🌏 Green Queen released its report on the APAC alternative protein ecosystem. It’s a long read but it is filled with insights about Asian startups and their founders. If you are not familiar with the local ecosystems, I recommend it to you.
TL;DR – APAC alternative protein founders think they will win the game because they better know their very specific (huge and keener on plant-based) home market tastes.
🪴 📉 🇫🇷 Vegan alternatives are growing everywhere… but not in France. Sales data is less than impressive. In 2020, sales of vegan products grew €28M, to be compared with the launch of a new Ferrero snack which made €14M in sales in a quarter.
💰 The best deals of the week are about meals not cooked at home:
- New unicorn #1 in India: Lucious raised $52M for its fresh meat and seafood marketplace. The impressive growth of the company’s sales and its valuation shows the massive potential for innovation in the supply chain for fresh food products. This is especially important in countries such as India (with a growing middle-class population, increasing consumption of meat products and facing traceability challenges).
- New unicorn #2: Rebel Foods, which operates more than 450 cloud kitchens and 4,000 “internet restaurants” (franchises) throughout India, raised $175M. It will use this funding to grow its set of brands internationally. It could go public in the next 24 months. It is one of the top 3 cloud/dark kitchens startups to follow globally for people in foodservice.
- Siwar, a Saudi startup, raised $7.5M for its frozen meals delivered for your week of meals or available in supermarkets.
DigitalFoodLab: we observe a surge of startup creations (or new services from existing startups) in this space of “meals for the week”. The market could be much bigger than meal kits’.
