💸 60 AgriFood Solutions VCs want you to pitch them

Fundraising in 2024 is proving an uphill battle for AgriFoodTech startups.

And yet at the same time we find ourselves at pivotal moment as the urgency to address global food challenges such as climate change, food security, and sustainability reach a climax.

Highlighted no more so than today, World Food Day with a call to give a right to foods for a better life and a better future.

So to give fundraising founders a power-up, here at FoodHack, we spoke to 25 AgriFood investors to hear which solutions they want you to pitch them.

It’s clear that technology has a crucial role to play in the future of food, but which solutions are investors looking to back next, and crucially do you have the answer?

Solutions include:

🌾 Green Fertilizers
🥡 Sustainable Packaging
☀️ Climate Resilient Crops
🪴 Soil-Enriching Solutions
🧊 Cold Chain Optimization
🧁 Sugar Reduction Technologies
🍫 Coffee and Chocolate Alternatives
🧫 Molecular Farming and Plant Cell Culture
🛠️ Picks and Shovels for Food Processing and Food Safety

Better still, if you’re looking to fast track your first/next fundraise, come and join the HackSummit in NYC this December.where hundreds of investors across climate deep tech will be attending and ready to learn more about your solutions.

↘ Use code FUNDME20 to save 20% on your pass.

Steve Molino at Clear Current Capital

• Optimizing Existing Infrastructure: Improving efficiencies for existing food and ag infrastructure is less “sexy” than innovation around novel infrastructure, but there is immense opportunity to generate revenues and impact in the short term by optimizing what already exists. This is true in everything from bioprocessing and synbio to on-farm infrastructure for water, fertilizers, and other inputs 

• Food Waste at Consumer Level: We’re seeing tons of innovation around food waste in the upstream and midstream portions of the supply chain, but less at the consumer level (which accounts for a massive portion of the waste in developed countries). This is usually due to a requirement to change consumer behavior, which is unbelievably hard. We think there are major opportunities to address food waste at the consumer level by creating businesses that address this behavior change requirement without consumers knowing (or caring) about the need to reduce food waste. 

• Supply Chain + Data: It’s hard to improve something you can’t accurately measure, and much of the food supply chain, and logistics associated with it, is fragmented with major gaps in data. We see a major opportunity to reduce costs, inefficiencies, food waste, labor, etc. by continuing to digitize the food supply chain.

Melody Violton at CPT Capital

• High-value Proteins/Ingredients: There is a strong demand for multifunctional and bioactive proteins. These are highly appealing from a unit economics standpoint as they will represent high price and high margin products with low inclusion rates, enabling to significantly reduce the barriers to scaling up production. 

• Innovative Downstream Processing (‘DSP’): As downstream processing still represents one of the largest cost drivers of fermentation processes, there is a clear need for innovative and cheaper DSP technology to reach cost parity with animal-derived products. In particular, solving the cost bottleneck of DSP will unlock the path to profitability for many precision fermentation companies.  

• Molecular Farming/Plant Cell Culture: These two sub-tech in recombinant proteins technology warrant attention as they might challenge conventional precision fermentation for the production of bioactive proteins with viable unit economics. We have seen some positive signals on the regulatory side in the last few months, making us think that the regulatory pathway is starting to ease for molecular farming companies, although still being challenging.

Julius Strauss at FoodLabs

• Crop Engineering for Climate Adaption: Crop engineering for climate adaptation offers a transformative approach to sustaining global agriculture in the face of environmental challenges. By developing crops with traits such as heat resistance, reduced water needs, and the ability to grow in saline soils, this field enhances resilience to changing climate conditions. These innovations help ensure food security and improve yields in harsh environments, making it a high-impact area for investment with broad scalability and global relevance.

• Molecular farming: Molecular farming has the potential to revolutionise food and protein production by using plants to produce high-quality proteins and nutrients at a fraction of the cost of traditional methods. With recent positive regulatory developments, this low-capex approach enables scalable and sustainable alternatives to conventional agriculture and livestock farming, while reducing the need for expensive infrastructure compared to fermentation-based protein production.

