Recap AgtechFoodTech Berlin 2017

Last week I had the chance to fly out to Berlin to see my friend Jewell Sparks who organised another amazing @AgTechFoodTech Summit.

She brought together a mixed crowd of amazing entrepreneurs, investors, VCs and other thought leaders to share their perspectives on this space and openly discuss about how the Foodtech space is evolving on this side of the pond and what are the opportunities and challenges ahead of us.

Here are some key takeaways:

• Berlin Foodtech scene is evolving at a great pace with some very cool startups creating amazing products (e.g Philosoffe, , INFARM, ZZ,) — investors, you’d better watch this space!
• I gave a brief presentation on the FoodTech investment landscape in EU and how is evolving. It was reassuring to see most of the people in the audience agreeing with me on the fact that Europe is very well positioned to develop great FoodTech and AgTech companies but the ecosystem is not quite there yet. It seems we need more mature communities and a great group of investors to seriously get behind this space to create the right business environment to make such companies thrive also on this side of the pod.
• It’s incredible to see many amazing people from all over the world committed to tackle some the biggest issues that affect our food system and improve it in any way possible through their work

I believe one of the key highlights of the summit was definitely the ‘Women in Food’ panel — the panelists were a great mix of entrepreneurs, business managers, academics and it reinforced my belief that to really drive change we do need more women to get involved in this sector.

Throughout the Summit some terrific knowledge has been shared:

1. Future of nutrition by Dr Hannelore Daniel
2. Potential blockchain applications for the food system by CodeCentric
3. Successful corporate-startup collaborations (namely, EDEKA retail platform for startups) and how Edeka is supporting food startups to understand how to work with retailers
4. Coop’s Sweden case studies on how they are driving their sustainability agenda in through a number of campaigns (eg. Future of protein) that encourage consumers to shift to a more plant-based diet.

A big kudos to Jewell Sparks for bringing together such amazing bright minds and food experts, all #Unitedforfood, to talk about the latest trends and developments in Agtech and Foodtech globally and openly share their experiences with budding entrepreneurs.

I feel really fortunate and grateful to have been invited to join this summit again and I look forward to next year one already but for now I’m going to ‘keep calm and be a foodie’.