The folks at Collaborative Fund certainly like a challenge.
Oh, and they decided to raise their sixth flagship fund at a time when limited partners have grown more miserly.
Collaborative recently raised $125 million for its sixth flagship fund, the firm exclusively told TechCrunch, completing the process in just over 90 days.
“This fundraising environment is tougher than any I’ve seen since starting the firm well over a decade ago,” founder and managing partner Craig Shapiro told TechCrunch.
Part of that could be the fact that Collaborative has recently returned capital to its LPs, Shapiro said.
Thrive Market is well, thriving.
The billion-dollar e-commerce company splashed onto the scene in 2016 with its idea of online grocery delivery.
Nick Green, one of the company’s co-founders, stopped by Found to chat about his company and the market’s evolution since he first launched it.
This argument is what helped Thrive Market become the first online grocery retailer that the USDA approved to accept food stamps.
Thrive Market had to raise money from content creators and influencers until VCs picked up on the craze.
In 2023, higher egg prices provided an opportunity for alternative protein companies to show they could compete with traditional egg manufacturers.
At this capacity, Onego Bio is close to reaching competitive price points to traditional ways of making egg proteins, she added.
Onego Bio claims Bioalbumen is “bioidentical” to ovalbumin, which is the major protein in chicken egg white.
In preparation for this, Onego Bio recently secured $40 million in Series A funding to get Bioalbumen to market and increase manufacturing capabilities.
Tomosaku Sohara, managing partner of Nordic Ninja said in a statement: “Onego Bio is taking all the right steps to commercialize in record time … with a clear path to industrialization, go-to-market and profitability.
Once the baby is born, the nutrition guessing game continues on what foods are ideal for postpartum and nursing.
The product roadmap is evolving, too, extending from the postpartum program to eventually serve the full women’s health journey.
The 40-days postpartum program, which includes three meals per day, starts at $69 per day.
“For example, we started with the first 40-days postpartum program.
Other participants in the round include Ingeborg, Union Heritage Ventures, Peterson Ventures, Detroit Venture Partners, Palette Ventures, and The Helm.
Globally, a third of the food produced is lost or wasted, and in Kenya, that figure stands at between 20% to 40%.
Farm to Feed, an agri-tech based in Kenya, is one of the fast-risers in the space.
Farm to Feed teams then sort, grade and dispatch the products to clients from its warehouse in Kenya’s Capital, Nairobi.
Data collectionOn top of the e-commerce platform, Van Enk said they are building a data platform by collecting granular data including on climate and drivers of food loss, for better farming outcome and to create a more circular food system.
I do think that food loss is such a huge impact opportunity and also a very good commercial opportunity,” she said.
They founded Poseidona, a Barcelona-based developer of sustainable food technology, which uses that invasive seaweed and algal side-streams — the waste that agricultural producers generate — to make proteins.
In this case, it’s a soy protein alternative.
They’re looking for nutritional factors and an overall good functionality of the protein, Hurtado said.
Poseidona is not the only one using side-streams to make food.
“We’ll ultimately be able to be in cost parity with soy protein.”
Baron Capital, an investor in Indian food delivery startup Swiggy, has increased the value of its stake in the Indian firm, implying a valuation of $12.16 billion, surpassing the $10.7 billion post-money valuation at which Swiggy secured funding in early 2022.
The valuation uptick at the end of December is a noteworthy development for Swiggy and, more broadly, the Indian startup ecosystem.
This is particularly significant given that Swiggy’s valuation had previously been marked down to a low of $5.5 billion.
Swiggy commands roughly 45% market share in the Indian food delivery sector and is “well positioned to benefit from structural growth in online food delivery in India,” Baron Capital wrote in a separate filing.
Swiggy, which is also a key player in the instant-grocery delivery space in India, is increasingly broadening its offerings.
Uber Eats is adding a live location sharing capability to help couriers find customers in difficult-to-find locations, including public places such as campus courtyards, parks, and playgrounds.
Uber Eats is available in over 11,000 cities across six continents.
Uber Eats stops sharing the location once the order is delivered.
The company hopes its new live location sharing feature will help solve a major challenge that many couriers face, especially in the warmer months when people are spending more time outdoors, ordering food for birthdays and other events.
“We’re thrilled to bring location sharing to Uber Eats and help consumers ensure greater reliability with every delivery they receive,” Divya Dalapathi, Director of Product Management at Uber, said in a statement.
Mill, a food waste startup, is releasing an entirely new design of its bin that grinds and dries scraps, turning it into compost-like grounds that can feed plants and chickens alike.
Now, the heating elements surround the entire bin and the fan blows hot air through the food waste as it’s being processed.
That program continues nationwide, and a standards body recently certified Mill’s feed product, which should help the startup speed adoption among interested farmers.
“We’ve actually closed the loop in Phoenix,” Rogers said.
Mill may have already diverted 1 million pounds of food waste from landfills (and the associated greenhouse gasses), but it’s not enough for him.
Food tech investment may have declined along with overall venture capital, but Bluestein Ventures is not letting that slow it down.
The Chicago-based early-stage venture capital firm closed on $45 million in capital commitments for its Fund III.
Andrew Bluestein, co-managing partner of Bluestein Ventures, founded the firm in 2014 and brought on Ashley Hartman, also co-managing partner, eight years ago.
They join other venture capital firms, like Kost Capital, Supply Change Capital and Joyful Ventures, that have recently raised new funds to invest in food tech.
“When we started Bluestein Ventures, people would ask us why we were investing in food,” Bluestein told TechCrunch.
