Restoring the Ocean While Growing Industry

Ocean investment is accelerating globally. Yet within the field of ocean impact investing, investors with genuine on-the-ground knowledge of fisheries are almost nowhere to be found — and the same is true of fisheries practitioners who understand how investment works.
Against this backdrop, Beyond Impact — a Europe-based impact VC with a global investment track record — and UMITO Partners — a firm that grew out of sustainable fisheries consulting — have begun co-developing the ocean-focused impact fund Blue Frontier Fund (BFF).
What brought these two organizations together? And how does BFF intend to use impact investing as a lever for ocean restoration? In this first of two installments, Beyond Impact Partner Sagar Tandon and UMITO Partners’ Shunji Murakami discuss the origins of the fund and the future they are working to build.

Where does our capital flow? — The origins of Beyond Impact

Before discussing the background behind Blue Frontier Fund (BFF)［1］, could you first tell us how Beyond Impact［2］came into being and the philosophy behind it?

Sagar Tandon (hereafter “Sagar”): Beyond Impact was founded by Claire Smith in 2017, though the idea had already begun taking shape around 2016. At the center of it was a deeply personal conviction: to invest in solutions that could accelerate the transition toward a world that is kinder, cleaner, and healthier.

Claire’s starting point was the belief that the health of the planet, the health of people, and the existence of all living beings are fundamentally interconnected. From there, she began asking how we might break free from a system in which nature and animals are chronically over-exploited. And that led to a simple but foundational question: “Where is my capital actually going?”

Passive vehicles like the S&P 500 and country index funds are rational as a wealth-compounding mechanism. But many of the companies in those portfolios are not actively driving positive change for society or the environment. Wanting to align her capital with her values, Claire launched the ETF Beyond Investing［3］, which has since grown to approximately USD 133 million in assets under management (AUM). It is not a large market, but it has expanded steadily.

Shunji Murakami (hereafter “Murakami”): So the ETF did gain real traction.

Sagar: It did. But through that process, Claire arrived at another realization: this alone would not solve the underlying problem. ETFs can shift the direction of capital flows, but they lack the leverage to fundamentally transform companies or markets. That led to the next step — direct investment in innovators: startups with the technology to address systemic challenges.

Murakami: In other words, backing the companies and startups capable of reshaping the structure of the economy itself.

Sagar: Exactly. As that thinking deepened, one theme became particularly central: SDG 12［4］— Responsible Consumption and Production. What we eat, wear, take as medicine, rely on as materials — unless the production systems behind these things change, no fundamental transition is possible. That conviction is what drove Beyond Impact to evolve into an impact investment asset manager.

Murakami: Beyond Impact places kinder, cleaner, and healthier at the center of its investment philosophy. I find it telling that finance itself is being framed in these terms. What is the thinking behind each?

Sagar: Starting with “kinder”: our core belief is that there must be a fundamentally different way for people to relate to the planet, to each other, and to all living beings. In evaluating many innovations, we find this dimension of kindness is often absent.

“Healthier” reflects the view that low environmental impact alone is insufficient. If something harms human health, it cannot genuinely be called sustainable. A product may avoid animal-derived inputs and reduce environmental burdens — but if it negatively affects health, it is not a real solution.

And “cleaner” is a challenge to the status quo across food, materials, and cosmetics — sectors where an enormous number of chemicals are embedded in everyday products. Not all are problematic, but we believe there is substantial room to move toward simpler formulations and more biologically derived inputs. Critically, these three principles are not independent — they are deeply interconnected. That is why they sit at the center of every investment decision.

The future Eiichi Shibusawa envisioned — the arc of impact investing and today’s inflection point

Murakami: Impact investing itself has shifted considerably over the past several years. How do you see it having evolved, from a global perspective?

Sagar: Drawing on my own experience: I entered this field in the early 2000s, beginning with microfinance — small-scale lending to low-income communities in developing countries — and then, expanded into education. It was a period when philanthropic capital flowed primarily from developed to emerging economies, and I was part of that movement.Over time, a new logic emerged: that market mechanisms might be a more durable way to address social challenges. Philanthropists began evolving into impact investors. In that sense, early impact investing was effectively an extension of philanthropy. As the field matured, new dimensions, such as gender and climate, entered the frame. Today, even　mainstream institutional investors increasingly treat impact investing as a legitimate asset class.

Murakami: And yet deep structural challenges remain.

Sagar: Absolutely. According to the UN Financing for Sustainable Development Report and UNCTAD estimates, closing the SDG financing gap in developing countries requires approximately USD 2.5–4 trillion annually［5］. Against that, GIIN estimates the global impact investing market reached around USD 1.6 trillion in 2023［6］. Capital is moving — but we are still well short of the scale required.

