Big Idea Ventures announced the first close of their New Protein Fund with ~40% of targeted US$50m committed from Temasek, Enterprise Singapore, and Tyson Foods.
The fund is focused exclusively on startups developing plant-based and cell-based food products and ingredients. It will operate a food tech accelerator in Singapore, scheduled to launch in Q4 2019.
It is offering US$125k cash and US$125k in services to companies participating in the accelerator program in exchange for 8% equity. The largest chunk of the fund will be spent on follow on investments in the strongest performers.
BIV will also do selective investments outside of the accelerator. They already made their first by taking part in the recent seed round of Shiok Meats (see above).
Asked about their investment,
Enterprise Singapore sent me the following statement: “Industry players like BIV, that has the breadth of experience and established reputation, are valuable partners to grow Singapore’s agrifood-tech startup ecosystem”.
Big Idea Ventures’ founder and managing general partner Andrew Ive (previously with
Food-X) told
DealStreetAsia that he is “not ruling out the possibility of Asian food tech startups scaling up to take on rival brands such as Impossible Foods in the years to come”.