• Turning Deserts into Arable Land: Innovations in turning deserts into arable land are unlocking vast agricultural potential in regions like the Middle East and Africa. Techniques such as soil reclamation, desalination, and advanced irrigation systems have already enabled productive farming in arid areas, including projects in the Negev Desert and parts of Egypt. With over one-third of the Earth’s landmass classified as desert, these technologies offer enormous untapped potential for food production.

Michal Klar at Better Bite VC

• Algae Innovations: Algae has enormous carbon sequestration potential and various applications, but so far the price has been a key blocker. Recent innovations are rethinking algae production from the ground up, leading to cost reduction that can potentially enable whole range of new applications - not just in food, but also fuels and plastics.

• Yield Improvements and Fertiliser Reduction: Groundbreaking new technologies like carbon quantum dots (CQD) and variable electric field (VEF) can help farmers boost their crop yields and reduce the need for carbon-intensive synthetic fertilisers.

• Decarbonising the Food System in Asia: APAC region is contributing to 42% of global food-agri emissions; solutions are required across various sectors - meat & dairy, cutting methane emissions from rice farming, low-carbon fertilisers and addressing food waste.

Bodil Sidén at Kost Capital

• Climate Mitigation: Just as our latest investment in Foreverland Food - climate change and a unidirectional food system actualizes the obvious need for biodiversity and alternatives to different crops such as cacao, coffee, vanilla et.c and the need to secure your own supply chain. 

• Digital infrastructure: If the food industry are to leverage (sorry, trigger-warning) AI for real, we need digital infrastructure across the whole supply chain.

• Nutrition as Investment Criteria: To transform the food system ingredient by ingredient, we've learned that we need price parity (or lower), we need better taste but we also need the products to be more nutritious. This is as important for B2B as for the end-consumer value proposition. 

Steven Finn at Siddhi Capital

• Solving Industry Problems: Cash is tight. Big companies are moving at what feels like a snail's pace as they review a worlds worth of innovation and think about what's next for them. This takes forever, and it's no time to focus on saving the world. If you want to sell your product to an established corporate, the best way is to have a product that solves an urgent problem they are actively feeling pain from. Anything short of that is a one way ticket to the innovation department, which probably moves slower than the rest of the organization. Great examples are those solving for supply chains in current crisis, like eggs and chocolate.

• Precision Fermentation Infrastructure - I say this in every one of these articles, but there are two problems here. The world has limited capacity today for precision fermentation for food. As more food is fermented, there will be a capacity crunch. More importantly, what's available today is the wrong infrastructure for scale. If it seems like what's out there is fine for your needs, you either have a very high value product or you haven't fully thought through scale. 

• Food as Medicine - we're focused on high value, low inclusion ingredients. Not much checks those boxes better than low inclusion ingredients that are produced and regulated as food but have clinically backed pharma grade functional claims associated with them. Many consumers are buying on front of pack claims vs ingredient decks, and some of these ingredients focused on things like inflammation and gut health pack a huge punch at a great margin without requiring facilities to be built from scratch to get there.

Steve Simitzis at Solvable Syndicate

• Pet Food: Cat food in particular is wide open for innovation in alternative proteins and fats. Cats are growing in popularity as pets, driven by workers returning to the office and the relative ease of cat ownership vs dogs. Confirming this are data from NielsenIQ and trends at Global Pet Expo, both showing faster growth in cat adoption and spending. Unlike dogs, which are omnivores and can thrive on plant-based diets, cats are obligate carnivores, which opens up opportunities for cultivated meat suppliers to enter the pet food industry.

• Cultivated Meat Goes B2B: By shifting from the consumer market to meat producers, cultivated meat can find product market fit with a customer that already has a burning need for the product. Consumers buy based on price and taste, and largely do not care about sustainability. But the value prop is clear for meat producers, who need stability and resilience in their supply, as climate change brings more chaos to commodity prices. Products that can be blended easily, like cultivated ground meat and cultivated fat, will find commercial success across the meat industry.