Murakami: That gap is a challenge — but I also see it as the defining opportunity for impact investors. Because the gap is precisely where fundamental, systemic change becomes possible.

Sagar: That brings to mind Eiichi Shibusawa［7］, who we’ve discussed before. When you examine his thinking carefully, what impact investing should truly be aiming for becomes much clearer.
His grandson Ken Shibusawa — founder of Commons Asset Management, and a leading voice connecting his grandfather’s philosophy to modern ESG and sustainable finance — has cited a passage that left an impression:

“A businessperson acts as a representative of their fellow citizens, for the benefit of the nation. And the people at the center of that nation must think not with a narrow focus on their own country alone, but about how the whole world can become one community.”

Unless we build companies and deploy capital in ways that create harmony between society and nature, the future of humanity itself is at risk. His concept of “harmony of morality and economy” goes to the very heart of impact investing. The conviction that climate change is a problem for all of humanity — not just a planetary one — is a direct extension of that thinking. Which is why impact investing is not simply a financial strategy. It is an act of responsibility: handing the next generation a future in which both society and nature can flourish.

Impact or return? — An investment philosophy beyond the trade-off

Murakami: A question that consistently comes up around impact investing is whether impact and financial return can genuinely coexist. How does Beyond Impact navigate that?

Sagar: Articulating the philosophy is relatively straightforward. Executing it in practice is a different matter entirely.

Our process begins with conventional investment analysis — assessing the business on its financial and commercial merits. That is the baseline. Only then do we apply the impact lens. For impact to be real and durable, the underlying solution must be commercially viable. Even if a technology has strong potential for positive social or environmental outcomes, we do not classify it as impact investing unless the business model holds. Equally, we will not invest in an opportunity that is commercially sound but cannot articulate a clear Theory of Change［8］. For climate-related startups, LCA［9］ and other quantitative tools are a standard part of how we verify the expected impact.

We also embed protective covenants in our investment agreements: if we determine that a portfolio company that initially provided a positive solution has come to cause harm — to the climate, to nature, or to animals — we retain the right to divest［10］. Maintaining impact integrity across the full investment period is non-negotiable for us.

Murakami: In your conversations with LPs and investors, what do you emphasize, and how do you frame it?

Sagar: We do not accept the premise that being an impact fund means accepting below-market returns. Solutions that are commercially robust and have a clear path to real-world deployment tend to scale sustainably — and as they scale, so does their impact. A business that achieves meaningful scale should be capable of delivering returns comparable to conventional ventures. That is the message we give investors clearly: we are targeting market-rate returns, equivalent to what you would expect from a mainstream VC.

Generating real positive impact on the ocean from the private sector — why UMITO Partners entered blue finance

Could you walk us through what led UMITO Partners to enter blue finance?

Murakami: UMITO Partners was built on the belief that fishers are the key actors in solving ocean challenges, and our sustainable fisheries consulting has consistently operated from that premise. But as we continued our work, the challenges facing the ocean felt increasingly complex and accelerating. The pace at which fisheries can transition toward sustainability simply cannot keep pace with the speed of environmental deterioration.

Through our consulting, we have worked alongside policymakers, distribution networks, and industry players to support equitable and inclusive policy design — ensuring that the voices from the fishing ground are reflected in policy decisions. That work made something clear: while policy holds significant systemic leverage, the agency for change ultimately rests with the fishers themselves. Fishers are at the frontline of ocean challenges, and sustainable fisheries cannot be realized without their active participation. That conviction remains the foundation of UMITO Partners. But transforming policy demands enormous time and sustained effort, and it is difficult to control the impact since policy change is in the hands of policy makers and the political environment is volatile and fast-moving. Influencing policy from the private sector at the speed the situation demands should not be the only primary lever.

So we asked: what can the private sector do to generate direct, scalable impact? The answer we arrived at was this: generate and support innovations capable of regenerating the ocean environment. By backing innovation, we could potentially create solutions that scale at a pace matching the rate of ocean degradation. Yet not to mention, we will continuously support equitable and inclusive policy change in parallel so we can maximize impacts in both ways.

Sagar: And that reasoning led you to finance.

Murakami: Exactly. Without a stable financial foundation, it is impossible to sustain impact over the long term. And consulting, as a business model, has a structural ceiling. The more impact you try to generate, the more human resources and time it demands — it does not fundamentally scale. That tension was something we felt acutely.

