Nigerian plant-based food company raises pre-seed funding
VeggieVictory, Nigeria’s first plant-based food company, has successfully closed a pre-seed round attracting investments from European and American venture capitalists. Sustainable Foods Ventures, Capital V, Kale United and Thrive Worldwide are the latest investors. Three of the four VCs are solely investing in vegan companies.
”We are excited to have won over these well-known investors not only for VeggieVictory but the African continent as the next frontier for the plant-based movement,” says Hakeem Jimo, founder and CEO of VeggieVictory.
”With these investments, we are able to develop more products aside from our main brand Vchunks, a plant-based meat substitute. Our vegan beef jerky ‘Kilishi’ is our latest innovation,” says Oyebola Adeyanju, VeggieVictory’s co-founder. She is in charge of product development.
Vchunks is 100% locally developed, manufactured and packaged in Lagos, Nigeria. The product is affordable and rich in protein which can eventually help address the severe protein deficiency on the African continent.
The young Nigerian vegan food company had an angel investment round last year. One of the early investors then was Ryan Bethencourt, CEO of Wild Earth (USA). ”This is our second investment in VeggieVictory and Sustainable Food Ventures is proud to be the lead investor. The plant-based revolution is even more crucial in emerging markets and Nigeria being one of the biggest ones,” says Ryan Bethencourt, founder of Sustainable Food Ventures.
Capital V, Kale United and Thrive Worldwide became aware of VeggieVictory on the pitch platforms of Vevolution and Glasswall Syndicate when VeggieVictory made it to second place at the Vevolution Pitch & Plant event late last year.
“I am fascinated by Africa, and see tremendous growth and opportunities there. The continent is ready to skip some steps and rapidly adapt to plant-based protein, comparable with the leap to other new technologies; think cell phones and mobile banking. Hakeem, Bola and their team are providing affordable plant-based food in Nigeria, one of the biggest markets of the continent,” says Michiel van Deursen, founder of Capital V based in Spain.
“Kale United has said from day one its dream investment is a plant-based company in Africa who could help Africa make the same leap it did with mobile phones, skipping landlines but with plant-based alternatives to meat skipping the growth of meat consumption. We believe Veggie Victory is the right company to make this happen in Nigeria – the largest market in Africa,” says Måns Ullerstam, founder of Kale United based in Sweden.
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