New year, new people moves: Zomato, Sweetgreen executives out, AppHarvest taps CEA vet for COO
Other people moves from the last month include a new chief marketing officer for Grabango and a new role for Upstream Ag’s founder.
Other people moves from the last month include a new chief marketing officer for Grabango and a new role for Upstream Ag’s founder.
Food delivery, cultivated meat, and bio-energy startups across Asia, North America and Oceana landed agrifoodtech’s top five deals of 2022.
In agtech, deals from Grow Indigo, FreezeM and others were all about insect farming, forest restoration and capturing more carbon.
Aquaconnect will use the new capital to build up its product portfolio for both pre-harvest and post-harvest services for the aquaculture industry.
Led by Swiggy, Restaurant Marketplaces raised $1.95 billion in FY22, scooping up the most funding of any agrifoodtech category.
Indian farmtech startups raised $1.5bn in the fiscal year ending March 31, 2022, which was around 30% of total funding but 60% of deal count.
DeHaat says the Series E round will help the company reach break-even profitability within the next 12 months.
Investment in farm technologies was particularly buoyant, increasing 185% year-on-year and accounting for 60% of the total number of deals closed.
In agtech, produce quality control platform Clarifruit raised $12 million while more layoffs struck the food delivery sector.
The category’s strong fundraising performance underscores its potential to positively impact Asia-Pacific, especially when it comes to smallholder farmers.
Meanwhile, it’s more bad news for food delivery, with a quick-commerce startup shutting down and a major service leaving Australia.
India is by far the region’s most advanced farmtech ecosystem, while a Chinese agricultural drone service raised the biggest farmtech round in 2021.
Investors poured a record-breaking $15.2 billion into Asia-Pacific agrifoodtech startups in 2021; in 2022, the region continues to break records.
From old timers with mega deals to up-and-comers just entering the space, here are the ghost kitchen startups leading the pack of a growing if somewhat controversial segment of the food industry.
Gramophone has partnered with Yara Ventures-backed Jai Kisan to add loans to its full stack portfolio of services for India’s smallholder farmers.
Indian insect biotech startup Loopworm secures $3.4m seed round led by Omnivore and WaterBridge to scale up research and development and production.
Layoffs, cuts, and reorganizations continue across the foodtech industry, especially for restaurant-related businesses like Sweetgreen and Deliveroo.
Farmley, India’s dried fruit and nuts marketplace, secured $6m in Series A funding led by DSG Consumer Partners and Alkemi Growth Capital
The Netherlands-based animal and fish feed producer has acquired close to 94% in Indian aquatech company Eruvaka as impact fund Omnivore and Eruvaka team exit.
The US alt-dairy startup has posted the winning ₹6.38 billion ($79.8 million) bid to take over Sterling Biotech, which entered liquidation in 2019.
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International Fresh Produce Association launches year 3 of its produce accelerator