We worked through a range of alternative business model ideas, but each addressed only a portion of the challenge. Ocean challenges are complex and deeply interconnected — we came to realize that generating fundamental change requires not a single solution, but a portfolio of complementary solutions deployed in parallel. And if the right volume of capital could be directed into that portfolio, the impact could be amplified significantly.

Sagar: That was a defining strategic turning point for UMITO Partners.

Murakami: When our team arrived at that conclusion, we were out in nature. At UMITO Partners, we take the whole team on a retreat once a year — somewhere we can feel truly connected to nature, and think about what it means to restore it while being immersed in it. That time, after an afternoon playing in a beautiful mountain stream, we sat together by the riverbank and talked about what we should be working toward next. The decision to enter blue finance came not in a meeting room, but out in nature. That felt very true to who we are as an organization.

Sagar: What I find distinctive about UMITO Partners is that you see yourselves not as “solution providers” but as “ecosystem players.” That framing is precisely what allowed you to arrive at the portfolio approach.

Murakami: That self-understanding has always shaped how we operate. In practice, the stakeholders we work with extend well beyond fishers — they include university and institutional researchers, scientists, corporates, policymakers, chefs, and many others. No single stakeholder can solve these challenges alone. What resolves systemic ocean challenges, we believe, is what is sometimes called Collective Impact［11］: people from different disciplines and positions working together under a shared agenda to create change that none could achieve alone.

How Beyond Impact and UMITO Partners came together

What led two such different organizations to form this partnership and launch a VC fund together?

Sagar: Beyond Impact has built deep expertise and a portfolio track record in next-generation food systems, innovative bio-derived materials, advanced nutrition［12］, and bio-derived cosmetic ingredients — all sectors moving away from chemical synthesis and animal-derived inputs toward nature-based solutions. Within that broader portfolio, the ocean was a domain of clear strategic importance where our expertise was limited, and we had long wanted to develop a serious ocean focus. But we are a lean team. Under those resource constraints, entering the ocean field with conviction required the right partner.

That is when we encountered UMITO Partners. UMITO’s depth of knowledge on ocean challenges — and particularly its strong on-the-ground network across island communities in Asia — matched exactly what we were looking for. The strengths are highly complementary: by combining them, we could build a robust bridge between Europe and Asia, and connect the ocean — one of the most critical ecosystems on the planet — to our wider investment platform.

Murakami: As I mentioned, we had just begun seriously exploring how to enter blue finance when I met Sagar at an event. From the first conversation, I sensed the genuine commitment — the seriousness — that both Sagar and Claire brought to impact investing. And as our dialogue deepened, I became increasingly confident that this partnership could be one where we genuinely learn from each other.

Sagar: For me, the human dimension of a relationship matters enormously — that is simply how I work. A handshake carries as much weight as a legal contract. When I shook hands with Murakami, I felt that straightforward, personal trust — and that is what made this feel like the right partnership. What particularly struck me was that Murakami had come to this field from a completely different starting point. Long before founding UMITO Partners, he had spent years working in close to fishing communities, engaging firsthand with the social and environmental dimensions of that work. Hearing how he had expanded his vision from that experience was truly moving.

A future where innovators and fishers build trust and work together

Sagar: Murakami, drawing on everything you’ve experienced in the field, how do you see the future of fishers?

Murakami: Fishers play an irreplaceable role as the key actors of the ocean — and that runs deeper than food supply. We see them as essential to national and food security, the continuity of culture, and the cohesion of local communities. Innovation may, over time, automate or replace certain aspects of fishing. But the knowledge and practical wisdom that fishers have built and transmitted across generations is embodied, experiential knowledge — it cannot be acquired quickly — and it is precisely the kind of knowledge that should be integrated into the technologies and solutions that emerge. That is why, even as we enter blue finance, we will continue our consulting work walking alongside fishers, just as we have always done.

Sagar: Innovation tends to generate anxiety. But these technologies should not replace fishers — they should expand what is possible for them. What matters is that technology is not deployed in a top-down, centralized way, but distributed within fishing communities in ways that create new business opportunities and economic agency. The vision of innovators and fishers evolving together — building trust, working side by side — is realistic, and a nature-positive future.

Murakami: Fishers need not be limited to fishing. By combining the resources, knowledge, and relationships they already hold with emerging technologies, they can create entirely new businesses. Our role — through BFF and through our continued consulting work — is to act as a bridge: helping fisheries and technology companies move toward each other, build trust, and collaborate in ways that create a new economic sphere.

What BFF is ultimately working to restore is natural capital. But the cultural capital that fishing communities have cultivated and passed down over generations — traditions, practices, relationships, and ways of living with the ocean — is equally a form of value that must be integrated into that vision. That is the future we are working toward, and it is one we find deeply compelling.

---