• Enabling Technologies: The crash and rebirth of FoodTech will mirror the rebirth of the tech industry following the dot-com crash of 2000. New tech like cloud computing and smartphones led this rebirth and drove down CAPEX/OPEX in an industry that bled money just a few years prior. Similarly in FoodTech, a new ecosystem of enabling tech will drive down costs. Examples are purpose-built bioreactors, cell lines, bioprocess software, etc. This vertical has a flywheel effect as founders start new enabling tech startups to solve the problems they encountered at the last startup.

Jacob Afriat at Great Circle Ventures

• Seed Oil Alternatives: We see significant potential in seed oil alternatives that can deliver healthier nutritional profiles while addressing the environmental concerns associated with traditional seed oil production. Startups developing sustainable, scalable oil alternatives that offer lower levels of harmful fatty acids and minimize the carbon footprint of the food system will be well-positioned to capture growing consumer demand for healthier and eco-friendly options, especially in CPG.

• Sugar Alternatives and GLP-1 Synergy: With the increasing prevalence of metabolic disorders, we believe the market for sugar alternatives, especially those that complement emerging GLP-1 therapies, is ripe for disruption. We are actively seeking better-for-you solutions that are working to replicate the experience (sweetness, mouthfeel, duration) of sugar and have a path towards replacing sugar at-scale. This area has the potential to reduce the reliance on pharmaceutical interventions and enhance consumer well-being through functional food products.

• Salt Alternatives and Sodium Reduction: The demand for sodium reduction in food products is accelerating, driven by both health-conscious consumers and regulatory pressures (eg EU sodium regulation targets). We are particularly interested in startups offering innovative salt alternatives and sodium reduction technologies that enable food manufacturers to reduce sodium content without compromising flavor.

Lauri Reuter at Nordic FoodTech VC

• High-Impact Ingredients: Biotech continues to enable production of ingredients the food industry has not been able to use before. We are especially looking into ingredients that deliver clear value at low inclusion rates, regardless if it is for structure, taste or nutritional profile of food products.

• Green Fertilizers: Nitrogen still comes largely from fossil intensive processes and other minerals from limited virgin sources. We are looking for technologies to close the nutrient loops, recycle and produce fertilizers in sustainable ways. 

• Sustainable Crop Protection: The shift away from chemical pesticides creates an opportunity for new technology in protecting crops from pests and disease. We are eager to see more solutions emerging from plant breeding, biological pest control - and the next wild ideas we could not have even dreamed of.

Shayna Harris at Supply Change Capital

• AI-Enabled Software: For value chain efficiency, tackling big data problems that are critical for the food supply chain, such as food safety, transparency and traceability, streamlined manufacturing operations, sustainability, and more.

• Cold Chain Optimization: Solutions that reduce refrigerant usage, extend the shelf life of crops, and reduce costs across the supply chain.

• Solutions Addressing the Health and Safety of Workers in Food and Agriculture: Including innovative health insurance models, labor optimization platforms, and human-assistance technologies. 

Erik Byrenius at Mudcake

• Reducing Methane Emissions from Rice: Rice cultivation alone accounts for appr. 1.5% of global GHG emissions and is a huge market, still very few innovations target this topic.

• Software Connecting the Food System: Simplifying and automating interactions, reducing waste, improving transparency and traceability, increasing efficiency and margins.

• Nutrition and Obesity Innovations: Solutions powered by new technology or science to increase satiety, boost macro and micro nutrients, replace or reduce sugars, increase fibers etc.

Hadar Sutovsky at ICL Planet Startup Hub

• Functional Clean Label Food Ingredients: Natural or minimally processed components that serve a specific performance purpose in food products, while maintaining transparency and simplicity in the ingredient list without artificial additives, for example natural thickener or emulsifier for food products. 

