B2B Marketplace Jumbotail Selected to Join 11 Leading Edge Companies at the 2020 Unreasonable Impact Asia Pacific program

Jumbotail selected to join 11 leading edge companies focused on solving the world's greatest challenges at Unreasonable Impact Asia Pacific 2020

Bengaluru, December 7th, India – Jumbotail 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 focussed 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, Karthik Venkateswaran - Cofounder & CEO, Jumbotail 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.

Speaking about the programme, Karthik Venkateswaran - Cofounder & CEO, Jumbotail said, "It is an honour to represent Jumbotail in Unreasonable Impact Asia Pacific. Jumbotail is digitizing and modernizing the traditional mom & pop kirana stores via our B2B marketplace and New Retail platform. We empower the kirana stores with cutting edge technology, plug them into our modern supply chain, provide them access to formal credit, and give them the tools, and training to transform their traditional stores into omnichannel ready modern J24 stores. By our innovative business model of partnering with kirana stores, and bringing them into the formal economy, we help in inclusion, preserve jobs and create new jobs, and deliver upto 5x Impact Multiple of Money for every dollar invested.

We look forward to leveraging the Unreasonable group's powerful network, expertise, and access to a capital pool that is aligned with our mission to create economic opportunities to mom & pop kirana retailers across India and other emerging markets."

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 programme 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 programmes 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 Jumbotail into our global community and look forward to supporting Karthik 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 $76.28M million in revenue, raised USD $114.48M 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. Jumbotail 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.

DeHaat: Building AI-enabled technologies technologies to revolutionise supply chain and production efficiency in the farm sector.

Frontier Markets: Alleviating poverty by investing in rural households, and especially women.

gFlow+: Providing electric, solid-state water meters and smart metering solutions for a more water-efficient future.

Jumbotail: Organising the food and grocery ecosystem in India using technology, data science, and design.

Maeko: Turning organic waste into fertilizer in just 24 hours with cutting-edge compost machines.

Mobi-Air: Delivering breakthrough low-energy, low-cost, competitive air filtration technology.

MOVUS: Delivering an all-in-one equipment monitoring solution for smarter and more efficient machinery.

Shiok Meats: Transforming the food industry in Asia with cell-based, clean meat and seafood.

TRENDE: Providing Japan affordable, renewable, and local energy through rooftop solar.

Tridi Oasis Group: Recycling locally-sourced plastic waste into high quality raw materials.

TurtleTree Labs: Recreating the full composition, functionality and taste of milk using the latest cutting edge innovation in biotech.

About Jumbotail:

Jumbotail is India's leading New Retail platform and online B2B marketplace for food & grocery that connects 30,000+ mom & pop kirana grocery stores with brands, producers, and farmers. Jumbotail was co-founded by Stanford MBA classmates S.Karthik Venkateswaran and Ashish Jhina, in November 2015. Jumbotail Logistics is an inhouse, end to end, tech powered full stack supply chain network with fulfilment centers, distribution centers, enabling last mile storefront delivery and payments collections from its customers. Jumbotail's fintech platform facilitates working capital credit in a cost-effective and scalable manner from lenders for its customers and sellers using its proprietary algorithms & integrated credit product.

Jumbotail transforms traditional mom & pop stores into J24 stores - a chain of modern convenience grocery stores, owned and operated by mom & pop retailers, fully integrated with Jumbotail's new retail platform. Jumbotail has the capability to set up a fully functional J24 store within 24h-48h with its logistics, supply chain, and fintech platform. J24 stores are omni channel ready, and consumers can order via voice, online, and via hyperlocal platforms.

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 programmes, 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

Retail Tech Platform, Arzooo Raises $ 7.5 mn in Series A led by US-based WRVI Capital

Retail Tech Platform, Arzooo Raises $ 7.5 mn in Series A led by US-based WRVI Capital 

The B2B Retail-tech firm will leverage funds for technology and market expansion 

Arzooo, India's fastest growing retail-tech startup today announced that it has raised $7.5 mn in Series A funding led by WRVI Capital. Arzooo's existing investors 3Lines Venture Capital, another US-based investor and Jabbar internet of UAE also participated in the current round. The startup will leverage funds for tech-upgradation and market expansion.

Arzooo, which currently operates in Bengaluru, Delhi-NCR, Chennai, Kolkata, Hyderabad will be scaling operations in Eastern and Western regions of the country. The startup will also channelize funds to ramp its 'Tech platform, "Go Store. Arzooo's "Go Store" is the unique technology platform by Arzooo that solves the big problem of selection, price and complex supply chain & sourcing for offline retailers. The company aims to serve 50,000 retailers in the next year.

Commenting on the fundraise, Khushnud Khan, cofounder of Arzooo.com says, "Our strong growth over the past year is a testimony to the positive impact Arzooo has had on the business of physical retailers. The current fundraise will help us boost our Technology, Quality of service and reach to fulfil our goal of equipping each retail store with technology to grow and perform profitable business."

Sudhir Rao, Managing Partner WRVI Capital India Says, Arzooo has in less than two years, through it's initial focus on $50 Billion consumer durable segment , demonstrated a highly scalable product market fit, especially in a country where local medium & small retailers dominate the market. Arzooo's technology and localised demand-Supply integration offers great scalability to retail stores for both product expansion and profitability, which is a win-win for all.

Arzooo recently announced the launch of its new digital credit lending product, 'Arzooo Credit', for offline retailers, that will offer working capital cushion to Arzooo's partner stores, especially during the time when the retail is just on its way to recovery from covid impact. With Arzooo Credit, retailers can avail from Rs 1,00,000 to 10,00,000 credit on Arzooo platform. At present, the service is open to over 5000 retailers across 10 cities.

About Arzooo.com:

Arzooo.com is a retail technology venture empowering physical retailers to compete and grow against e-commerce platforms like amazon and Flipkart, with its technology platform.

Arzooo's unique technology platform is India's fastest growing integrated retail network with over 5000 partner stores. Spread across 10+ cities, Arzooo enables a partner store to overcome broader limitations of physical retail and offer its customers the largest inventory selection, best price and fastest delivery, without them having to stock everything. This is backed by attractive payments and financing solutions to drive up sales and conversion in- store.

Arzooo is founded by ex-Flipkart colleagues and IIT-Kharagpur alumn, Khushnud Khan and Rishi Raj Rathore, in the year 2018 in Bangalore. Since its inception, Arzooo has seen tremendous growth and has enabled over 5000 partner stores to grow sales and compete with bigger sellers and online marketplaces.