Humble Sustainability, a circular economy startup from the Philippines, closed its seed round led by Swiss-based venture capital (VC) fund Seedstars International Ventures and with participation from iSeed Ventures, an early stage VC in San Francisco; and angel investors like Alan Wong, co-founder of Ula, as well as Sagar Achanta, who has held product leadership roles at Amazon, Booking.com and Disney+.
The fresh funding will enable Humble to continue bringing companies’ excess inventory back into circularity through its technology services.
Humble helps some of the largest e-commerce, logistics and retail companies in the Philippines make their returns and excess inventory the hero, while extracting high value from the items for their clients.
With a vision to create a community where any item can be brought back into circularity by anyone, Humble’s advocacy of “circular living” reduces waste from both ends, by preventing items from being disposed of and decreasing demand for the production of new items. As Humble continues to grow, it hopes to become a leader in circular economy and sustainability in the Philippines, with initiatives in mind like carbon footprint tracking, innovation grants and raw materials extraction.
Founded by passionate advocates of sustainability, Humble CEO Josef Werker and COO Niña Opida used their combined years of experience growing and scaling companies in the past to build Humble as a means to create a more sustainable Philippines.
“Our dream is to make living circular as normal as possible, starting with the way we buy things and what we do with them. We’re not environmental scientists, but we’re really passionate about making an impact in this area, and this is the decade where action has to happen,” Mr. Werker said.
Leading Humble’s seed round was Seedstars International Ventures, a seed-stage venture fund dedicated to emerging and frontier markets. Seedstars Partner Patricia Sosrodjojo said that Humble is a great fit to their fund’s thesis of supporting early-stage companies that can create meaningful impact with an attractive business model.
Aside from iSeed Ventures, Mr. Wong and Mr. Achanta, Filipino strategic investors and serial entrepreneurs such as Paco Sandejas and Richard Eldridge, among others, also participated in the round.
Mr. Werker said that their new investors bring more than capital as they are all actively involved and are bringing immense value.
“We’re really grateful for their trust and guidance; we have already learned so much. This journey started because our dream is to make a real impact towards one of the world’s greatest challenges. The crazy ride continues,” he said.
To address a seen problem of unused and wasted inventory, Humble uses two main channels to bring items back into circularity. High-quality items are sold on their e-commerce platform, Thrift by Humble, while everything else is sent to their network of business-to-business (B2B) buyers and recyclers. This allows Humble to ensure all items are sent to new, sustainable homes.
Thrift, an extension of Humble’s initial brand, was launched in October 2021 with the objective of providing consumers with a sustainable alternative to e-commerce. The products offered on the platform are high quality and the deals are hard to beat anywhere else online.
With the impressive growth that has taken place, Humble is on track to continue scaling as they expand their network to more partners and buyers from a variety of sectors. Humble is also set to hire more employees for their ever-expanding team. For available openings, write to grow@humblesustainability.com.
For those who would like to sell their items with Humble, or purchase sustainably-sourced items in bulk, reach out to team@humblesustainability.com or through their dedicated B2B platform, http://humblesustainability.com.