• Alternative Dairy Products, Specifically Ingredients for Dairy: Substitutes for traditional dairy, designed to mimic the taste, texture, and nutritional profile of milk, cheese, and yogurt, without using animal-derived ingredients. I am looking for high performance and cost efficient ingredients that can achieve for example meltability in cheese products, created by the balance of fat, moisture, and proteins like casein. 

• Enhanced Efficiency Fertilizers: Formulations designed to improve the uptake and utilization of nutrients by plants, minimizing nutrient losses to the environment through processes like leaching or volatilization. For example, solutions which slow down the conversion of urea into ammonia, reducing nitrogen losses through volatilization and making more nitrogen available to plants for a longer period of time.

Matteo Leonardi at Grey Silo Ventures

• Cocoa / Chocolate Alternatives and/or Traceability Solutions: The recent disruptions we’ve seen in the cocoa and coffee supply chain, which led prices to skyrocket in the last year, as well as the introduction of the new EUDR policy will boost companies’ adaptation strategies to face these fast-paced changes. We expect a major increase of total funding amount for categories of products looking to replace cocoa- and coffee-derived ingredients in product formulations as well as solutions looking to provide clarity along the supply chain. 

• Fats and Sugar Alternatives: Fats and sugar play a key role in stabilizing food formulations as well as adding functionality, texture and taste. New classes of ingredients in the alt-fat space (especially oils and fats of vegetable matrix which undergo a mechanical process to make them behave like animal fats) and solutions which allow to add less refined sugar in product formulation are becoming the mantra for companies’ reformulation strategies, so innovative technologies and products addressing them will draw lots of attention (and funding).

• Enabling Technologies: Just as fats are enabling the acceptance of new categories of products (think plant-based foods) by making their taste and texture better, there is also the need to get closer with animal-derived products in terms of cost. Enabling tech (infrastructure, AI-based software) that cut developing costs and reduce timelines will soon be under the spotlight.

Maria Renner at GRIDX

• Biodiversity as a Solution: Biodiversity is a goldmine for startups seeking creative solutions. By harnessing the remarkable adaptations of organisms like extremophiles, these startups are discovering novel ways to boost crop yields, restore soil and tackle other challenges.

• Food as Medicine: The shift to viewing food as medicine is gaining momentum. Whether derived from fungi or plants, the therapeutic power of the natural components is being unraveled and will move fast to be adopted.

• Enabling Technologies: Enabling technologies are set to play a pivotal role in scaling precision fermentation products. Innovations are driving down production costs and enhancing scalability.

Mridul Pareek at European Circular Bioeconomy Fund

• Picks and Shovels (Enabling Tech) for Food Processing and Food Safety: Our FoodTech team focuses on solutions that can reduce the carbon footprint of the food industry. In the overall value chain, we see that mid-stream technologies like food processing and food safety are often overlooked.

• Food Ingredients with Functionality (e.g., Clean Label): Any food ingredients that can help meet customer demands for clean labels, taste, texture, and lowering costs. One key lever we look for here is the cost in use for the applications that the ingredient is targeting.

• Digital Solutions for the Food Value Chain: Software and SaaS solutions that can scale easily along the food value chain (or a part of it) and result in the reduction of food waste or any other resources.

Rosemari Herrero at PINC 

• Sugar Reduction: This is a prioritized area within Paulig, we’re interested to meet startups developing ingredients that maintain or improve functionality and taste while improving Nutriscore.

• Soil Health: Recognizing the tight connection between soil, planetary, and human health, we are keen to invest in technologies that promote soil health.

• Sustainable Packaging: With the upcoming EU regulation (PPWR) set to begin in 2025, which requires all packaging to be recyclable by 2030, we are seeking circular packaging designs with less or renewable materials. 

• Strategic Focus: Solutions related to Paulig's main crops; wheat, corn, and coffee across the value chain, innovations in agtech is particularly interesting. 

