the green economy forward.

As COVID-19 continues to have a major impact on everyday life, supporting ventures that provide the most effective and meaningful solutions to address the immediate and long-term challenges resulting from the effects of the global pandemic is critical.

After a rigorous selection process involving hundreds of world-class companies, Lucro Plastecycle's Ujwal Desai has been selected to join 13 other groundbreaking growth-stage venture from across Hong Kong, South Korea, India, Indonesia, Japan and Australia, for the Unreasonable Impact Asia Pacific program, which aims to accelerate the growth of their companies.

Each venture was selected based on its potential to address key social and environmental issues, such as transforming the future of food, renewable energy innovation, sustainable lifestyle solutions, and to create at least 500 jobs within the next five years. The program also connects the entrepreneurs to an exceptional, international network of experienced specialists and mentors.

Lucro's model – of backward and forward integration of the supply chain is a transition to a truly circular economy. There are several industry challenges that Lucro has been trying to address one step at a time.

1. While most recycling companies tend to recycle only industrial plastic waste, 80% of the waste recycled by Lucro is post-consumer waste- this is the dirty, mixed plastic waste that is thrown by all of us in our waste bins.
2. Waste is segregated into over 15 categories before it is sent to the washing plant.  These are important steps required to get a good end product.
3. Problems in transparency and traceability in the waste industry have been addressed by Lucro through a blockchain based software called Satma CE that is able to track the product from collection, right through sorting, washing, recycling to end manufactured product.

Lars Aagaard, Head of Merger and Acquisition and Financial Sponsors Group, Asia Pacific, Barclays commented, “We are delighted to welcome the latest cohort of ventures onto our second virtual Unreasonable Impact programme here in Asia Pacific. Tackling some of today’s greatest challenges, the entrepreneurs are developing ground-breaking 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, “Unreasonable Impact was co-created with Barclays with a shared intention to help entrepreneurs take their businesses to the next level, faster. We firmly believe that the most valuable, influential and lasting companies are those solving humanity’s most pressing challenges, and we're so incredibly grateful and privileged to support these ventures and Fellows, and welcome them into our global community of life-long support."

Cumulatively, the 14 ventures have generated more than USD $117 million in revenue and are operating in 37 countries. More than 50% of the cohort is female-led, and 78% is BIPOC-owned.

Since the program's global launch in 2016, the Unreasonable Impact community, made up of 178 ventures, has positively impacted more than 255 million people, reduced greenhouse gas emissions by 48 million tons, and generated more than 48,000 net new jobs. The companies have also raised more than USD $5 billion in funding. [Company] joins this unparalleled global network in its shared effort to drive lasting and scalable change.

For more information, visit http://unreasonableimpact.com/asia

The participating companies in the 2021 Unreasonable Impact Asia Pacific program include:

• Absolute Foods: Creating the world's first, universal Farm Operating System, driven by AI to optimize sustainability and productivity
• Aqua Development: Mimicking the nature of aqua ecosystems to create high-quality and sustainable organic shrimps
• ATEC: Enabling clean cooking through smart biogas and smart electric cookstoves
• ATKO: Enabling the circular economy by endlessly recycling leather waste
• Avant Meats: Producing safe, high-quality and sustainable fish products with patent-pending cell cultivation and tissue engineering technology
• Goterra: Using robots collaborating with insects to decentralise waste management
• IntegriCulture: Pioneering a scalable general-purpose cell culture system with applications ranging from reagents and cosmetics to cell-based meat
• Intello Labs: Digitising food quality to build a world with no food loss or waste
• JALA: Transforming the shrimp industry using a data-driven farming and an analytics platform
• ListenField: Gathering, processing and analyzing multilayer data to provide comprehensive and sustainable precision farming solutions to farmers and agribusinesses
• Lucro: Recycling the hardest to recycle plastics to enable the circular economy
• Power Ledger: Building the operating system for the new energy marketplace
• Smart Joules: Eliminating energy waste through innovations in continuous energy optimization
• Three Wheels United: Facilitating the electrification of India’s 175M Light Vehicles

About Unreasonable Impact, created with Barclays

Unreasonable Impact is an innovative multi-year multi-geographic partnership between Barclays and Unreasonable 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 170 ventures that comprise the global cohort operate in more than 180 countries, have raised over $5B USD in funding, have generated over $3.7B USD in revenue, and have created more than 48,000 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 customers and clients, 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, all of which are supported by our service company which provides technology, operations and functional services across the Group.

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.

About Unreasonable:

Building community between entrepreneurs, institutions, investors, and business leaders, Unreasonable acts as a catalytic platform for entrepreneurs tackling some of the world’s most pressing challenges facing us today. Part global community and part investment firm, Unreasonable is an international company that supports a Fellowship for growth-stage entrepreneurs, channels exclusive deal-flow to investors, and partners with institutions to discover profit in solving global problems. Unreasonable exists to re-purpose capitalism, with the firm belief in the power of business to drive lasting and scalable change.

For more information about Unreasonable, please visit www.unreasonablegroup.com