Raising €3.25M to fund the most ambitious attempt to crack plant based cheese
Today we have some good news for all you 🧀 lovers out there!
One year ago Anja and I founded Noquo Foods to re-invent our favourite foods, starting with cheese. We believed that the old school cheese making technology based on animal milk was no longer a status quo we could support, knowing what we know today about its environmental impact, health issues and animal welfare challenges.
Unfortunately, the alternatives made from plants were, and one year later still are, nothing a cheese eater would buy. Nutrition, functionality and texture aside; the alternatives simply don’t taste good enough. Sales are still below 1% of the total cheese market despite a large number of new product launches and in contrast to other plant based categories such as milk that are taking off. Why you might wonder?
’Cause making delicious cheese using only plants is really really hard!
Today we are announcing our 3.25M EUR Seed Round to fund what we believe will be the most ambitious attempt to make a better cheese. We are officially going all-in as we now have the fire power to continue to build a world-class team, provide them with the right tools and the patience needed to develop cheese products that are delicious, that are good for you and that use significantly less resources than conventional cheese.
Joining the Noquo Foods family is…
We are truly excited and humbled by our 10 new investors joining us in this mission. Astanor Ventures, focused on transforming the food system, is joining us together with tech VC firms Northzone, Inventure and Creandum. Also joining us are Henry Soesanto, CEO of MondeNissin Group who owns Quorn and is based in Manilla / London, together with Martas Explorers, founded by Carolina Sachs ( ex Axfoundation) and Catharina Finin Versteegh, Gary Lin’s Purple Orange Ventures from Berlin, Eric Wahlforss (co-founder SoundCloud), our vegan friends at Kale United, our Senior Advisor Daniel Skaven Ruben (Consultant to the Rockefeller Foundation Food Team) and Joshua Ismin based in Sydney.
You can join our mission too!
2019 was a year of learning, validating the market and building a strong R&D foundation. Now we are accelerating our R&D efforts further towards developing groundbreaking products. There’s a lot to do so we have several open positions for people who are as passionate about our mission as we are.
At our Careers page you can learn more about what it’s like working with us and see the latest open positions. You can also connect with us to get notified whenever we announce new open positions.
And in case you are wondering, we are yet to announce a date for our first products to be launched, so stay tuned :)
More coverage here:
- AgFunder: BREAKING: Noquo Foods raises €3.25m in seed funding to crack plant-based cheese
- The Spoon: Noquo Foods Raises $3.6M to Make Plant-based Cheese That Actually Tastes Good
- Dagens Industri (SE): Guldregn över succégrundarens ”nya Oatly”
- AGFO (SE): Svensk startup tar hem storinvestering
(If you want to cover our story, here’s a press folder with photos etc.)