Mark Kahn at Omnivore

• Democratising Access to AgriFood Solutions: The slow adoption of agrifood innovations at the grassroots level  in rural India  can be attributed, in part, to financial barriers, particularly when implementation costs exceed a certain threshold and formal financing is difficult to secure.  This creates a significant entry barrier for many farmers and small-scale producers, impeding widespread integration of transformative technologies and widening the gap between early adopters and those struggling to access innovations. To accelerate adoption rates we need more accessible financing options through innovative fintech solutions or public-private partnerships is clearly the future. 

• Climate Adaptation and Mitigation Solutions: These are becoming a fundamental criterion for assessing innovations, reflecting the growing recognition that food system sustainability is inextricably linked to addressing climate challenges. Future agrifood innovations will be evaluated on their capacity to reduce emissions, enhance carbon sequestration, and improve climate resilience alongside traditional metrics of efficiency and profitability. This shift will drive increased investment in technologies such as precision agriculture as well as life and material sciences, with companies demonstrating tangible climate benefits likely to gain competitive advantages in both consumer and investment markets.

• Compelling Investment Opportunities at the Intersection of Food and Agriculture with Other Sectors: This underscores the interconnectedness of the global food system and the evolving nature of agrifood technology. This trend can potentially boost fund returns by capturing value from adjacent segments. It highlights the need for a multifaceted approach to address complex challenges in food and agriculture, suggesting that successful investors must maintain a broad perspective on innovations that may shape the future of these industries.

Brian Frank at FTW Ventures

• AI for Agriculture & Supply Chain Productivity: The next century of food production is being augmented by data generated at the field, in monitoring equipment watching our supply lines and by robots that will make us more productive and waste less product. Therefore, we are bullish on the development and integration of the AI ‘intelligence layer’ that will help both incumbents and emerging players in the food system improve productivity, reduce waste and increase margins on products.

• Superpowered Plants and Enriched Soil: With limited arable land to expand food production and to combat the effects of climate change, we must think about how to grow more food with less resources and to put more nutrients back into our soil, and ultimately our crops. This means taking a more aggressive approach to imbuing our crops with ‘superpowers’ to strengthen their resilience, protect against diseases, fend off pests and produce better fruits and vegetables.

• Soil-Enriching Solutions: We must also look at the soil in which plants grow, enhancing the ability for the soil to continually produce high quality products year after year. This means we must invest heavily in advancements in precision application of water and fertilizers, the addition of beneficial microbes and other techniques that revitalize our farmlands. It's the platforms that can design more verdant crops, create a wide range of inputs and speed verification of their efficacy on a range of soil types and under various conditions that are of most interest to us as capital providers.

• Combating Disease & Aging through Food:Imagine a world where we can treat Alzheimer’s or other degenerative, age-related illnesses through functional nutrition interventions. Research is finally achieving breakthroughs in the human microbiome, metabolic health and the gut-brain axis, unlocking opportunities to bring better food and health treatments to the market. It's now more important than ever to address the rising rates of clear diet-related illnesses like heart disease and hypertension, but also use functional foods and nutritional counseling to extend our active, healthy lifespan and reverse degeneration of core human functions.  

Thibault Vanvincq at Joyance Partners

• Eco-friendly Alternatives to Petrochemicals: This is particularly crucial in industries like food and personal care. The environmental impact of traditional methods for cellulose extraction raises significant concerns, including deforestation, water consumption, and hazardous by-products. Moreover, impending regulations, such as the EU ban on synthetic polymer microparticles, underscore the urgency for eco-conscious alternatives. Cellulose has broad applications that extend well beyond food such as biomedicine, paints, and textiles, signifying a considerably larger market potential.

• Health-Conscious Pantry Staples: Common pantry staples like salt and cooking oil can have negative health effects. Salt is a major factor in increased blood pressure, heart disease, and stroke. Cooking oils contain high levels of saturated fat, contributing to high cholesterol levels, heart disease, and stroke. Increased awareness about these risks is opening doors for new products, like oils made with alternate sources like inflammation-reducing algae and nutrient-infused seasonings. 

