Dialogues With Sagar & Shunji — Part 1

Ocean investment is accelerating globally, yet within ocean impact investing, investors with genuine on-the-ground fisheries knowledge are rare — and fisheries practitioners who understand how investment works are rarer still. Against that backdrop, Beyond Impact and UMITO Partners have begun co-developing the ocean-focused impact fund Blue Frontier Fund (BFF). In Part 1, Partner Sagar Tandon (Beyond Impact) and Founder Shunji Murakami (UMITO Partners) discuss the origins of the fund and the future they are working to build.

This conversation was originally published by UMITO Partners (text by Eri Ishida). The full original article is available at umitopartners.com.

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

Sagar traces Beyond Impact back to Claire Smith's conviction, taking shape around 2016, that the health of the planet, of people, and of all living beings is fundamentally interconnected. The starting question was simple: where is my capital actually going? Passive vehicles like the S&P 500 are rational wealth-compounding tools, but many of the underlying companies are not actively driving positive change for society or the environment.

From that question, Claire launched the ETF Beyond Investing, which has grown to roughly USD 133 million in AUM. But the team realised an ETF could shift capital flows without fundamentally transforming companies or markets — so the next step was direct investment in innovators, particularly startups working on the SDG 12 agenda of responsible consumption and production.

Kinder, cleaner, healthier

Sagar describes the three pillars at the centre of Beyond Impact's investment philosophy. 'Kinder' is the belief that there must be a fundamentally different way for people to relate to the planet, to each other, and to all living beings. 'Healthier' reflects the view that low environmental impact alone is not enough — if something harms human health, it cannot genuinely be called sustainable. 'Cleaner' is a challenge to the status quo across food, materials, and cosmetics, pushing toward simpler formulations and more biologically derived inputs. The three are deeply interconnected and sit at the centre of every investment decision.

The arc of impact investing — and today's inflection point

Sagar recalls entering the field in the early 2000s through microfinance and education, when philanthropic capital flowed from developed to emerging economies. Over time, philanthropists evolved into impact investors as market mechanisms came to be seen as a more durable way to address social challenges. Today, mainstream institutional investors increasingly treat impact investing as a legitimate asset class.

Yet structural gaps remain. UN and UNCTAD estimates put the SDG financing gap in developing countries at roughly USD 2.5–4 trillion per year; GIIN estimates the global impact investing market at around USD 1.6 trillion in 2023. Murakami frames the gap as the defining opportunity for impact investors, because that is precisely where fundamental, systemic change becomes possible.

Sagar returns to Eiichi Shibusawa's concept of the 'harmony of morality and economy' as the heart of impact investing — building companies and deploying capital in ways that create harmony between society and nature, so the next generation inherits a future in which both can flourish.

Impact or return? — Beyond the trade-off

Sagar explains how Beyond Impact navigates the perennial question of whether impact and financial return can coexist. The process begins with conventional investment analysis — assessing the business on its financial and commercial merits — before applying the impact lens. For impact to be real and durable, the underlying solution must be commercially viable; equally, the team will not invest in an opportunity that is commercially sound but cannot articulate a clear Theory of Change. LCA and other quantitative tools are standard for verifying expected impact on climate-related startups.

Investment agreements also embed protective covenants: if a portfolio company that initially provided a positive solution comes to cause harm to the climate, nature, or animals, Beyond Impact retains the right to divest. With LPs, the message is direct — being an impact fund does not mean accepting below-market returns. The aim is market-rate returns, equivalent to what investors would expect from a mainstream VC.

Why UMITO Partners entered blue finance

Murakami describes UMITO Partners' founding belief that fishers are the key actors in solving ocean challenges. But as the team continued its sustainable fisheries consulting, the pace at which fisheries can transition toward sustainability simply could not keep pace with environmental deterioration. Policy work carries significant systemic leverage, yet it is slow, volatile, and largely outside the private sector's direct control.

The team asked what the private sector could do to generate direct, scalable impact. The answer: support innovations capable of regenerating the ocean environment — backed by stable, patient capital. Consulting, by contrast, has a structural ceiling; the more impact you try to generate, the more human time it demands. Ocean challenges are complex and interconnected, requiring not a single solution but a portfolio of complementary solutions deployed in parallel.

Murakami notes that the decision to enter blue finance was made not in a meeting room but during a team retreat in nature — sitting together by a riverbank after an afternoon in a mountain stream. He frames UMITO Partners not as a 'solution provider' but as an 'ecosystem player' — convinced that what resolves systemic ocean challenges is Collective Impact: people from different disciplines working under a shared agenda to create change none could achieve alone.

How Beyond Impact and UMITO Partners came together

Beyond Impact had built deep expertise across next-generation food systems, bio-derived materials, advanced nutrition, and bio-derived cosmetic ingredients. The ocean was a clear strategic priority where its expertise was limited — and as a lean team, entering with conviction required the right partner. UMITO Partners' depth of knowledge on ocean challenges and strong on-the-ground network across Asian island communities matched exactly what they were looking for.

For Murakami, the partnership was rooted in the seriousness both Sagar and Claire brought to impact investing. For Sagar, the human dimension was decisive — a handshake carrying as much weight as a legal contract. What struck him was that Murakami had come to the field from years working close to fishing communities, engaging firsthand with the social and environmental dimensions of that work.

Innovators and fishers, building trust together

Murakami emphasises that fishers play an irreplaceable role that runs deeper than food supply — essential to national and food security, cultural continuity, and community cohesion. The embodied, experiential knowledge fishers have built across generations cannot be acquired quickly, and is precisely the kind of knowledge that should be integrated into emerging technologies and solutions.

Sagar adds that innovation tends to generate anxiety, but these technologies should not replace fishers — they should expand what is possible for them. The vision of innovators and fishers evolving together, building trust and working side by side, is both realistic and nature-positive. What BFF is ultimately working to restore is natural capital — but the cultural capital that fishing communities have cultivated over generations is equally a form of value that must be integrated into that vision.

Read the full original interview (text by Eri Ishida) on UMITO Partners: https://umitopartners.com/en/stories/restoring-the-ocean-while-growing-industry-part-1/