rePurpose Global Joins Palo Alto-Based Pear Ventures’ Exclusive Accelerator Program

We are so excited to be a part of the Pear Accelerator this summer as mentorship from serial entrepreneurs and growth-focused resources will fastrack rePurpose to enable impact on a grand scale.

Written by
Peter Wang Hjemdahl
Published on
August 2, 2022

We are thrilled to announce that rePurpose Global is partnering with Pear Ventures, a Palo Alto, California-based seed-stage investment fund who partners with entrepreneurs from day zero to build category-defining companies worldwide. We are so excited to be a part of the Pear Accelerator this summer as hands-on mentorship from serial entrepreneurs and growth-focused resources will fast-track rePurpose Global to enable impact on a grand scale.

Pear Is Going to Help Us Grow In Unimaginable Ways

Pear Ventures is an early-stage venture fund that has partnered with cutting-edge companies across sectors such as DoorDash, Guardant Health (NASDAQ: GH), Branch, Gusto and many more. The Accelerator program helps early-stage startups grow by providing product and growth mentorship, networking, and learning resources across the business. The mentorship includes mini-board meetings with the Pear partners, access to a dedicated operating mentor, regular workshops, and speaker series with accomplished experts.

To rePurpose Global, one of the most valuable takeaways would be to learn from exceptional serial entrepreneurs in the Pear team as well as other founders in Pear’s portfolio. We are truly grateful to be in the company of compassionate and resilient entrepreneurs this early into our journey as a social enterprise.

Impact and Profitability Goes Hand in Hand

Our co-founders Peter Wang Hjemdahl and Savinka Balasubramanian in a waste recycling enterprise in India

rePurpose Global is a global movement of conscious consumers and businesses going Plastic Neutral. As the world’s first Plastic Credit Platform, we make climate action delightfully simple for companies by removing and recycling as much ocean-bound plastic waste as they produce while greening their product experiences to reach and retain purposeful consumers.  

As environmental changemakers, we are so excited to be building a venture and a business model with the potential to mobilize billions of dollars of financing towards scaling up the circular economy worldwide. Pear recognizes that in this new world order, you can do well by doing good, and rePurpose Global represents the perfect embodiment of that philosophy.

Our venture has seen much evolution, and with Pear, we will continue to grow and flourish. Since launching 10 months ago, we have rapidly built up a global community of Plastic Neutral brands and companies across 6 countries in food, beverage, health, beauty, and professional services. We are proud to have enabled the removal of over 190 tons of ocean-bound plastic waste across our vetted recycling projects in 3 continents and 6 countries (India, Sri Lanka, Indonesia, Kenya, Colombia, Haiti, Honduras).

How We Got Here

A man standing behind a garbage dump

Our journey started 3 years ago during a visit to Deonar East, one of Asia’s largest landfills, in Mumbai, India. There, we stood between mountains of plastic and the booming skyline of India’s financial capital – we realized something needed to change. From side streets in Mumbai’s largest slum to corporate headquarters in New York, we traversed across Asia and the world to create an ecosystem that would reduce waste, revive lives, and restore nature’s balance.

Armed with a design thinking approach and deep understanding of pain points across the global circular economy, we launched the world’s first Plastic Credit Platform. 3 years ago, we were passionate idealists with a mission to end waste and empower lives without anything to show for it. Today, we are leading an energetic 12-person team spread across 2 countries and 6 cities, pushing full-throttle to enable our world’s transition towards climate neutrality.

Where We Are Headed

A hand with a globe in their palm in front of high-rise buildings

1. Growth:

We are looking to expand our customer footprint in North America and Europe. To help build a truly circular economy, we also hope to bring more brands across industries like food & beverage, personal care, wellness, and fashion companies under our wing.

2. Accessibility:

Simplification and affordability is important in the larger scheme of building a circular economy. We need a large number of companies going Plastic Neutral to truly help protect our planet, and to make that happen, we are working towards making our offerings easy, affordable and seamless for companies of all sizes to take climate action. Sustainability has just started to trickle down from large companies into SMEs, and our philosophy has been and will always be to help conscious brands grow and flourish through sustainability efforts that deliver bang for buck.

3. Industry-defining partnerships:

It’s no secret that market leaders sway standards and business trends to a large extent. If large, influential companies were to go Plastic Neutral with us, it would pave the way for the thousands of smaller players to follow suit. Unilever and Coca Cola have already committed to going Plastic Neutral by 2025 and 2030 respectively. Alan Jope and James Quincey: if you are reading this, rePurpose Global stands ready to help you accomplish your goals.

Three eventful years ago, we started rePurpose Global with a dream of creating a brighter future for our planet. We’ve worked with people who lost family members while picking waste in landfills. We’ve worked with driven consumers and conscientious brands. And we built rePurpose Global as a platform for them, for you, for the future.

With love,

Peter, Svanika, Aditya, and the entire rePurpose Global team

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