Sustainability

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Ahmir Khalib Thompson, better known as Questlove, is an American DJ, songwriter and filmmaker. He is the drummer and joint frontman of the hip-hop band the Roots and has also made several appearances in movies and television. He has been also a musical director at the 2020 and 2021 Academy Awards ceremony. The plant-based food investor was reportedly behind President Barack Obama’s upcoming birthday celebration in 2021. Questlove has backed plant-based food companies Impossible Foods and NotCo.Also in 2021, Questlove directed a film about the 1969 Harlem Cultural Festival, the Summer of Soul (...Or, When the Revolution Could Not Be Televised), which won the US Grand Jury Prize and the Audience Award for documentary at the Sundance Film Festival.

Founded by Finnish serial entrepreneur and angel investor Riku Asikainen, Helsinki-based Evli Growth Partners invest across market segments, with typical initial stakes of €3m–5m at Series A and B funding stages. The VC is currently building up a total fund of €200m to focus on investments in later-stage growth companies Europe. The first fund, EGP Fund I Ky, was launched in December 2018 and closed at €60m in November 2019. New funds will be set up every two years until 2028.EGP currently has seven companies in its portfolio. In 2021, Evli was co-lead investor for the $54m Series B round of Austrian refurbished electronics goods marketplace Refurbed in August, and investor lead in the €22m Series C round of Polish customized furniture design platform Tylko in March.

Founded in 1994, London-based Hermes GPE is a subsidiary of NYSE-listed Federated Hermes Inc (FHI). The UK limited liability partnership (LLP) is one of the UK’s leading independent investors with $7bn pumped into 260 funds. With a network of over 300 general partners worldwide, the LLP also works with global LPs like BT Pension Scheme, Royal Bank of Scotland and Korea Teachers Credit Union.Hermes started investing in tech startups in 2002 and has provided over $3.7bn worth of co-funding to both tech and non-tech startups via 234 fundraising rounds. Managing assets worth $6bn and international offices in New York and Singapore, sustainability is at the core of its investing portfolio of over 113 startups worldwide. In 2021, recent investments include participation in the $54m Series B round of Austrian refurbished electronics goods marketplace Refurbed in August and May’s $125m Series B round of Paysend, the UK-based card-to-card pioneer and international payments platform.

Founded in 2018, Tilia Impact Ventures is the first social impact fund in the Czech Republic. Co-founding partner Silke Horáková has worked in private equity and is also a co-owner of Albatross Media. Co-founding partner Petr Vítek has worked for nine years as a Deloitte consultant. He is also co-founder of Impact Hub in Prague, Brno and Ostrava. Both have experience working in the social enterprise sector.  About 23 investors have contributed to the impact fund. Tilia plans to have 10 local social impact companies in its portfolio, each with an expected investment life of five to seven years. The VC has invested in four companies to date: smart vending SaaS platform MIWA Technologies, data-mining startup Datlab, ready-made spectacles supplier DOT glasses and waste-to-resource marketplace Cyrkl.

Royal Golden Eagle (RGE) is an industrial group owned by Indonesian tycoon Sukanto Tanoto. It employs 60,000 people worldwide with assets worth over $20bn. Tanoto started his business empire in 1967 as a supplier of spare parts to oil and construction companies in Indonesia. He went on to invest in oil palm plantations in 1979. Since 1985, his group companies have been managing 30,000 acres of oil palm trees each year across a total land area of 160,000 hectares.Headquartered in Singapore, RGE has interests in diverse sectors like paper palm oil, viscose, asset management, real estate, construction and energy. RGE owns the world’s largest viscose producer Sateri, Asia Pacific Rayon and energy firm Pacific Oil & Gas. It is also the owner of the Asia Pacific Resources International Holdings Limited (APRIL), one of the world’s largest pulp and paper mills. The Rainforest Action Network and other NGOs like Greenpeace and the WWF have put considerable pressure on the RGE group’s unsustainable operations such as the destruction of rainforests by APRIL. In 2019, RGE announced plans to invest $200m in cellulosic textile fiber research and development over a period of 10 years. Projects will include the scaling up of proven clean technology in fiber manufacturing, bringing pilot-scale production to commercial scale and R&D in emerging frontier solutions.