• Sustainable Ways to Produce Coffee and Tea: These universal drinks are poised for disruption. One reason is global warming; Western consumers’ preferred yet climate-sensitive form of coffee bean, Arabica, has become highly problematic. Rising temperatures make growing difficult, resulting in a supply shortage struggling to keep up with global demand. On the consumer side, Millennials are demanding more authenticity and transparency from their products, so beverage companies putting health, wellness, and mindfulness at the heart of their buying are gaining significant traction.

Soham Sanyal at Nourish Ventures 

• Personalized Nutrition: Consumers prefer individualized approaches to nutrition. We expect start-ups to leverage information regarding how consumers obtain food and what they eat, their medical history, advanced analytics, and even genetic testing. This information will then be used to deliver tailored nutrition and dietary solutions.

• Precision Agriculture: New technologies in agriculture have the potential to create the sustainable food systems of the future. Advancements in data gathering, robotics, irrigation, soil health, and biologicals significantly can impact the industry by improving sustainability and profitability.

• AI in FoodTech:  AI will have a transformative impact on the food industry. AI will lead to greater efficiency in operations, reduced food waste, and an enhanced experience for consumers.

Stephanie Dorsey at e squared

• Upskilling: The ag industry faces a looming crisis with an aging demographic of farmers  coupled with a widening skills gap. The crisis extends to the food sector as well, where workforce shortages are already acute. This succession and skills crisis creates a perfect storm for upskilling solutions in this space. Startups offering innovative solutions to bridge this gap have our attention. 

• Data Security: As AgriFood becomes increasingly digitized, cybersecurity threats pose a significant risk to our critical infrastructure. We're seeing a growing attack surface with the proliferation of IoT devices, drones, robotic harvesters, and autonomous equipment. We're interested in companies developing robust cybersecurity solutions tailored for the unique challenges in the sector and we’re particularly keen on companies that prioritize security during the development phase. This includes protection against cyberattacks that can disrupt supply chains, poison datasets, or hijack critical systems.

• AI: AI has the potential to transform this sector, but unique challenges persist. We're excited about startups bridging the talent gap between AI expertise and AgriFood domain knowledge, as well as those navigating the complex, multi-stakeholder landscape of AgriFood tech. In the near term, we see significant potential in the integration of AI in agribusiness software, particularly for administrative and workflow optimization.

Gali Soria-Artzi at PeakBridge

• AI for Personalized Nutrition and Preventive Heathcare: AI is revolutionizing personalized nutrition, driving the development of tools that analyze everything from genetic data to lifestyle factors to create individualized dietary plans. In the longevity space, AI technologies are gaining momentum by designing nutrition strategies, as well as integrating nutrition and health data for predictive interventions aimed at prolonging life and preventing age-related diseases.

• New Ingredients & Delivery Systems: The next wave of investment in health-improving ingredients, such as GLP-1 inducers, is set to grow rapidly. These ingredients are recognized for their ability to support weight management and manage metabolic health. Simultaneously, cutting-edge delivery systems are emerging to ensure targeted and more efficient absorption of compounds and nutrients, optimizing health outcomes.

• Sustainability and Traceability Through Digitalization: Digital transformation is reshaping the food supply chain, with platforms, blockchain, and IoT devices connecting farmers directly to consumers. These systems are enhancing transparency, reducing inefficiencies, and empowering local producers. Investment is flowing into platforms that facilitate these interactions, particularly those promoting sustainability and food security.

Gabriel Estrada at Dalus Capital

• Sustainable Crop Enhancement: Startups creating biostimulants and biofertilizers to reduce the use of chemicals, promote regenerative agricultural practices and boost crop health. Some are developing very innovative products derived from beneficial ancient microorganisms or using biocapsules for controlled release of nutrients.

• Climate Insurtech: Innovations in crop and disaster insurance that enhance risk management and response through climate data and predictive tools, improving preparedness and facilitating recovery.

