Amid a growing uncertainty in both public and private markets, we've taken a closer look at the most active foodtech investors of the first half of 2022. We benchmark the number of rounds they participated in at the same time last year to infer if their activity is slowing down or accelerating.
In 2021 H1, the multistage investor SOSV participated in the most deals. However, in the first half this year, SOSV participated in 7 foodtech rounds. SOSV's overall activity might have slowed down, so far, but its portfolio companies need not worry. Last year in June, SOSV raised a $100 million fund to exclusively invest in their portfolio companies at Series B+ stage.
Similarly, we can infer S2G Ventures, Sequoia Capital, Tiger Global, Big Idea Ventures and Blue Horizon Corporation have also participated in less deals compared to the same time last year.
On the other side of the spectrum, there are VC funds that have accelerated their activity this year. For example, Gaingels participated in 11 deals this year, up from 7 in the first half of last year. The Indonesian Alpha JWC marked the largest absolute increase. In November last year, they raised the largest Southeast Asian early-stage VC fund of $433 million.
Click on the links below to explore each investor's foodtech portfolio:
🛍 India leads the world in ultrafast grocery adoption. As Chinese tech giants face an increasing government oversight, investors look India as the next big ecommerce opportunity. Online grocery sales account for just 2% of total in India, but it is one of the fastest growing categories. -Bloomberg
🏘 Multinational food manufacturer Kellogg splitting into 3 companies. The company will spin off its American cereal and plant-based divisions. The rest of the divisions, international cereal, frozen breakfast and noodles, will remain in a separate third entity. This move will help each of Kellogg's businesses focus on their operations and make better strategic decisions. -Fooddive
🇮🇳 Waycool, an India-based B2B agri and food marketplace, raised $25M in equity and $15M in debt from US-based private equity investor, 57 Stars. The company is now valued at $585M. Waycool raised $117M back in January this year, but the valuation was not disclosed.
🇮🇩 Dailybox, an Indonesian online restaurant company, raised $24M in Series B funding to fuel growth. The company has 3 brands: Dailybox (convenient food), Shirato (a Sushi-Burrito fusion concept) and Breadlife (bakery). During the pandemic, Dailybox recorded a 100x increase in transactions. It is still a question whether growth is sustainable.
Other notable foodtech deals from around the globe:
🇺🇸 Nitricity, a US-based renewable nitrogen fertilizer producer, raised $20M to broaden the product portfolio and grow the top line of the company. Nitricity raised its seed round in August last year.
🇬🇧 THIS, a UK-based manufacturer of plant-based meat, raised £5.8M at £150M valuation.
Dealroom has launched a powerful predictive algorithm to discover the most promising companies, Startup Signals. The input for each Signal's algorithm includes company growth (team size, product growth), job openings, completion score and contextual data (does the company fit into segments of interest), timing (is the startup likely to raise their next round soon) and team composition.
The most valuable early-stage foodtech companies don't have to have the highest Startup Signal. For example, Flink (37) is the most valuable grocery delivery service launched since 2020, but has a lower signal than Zepto (69).
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