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11 notable deals and things to know this week (2024 – week #28)

Published on July 9, 2024

Startup news and deals

🇧🇷🌱 Genica, a Brazilian startup, raised $12M for its bio-based products for agriculture, including bio-inoculants, bio-stimulants, and bio-pesticides.

🇺🇸🍎 Foodsmart, a US-based startup, raised $200M for its telenutrition services. It supports people with diet-related health conditions, and beyond recommendations, it offers grocery discounts.

🇪🇪🌾 eAgronom, an Estonian startup, raised €10M for its carbon credits marketplace. It already helps more than 3,000 farmers to create additional revenue streams while adopting more sustainable practices. After a wave of startup creation in this space over the past couple of years, we now observe a consolidation around a handful of players, notably Europe-based companies. The next 12 to 18 months will be key in deciding who will lead this space.

🇩🇪♻️ Vytal, a German startup, raised €6.2M for its reusable food containers for takeout and delivery.

🇺🇸 🍽️ Local Kitchens, an American startup, raised $40M to expand its hybrid model restaurant model. It operates what we could call micro food halls, enabling online and in-person customers to choose among multiple bands operated by its own staff (hence, it is quite a different model from the current consensus in the virtual restaurant and ghost kitchen ecosystems). Such a hybrid, while slow to scale (as it requires opening locations and training staff), could be a winning model.

🇫🇮 🍽️ Cluby, a Finnish startup, raised €2.9M for its loyalty platform, connecting restaurants with customers through membership cards.

🇬🇧 📉 This, a British plant-based meat startup, recently raised £20M. This is good news… until you dive into the details: the valuation decreased by about 70% from last year’s last round… which happened on a crowdfunding platform. Beyond that, a large part of the funding was used to cash out (buy the equity of) the founders. That’s quite a shock for these small investors who bet on a brand they loved and may now feel angered.

🇳🇱 📸 Aurea Imaging, a Dutch startup, raised €2.8M for its sensor systems and software for precision farming dedicated to orchards to enhance yield and reduce chemical use.

🇨🇷 🐛 ProNuvo, a Costa Rican startup, raised $2M to produce insect-based animal feed and organic fertiliser, using waste as an input.

Industry news & trends

🇨🇭💉 Nestlé Health Science is launching a GLP-1 platform. It is dedicated to people using GLP-1 drugs (such as Ozempic; these drugs help their users to lose weight fast). It provides access to a food supplements marketplace (from collagen to probiotics) and educational content and will include consultations with “nutrition coaches”. Beyond the opportunity to sell more value-added products, people undergoing a GLP-1 treatment are also re-examining their relationship with food, so using this moment of their life to grab their attention with quality content could be a smart move.

🌎 📈 Climate change is causing persistent food price inflation. Indeed, major crops like wheat, rice, soybeans, corn, and potatoes face yield reductions due to rising temperatures and extreme weather events. Food inflation rates could rise by up to 3.2% per year within the next decade as global temperatures rise faster than expected. Many solutions are advanced, from price controls to subsidies, but no consensus has yet emerged beyond a rising wave of protectionism that some predict could lead to “food wars”.

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