• WaterTech: Technologies for efficient water use, conservation, and recycling are essential to address water scarcity and quality concerns, ensuring access to clean water and promoting sustainable water management practices especially in farming and manufacturing.

Michel Kovac at McWin

• Climate Resilient Crops: From terrible droughts across Europe last year to now almost repetitive flash floods, climate resilient crops will play a crucial role in feeding future generations and meeting growing food demand fueled by expanding middle class and growing population.

• Functional Ingredients and Bioactives: Looking to prioritize their health and wellness, consumers have started to gravitate towards “good-for-you” and “better-for-you” products and demand science-backed, data-driven solutions that deliver effective health benefits. Wellness is still a very rudimentary category dominated by vitamins and standard food supplements with little customization. We believe that space is ripe for disruption and will produce several winners that leverage science and technology.

• Restaurant Tech: Although vast, restaurant tech space is often overlooked by the food tech community, because it’s not considered deep tech pureplay. We believe that the sector will play an important role going forward, considering the pronounced shift in how consumers interact with food and reshape their eating/dining habits. With our portfolio of +2000 restaurants, we actively keep track of this still significantly underdeveloped category.

• M&A and Consolidation: We expect a new wave of companies hitting fundraising wall and experience some sort of cash problems. Increased M&A activity, be it IP takeovers or less likely mergers, is expected in the upcoming 2-3 quarters with investors trying to save what’s left saving and companies with available war chest looking to capitalize on the opportunity.

Nader Amiri at Homegrown Ventures

• Q-Commerce: MENA’s 15-Minute FMCG Revolution: Quick Commerce is shaking up MENA, getting everything from frozen meals to skincare at your door in under 30 minutes. With UAE and Saudi leading global digital adoption, this is more than just speed—it’s a lifestyle transformation. Startups are winning here, outpacing the big guys by being quicker, more agile, and deeply connected to what today’s consumers expect. It’s fast, fun, and changing the way we think about everyday shopping.

• Clean Label: Where Tradition Meets Transparency: MENA consumers aren’t just health-conscious—they’re tradition-conscious. They want real, simple ingredients that connect them to their roots, but with a modern twist. From dates to za’atar to sumac to camel milk to …, people are choosing fewer, fresher, local options that they can trust. And they’re ready to pay for it. The real winners are brands that keep it clean, clear, and delicious, delivering products that feel like a fresh take on forgotten/lost in time favorites.

• Food Security: MENA’s shift from an import-heavy region to focusing on local production is laying the groundwork for true food security. With food demand set to rise by 30% by 2030, the brands that localize their supply chains are positioning themselves to thrive. It’s not just about sustainability; it’s about resilience. Consumers want fresher, more reliable local products, and the startups tapping into that desire are the ones that will win when global supply chains stumble.

Francesco Lorenzetti at Green Circle Capital 

• Food Safety: The food safety industry is archaic and has not evolved over the last 70+ years in a major way. We think there is a great opportunity to disrupt the space with quicker, more accurate and more protective safety solutions across the food system that can provide less friction on cost, time and labor. 

• Microbiome: A nascent field that may provide food or pharmaceutical products to better enable a healthy lifestyle. 

• Sustainable Packaging: One of the biggest sustainability opportunities of my lifetime is reducing or eliminating single-use plastic from our day-to-day. Recyclability and even compostability in most cases is not enough, as most plastic is not recycled and composting often requires industrial and chemical processes. We are waiting for a truly biodegradable (after some reasonable amount of time), cost effective, and widely functional packaging solution.

• Waste to Value (Upcycling): Especially with regard to climate-affected crops, upcycling waste streams into value-added ingredients is a big opportunity tackling several key issues: food waste, supply disruption, quality assurance and sustainability. 

What’s Next: Come and surround yourself with some of these investors, and hundreds more at the HackSummit, the must-attend gathering for startups, scaleups, investors and corporates this winter.