Invest FWD A/S is an investment vehicle owned by Anders Holch Povlsen, founder of BESTSELLER and Heartland. It is also BESTSELLER’s investment arm for sustainable fashion. In June 2021, the firm made its investment by participating in a Series B round of Finnish cleantech Infinited Fiber. BESTSELLER’s sustainability innovation platform Fashion FWD Lab has been collaborating with Infinited Fiber over the past year to develop and patent Infinna™ fiber material. BESTSELLER has also signed a multi-year commercial agreement with Infinited Fiber to secure access to the startup’s regenerated fibers to be made from textile and other industrial waste.

H&M’s first shop was founded 74 years ago in Sweden by Erling Persson under the name “Hennes”, Swedish for "hers" since the shop was selling only women's apparel. In 1968, Persson expanded into menswear by acquiring Swedish retailer Mauritz Widforss. Hence the rebranding of the company into Hennes & Mauritz (H&M). In 1974, H&M was listed on the Stockholm Stock Exchange. Since then, H&M has expanding internationally opening its first store in London and the rest of Europe and also to the US in early 2000.In 2008, the company also moved into the home furnishings segment and launched H&M Home stores worldwide. The fashion chain can now be found across Europe, the US, Asia and the Middle East. The group expanded further by acquiring fast-fashion brands like Weekday, Monki and Cheap Monday. In April 2021, H&M Group announced a collaboration with textile cleantech Infinited Fiber to launch proof-of-concept denim created wholly from regenerated textile waste as part of its commitment to use only recycled or sustainably sourced materials by 2030.

Adidas is a German multinational corporation manufacturing shoes, clothing and accessories. It is the largest sportswear manufacturer in Europe, and the second-largest in the world, after Nike. The Adidas brand is part of the Adidas Group which also includes Reebok sportswear company, a 8.33% stake in football club Bayern München and also has interest in Runtastic, an Austrian fitness technology company. Total revenue exceeded €21bn in 2018.

Fortum Oyj is a Finnish state-owned energy company operating power plants and co-generation plants across the nation. Listed on the NASDAQ OMX Helsinki stock exchange, Fortum is reputed to be Finland’s biggest company in terms of revenue generated in 2020.It is also Europe's third-largest producer of carbon-free electricity and the second-largest producer of nuclear power. Ranked as the fifth largest heat producer globally, Fortum supplies electricity and heating directly to consumers in Finland, Germany, Central Europe, the UK and the Nordic countries.Fortum invested in Finnish cleantech Infinited Fiber, taking up a 4% stake in 2019, to complement the energy company’s biorefining value chain and to improve resource efficiency. The cleantech investee aims to license its biodegradable fiber technology to help industry partners to manufacture innovative materials from textile and industrial waste.

Mitchell Presser is a New York-based lawyer. He is currently co-chair of global law service Morrison & Foerster’s Global Corporate Department and a partner in the firm’s M&A and Private Equity group, advising on agriculture, amongst other areas. He previously was a founding partner of Paine Schwartz, a US-based $1.2 bn private equity firm specializing in sustainable food chain investing from 2006 to 2014. His sole disclosed angel investment to date was an undisclosed sum in the pre-seed funding of NovoNutrients, the US-based biotech producer of alt-protein from fermentation using CO2 and other emissions, 

