FoodTech Startups News: March #3
Stay up to date with what’s cooking in the food startups world!
Welcome to ShakeUp Factory’s News Digest!
Here are the latest impacts startups had on the food world:
Pygmalion’s Kitchen 🥣
Six Artifacts From The Future Of Food
It’s 2028. Your kids make cultured cheese in cheap bioreactors for lunch; you eat sushi made with lab-grown shark meat for dinner. Throughout the day, a sensor embedded in your intestines helps you track the health of your gut microbiome. Your kitchen appliances download a smoothie recipe and order you blueberries after using some underhanded social media to help to manipulate the market price; when you order a grocery delivery box, you pay extra for transparency to ensure food safety, but get a government discount for choosing plant-based foods. At a seafood store, you notice that digital displays have been hacked to show data about slavery in Thai fish farms.
The clean meat industry is racing to ditch its reliance on foetal blood
Slaughter-free meat is on its way to our plates. In California, the Netherlands and Japan, a handful of startups are already growing animal flesh in laboratories, outside of the bodies of animals. Their goal? To produce meat without needing to kill a single animal, cutting out the cruelty and huge environmental costs associated with meat production today.
But the clean meat industry has a messy problem. None of the major players have managed to grow meat without using animal serum — a blend of growth-inducing proteins usually made from the blood of animals.
Lab-Grown Dog Food Is First Step to a Clean Meat Empire
Someday the meat you eat will be as likely to have grown in a lab as on the farm. And the pathway from the lab to your plate may run through the sloppy dog dish on your kitchen floor.
Ryan Bethencourt and Ron Shigeta, the minds behind the biotech accelerator IndieBio, are about to launch a line of slaughter-free pet food with a company they call Wild Earth. First, they’re hitting the $30 billion pet-food market with dog kibble made with protein manufactured by living cells. That product comes out this spring.
Seducing Ploutos 💸
Anterra Capital Extends Fund to $200m and Widens View with Three New Investments
Agrifood technology VC Anterra Capital has extended its first fund by $75 million to $200 million in total, making it the largest single dedicated agtech fund in the world. The additional funds came from existing LPs, including Dutch global food and agriculture bank Rabobank, and Eight Roads, the proprietary capital arm of global investment house Fidelity International.
Managing partner Adam Anders told AgFunderNews that when discussing a second fund — the first fund originally closed in March 2016 — LPs suggested that Anders “not lose momentum” and offered to increase their allocations.
Seventure Partners and Adisseo Launch €24m Livestock Tech Fund
Seventure Partners, a French venture capital firm focused on life sciencest, has launched AVF, a new €24m ($29.4m) venture capital fund directed at companies focusing on the field of animal health, feed, and nutrition. Adisseo, an industry leader in the animal feed sector, is partnering with Seventure on the fund.
Isabelle de Cremoux, CEO and managing partner of Seventure Partners, said the goal of the fund is to invest in approximately 15 start-ups working in animal health and nutrition.
SoftBank Leads $62 Mn Funding Round In Online Grocery Startup Grofers
Online grocery delivery startup Grofers has raised $61.6 Mn (INR 400 Cr) in a round of funding led by SoftBank. With this, the Japanese investment behemoth now holds a 35%-40% stake in the Gurugram-based startup.
The funding round also saw the participation of existing investor Tiger Global as well as Russian tech billionaire Yuri Milner. With this new Series E round, Grofers will continue to invest in building private labels and supply chain improvements.
Karyogamy 🤱
The Meal-Kit Company HelloFresh Buys Green Chef
The German meal-kit company HelloFresh has agreed to acquire Boulder, Colorado-based Green Chef. Terms of the agreement were not disclosed, but HelloFresh expects the acquisition of Green Chef to contribute approximately $15 million per quarter to HelloFresh Group’s revenues starting in the second quarter of 2018.
Meal-kits have become a crowded market that by Packaged Foods estimates includes more than 150 players in the U.S. As the business model has proven to be operationally complex to build and scale, venture capitalists interest in investing in these companies has waned, making consolidation in the marketplace inevitable.
Carrefour Acquires Stake In French Meal Kit Quitoque
Retail giant Carrefour has acquired a majority stake in French meal-kit start up Quitoque.
The meal-kit company was created in 2014, and is now the market leader in France, delivering nearly three million meals last year.
Quitoque works on a subscription service, that delivers local, organic and seasonal products to customers each week, with ‘varied and healthy’ recipes that they can prepare at home.
Citius, Altius, Fortius 🎟️
A $6 trillion wake up call for the tech industry
Earlier this year, the business community received a wake-up call issued with all of the might that $6 trillion can muster.
The call came from Laurence Fink, the founder and chief executive of the global investment firm, BlackRock, and was delivered as a letter to the CEOs of the world’s largest companies.
Aptly titled, “A Sense of Purpose,” the letter informed business leaders that driving record profits is no longer enough to garner BlackRock’s support.
