New month, new ePitching with investors. February’s session was focused on Agritech and organised in partnership with EuroQuity – BPI France. On 16th February, seven EIC-funded SMEs had the opportunity to pitch in front of a jury of investors from Blu1877 – Barilla Group, LeadX Capital Partners, Faraday Venture Partners, Mitsui, Balderton CAPITAL, Eleven Ventures, South Central Ventures and Five Seasons Venture. Let’s discover the winner and impressions from the session.
The alliance between agriculture and technology is vital to meet the world’s growing population and plays an important role in food production and fighting hunger. Innovative solutions such as compostable packaging for sports nutrition, IoT/AI for bees and beekeepers, insect farming for aquaculture feeding, micro-algae biobased products, food safety testing devices, sustainable coatings for paper/board packaging and solutions for food safety industries were presented by Food Sourcing Specialists, 3Bee, InnovaFeed, Brevel, Cellugy, BIOSENS and Novolyze in the ePitching on Agritech. In the end, Food Sourcing Specialists convinced the jury and took home the prize. We sat down with the co-founder and CEO of the company Françoise de Valera Rose, and James Hook, Partner at LeadX Capital Partners to hear their feedback.
Finding new market opportunities
Food Sourcing Specialists started with the idea of creating a brand of sports nutrition with an innovative range of products. Their mission also includes the elimination of single used plastics but also bringing healthier ingredients and getting certified from sports performance products. They founded out a gap on the market, as Françoise explained: "There were no home compostable packaging solutions available for semi-liquid products like energy gels, so we decided to create our own packaging too".
When referring to getting in touch with investors, Francoise noted that: "having the investor attention even if it’s just for 5 mins of you presenting it’s a big win" as can be hard for them to get their attention in a sea of many.
On the other side of the investment table, James Hook from LeadX Capital Partners, revealed that its looking for an interesting product, able to attract customers and conquest the markets: "I look for traction with customers. That’s a clear demand to buy what the company is producing or providing as a service." James mentioned that is also looking for an engaged team working in technology, operations, sales & marketing, leadership and finance.
Considering investment areas, James explained that they can be divided into upstream opportunities act-tech, middle-stream by creating raw materials and down-stream with product and end-customers. LeadX Capital Partners was particularly interested in companies "working on packaging or on new alternatives for plastics" and food-waste. "There's a lot of food wasted in supermarkets, restaurants as well as at home".
Coming to events such as this ePitching session gave to Food Sourcing Specialists the opportunity to explore all possible revenues as they are opening a second round of investment of a 1.3M target that will close at the end of June. They got feedback on their presentation on a dry run before the event, received feedback from coaches before the session, and believed that helped them to succeed.
Françoise thinks it is great to do online pitches and believes that many face-to-face events will move to digital headquarters in the future. Networking with other investors and supporting the ecosystem was also mentioned by James as a great opportunity enhanced by this event.
Do you want to have the opportunity to virtually pitch your ideas to top-class investors?
We plan to host regular e-Pitches based on your company profiles in ScaleUp EU. Our next event will be the EIC Investor Day on the 23rd-24th March on Digitalization of the European Industry. More than 30 investors will be present and the investment rounds will be focused on Enterprise Software; Internet-of-things & Cloud computing; Artificial intelligence and Robotics. Join the online event here!
If you are interested in joining, don’t miss out and update your profile information straight away. If you need help, please contact us through our contact page (choose ScaleUp EU: claim access).
DISCLAIMER: This information is provided in the interest of knowledge sharing and should not be interpreted as the official view of the European Commission, or any other organisation.