Founded in Amsterdam in 2011, Rockstart is a global accelerator-VC focusing on sustainability startups across market segments. Rockstart also runs specialist programs like agrifood in Copenhagen, healthcare in the Dutch town of Nijmegen and also in emerging tech in Bogota, Colombia. It specializes in developing business relationships for portfolio startups with global corporates such as Maersk, Shell and the Dutch Ministry of Health. Rockstart has invested in more than 250 startups, valued at €750m in total.Launched in 2019, Rockstart’s €22m agrifood fund secured investment partners including Vaekstfonden’s Green Future Fund and global dairy cooperative Arla Foods. It has invested in 20 food enterprises like Swiss zero-waste supermarket Lyfa and Danish alt-leather startup Beyond Leather Materials in 2021. Rockstart’s energy fund recently invested in the €730,000 pre-seed round of Danish carbon sequestration corporate marketplace, Klimate, in September 2021. Exits include Wercker, iClinic, Brincr and 3D Hubs.

Bpifrance Large Venture is the growth equity arm of French state investor Bpifrance. It is a €1bn VC fund focused on high-growth, capital-intensive, innovative tech and life sciences companies that have already raised capital. It invests minority stakes of at least €10m as well as co-invests alongside current or new investors in rounds of at least about €20m. It has invested €600m to date and currently has 34 portfolio companies, including 18 listed ones.

Founded in 2013 by Ramanan Raghavendran and John Kim, Amasia is a venture capital investment firm based in San Francisco and Singapore. The VC promotes environmental and sustainable innovations that help to reduce consumption, boost recycling and upcycling. Eco-investments include Finch, Treedots and Joro. Finch provides information about a product’s environmental impact to consumers while TreeDots connects grocery suppliers directly with businesses and households. Joro advises users on actionable steps to reduce their carbon footprints.Amasia primarily invests in startups from seed stage up to Series B, but it has also participated in later-stage investments. The VC also aims to encourage conventional offline businesses to go online and optimize supply chain activities. In October 2020, Amasia participated in a $100m Series E round raised by Dialpad, a remote working communication software firm. In September 2021, the VC took a stake in Indonesian fintech Xendit’s $150m Series C round. Tokopedia also joined the Amasia stable in 2016 when the e-commerce platform became Indonesia’s first tech unicorn after the $147m funding round.Other investments include Super, a social commerce platform that improves FMCG distribution to tier-2 and tier-3 cities in Indonesia, online education firm SkillShare and Rainforest Life that acquires and aggregates direct-to-consumer e-commerce brands.

Goat Capital is a venture capital fund was set up by video livestreamer Justin.tv and Twitch co-founder Justin Kan and Robin Chan, also an angel investor and entrepreneur. Chan met Kan while working at Verizon Wireless when Justin.tv was being launched. Both have since become private investors for over 10 years, with early investments including Twitter, Xiaomi, Bird, Uber and Square. Established in September 2020, the fund’s name was inspired by the goat because good startup founders need to be agile and resilient to survive and be successful, according to Kan.Kan was also an early investor of Indonesian payment gateway Xendit before Goat Capital joined Xendit’s $150m Series C round in September 2021. Goat Capital’s portfolio includes corporate credit card startup Kodo, Indian neobank Bueno Finance, carbon capture developers Holy Grail and web development tool Spore. The hybrid incubator and VC fund has already secured $25m and aims to raise a total of $40m to invest in diverse sectors like digital health, e-commerce, robotics, climate change and gaming entertainment. Funding per startup would range from $500,000 to $3m.

Jason Stockwood is the chairman and co-owner of Grimsby Town Football Club. The Grimsby working-class lad managed to get a scholarship to study in the US, worked at Trailfinders and Lastminute.com in the 1990s. He was a non-executive director of Skyscanner and international MD at Travelocity Business and also at Match.com. In 2010, he became the CEO and vice-chair of online insurance company, Simply Business, that was sold for £400m in 2017.The co-founder of VC 53° has also invested in British startups across market segments, including the Series B investment round of food-sharing app OLIO in September 2021 and August 2020 financing of carbon tracking platform for banks and investors CoGo UK.

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