Rod of Asclepius 💊
Sage Project Uses Adorable Graphics to Break Down Nutrition Labels
When you’re in the grocery aisle deciding which type of crackers or canned tomatoes or granola to buy, you might check the label for nutritional information. Maybe you seek out the calories, the protein, or the fiber — but what does it all really mean?
New York-based startup Sage Project is hoping to cut through the confusion with their nutrition data platform. The best part? It looks great doing it.
Cornucopia 🍱
Amazon Is Looking for Larger Whole Foods Stores to Support Delivery Plans
Less than a year after closing its acquisition of Whole Foods, Amazon.com Inc. is looking for fresh ways to expand its brick-and-mortar retail network while bolstering the online shopping business.
The world’s largest online retailer is searching for bigger Whole Foods locations in cities that can serve as both grocery stores and urban distribution centers for delivering goods to online shoppers more quickly, said a person briefed on the plans. Amazon is seeking more retail space that can accommodate grocery aisles and storage for the most popular items purchased from Amazon’s website, like consumer electronics, bestselling books and yoga pants.
Online grocery CEOs: Using stores to fulfill orders is not the answer
Both CEO’s input should be taken with a grain of salt, since FreshDirect competes with many traditional grocers, while Ocado wants to boost its image in the eyes of potential U.S. retail partners. Still, both grocers belong to a very exclusive club of online grocers that turn a profit — so they know a thing or two about the business.
Independent research and analysis bears out their claims, too. Nielsen and FMI find that consumer demand for online shopping is accelerating, thanks in large part to Amazon’s acquisition of Whole Foods and the domino effect of e-commerce acquisitions and tie-ups that followed. As online grocery grows and innovates, more people want to use the service.
Google introduces ‘Shopping Actions’ to help retailers in their battle with Amazon
Google announced this morning a new plan to help retailers take on Amazon — and give Google a cut of their sales in the process. The search giant will allow retailers to list their products across Google Search, in its Google Express shopping service, and in the Google Assistant app for smartphones and on smart speakers, like the Google Home.
The program offers online shoppers a universal cart whether they’re shopping on mobile, desktop or via a voice-powered device. That latter item is especially important to retailers, given that Amazon has tied voice shopping to its Echo devices, and has claimed the majority of market share in smart speakers for the time being. And you aren’t able to shop Walmart from an Echo, of course.
Beating Pheidippides 🏃
Blue Apron will start selling its meal kits in stores
Blue Apron announced today it will bring its meal kits to stores. The news arrives at a time when the meal kit subscription company is struggling to grow and retain its users, who are often put off by the expense of the direct-shipped meal kits and the need to commit to an ongoing subscription. In recent months, Blue Apron has also laid off hundreds, lost its CEO, and has continued to post disappointing earnings.
In February, the company reported its subscriber base had fallen to 746,000, down from 856,000 the prior quarter, and down from its peak of one million last year.
I order my groceries from FreshDirect, the online grocery store that makes food shopping incredibly easy — here’s what it’s like
I don’t hate grocery shopping. Quite the opposite actually — I love leisurely strolling through aisles, trying to follow my meticulously curated grocery list while simultaneously allowing myself to get distracted and inspired by everything that’s not on it.
Sadly, once I moved to an overpopulated city, this relaxed Sunday afternoon ideal became a perfect pipe dream.
Return of Persephone 🌱
Why Syngenta Acquired FarmShots: “It’s Definitely a Race”
Syngenta acquired remote sensing startup FarmShots in February, in the first publicized acquisition of an agtech startup in 2018 for a major strategic player in agriculture. Financial terms were undisclosed.
FarmShots uses high-resolution satellite and drone imagery to deliver plant health analyses and offers insight into field conditions based on patterns of light absorption. The startup raised a $1.1 million seed round from local investors in 2016.
Following the acquisition, FarmShots now operates under Syngenta’s digital portfolio as part of AgriEdge Excelsior, Syngenta’s US farm management system en route to the global marketplace.
Farmstead Secures Additional $2 Million In Venture Capital To Accelerate Growth
Farmstead, the new AI-powered digital micro-grocer that curates and delivers fresh, local foods from farm-to-fridge in 60 minutes, today announced an additional $2 million capital infusion, led by Resolute Ventures and Social Capital, with additional participation from SV Angel and Y Combinator. This latest round brings Farmstead’s total seed funding to $4.8 million to date.
Farmstead will use the new funds to scale operations of its rapidly growing AI grocery sourcing and delivery service, continue building out its core AI technology, accelerate hiring, and expand its service well beyond the Bay Area.
Remote Sensing Startup Skycision Raises $1.1m Seed from Rural America Ag Innovation Fund
Remote sensing startup Skycision has raised a $1.1 million seed round led by Innova Memphis.
Skycision uses drone and satellite imagery to help farmers with decision-making in order to boost yield and profitability. The technology focuses on identifying changes in fields over time, analyzing three to five years of satellite data and present-day drone imagery to find variances and spot disease earlier in specialty crops, especially higher margin crops like grapes.
That’s all for today, thanks for reading!
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