Top 10 Food and Beverage Startup Investors in South Africa

Last updated: Apr 2024 A list of 10 angel investors and VC funds that invest in Food and beverage startups based in South africa. We rank investors based on the number of investments they made in Food and beverage companies from South africa. We update this investor list every month.

Top 10 Food and Beverage Startup Investors in South Africa

Investor	Food and Beverage South Africa investments
Cult Food Science	3
Standard Chartered Bank	2
Sustainable Food Ventures	2
Vumela Fund	1
Alethea Capital Management	1
HAVAÍC	1
Michael Jordaan	1
Tim Draper	1
Anonymous Trust	1
Kale United	1

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Investor list

CULT Food Science is an investment company focused on supporting and advancing the technology behind the future of food.

Investment focus

Food and Beverage, Biotechnology, Food Processing
Seed, Pre-Seed, Funding Round
United States, South Africa, Canada

Portfolio highlights

Novel Farms — Novel Farms uses microbial fermentation to develop cruelty-free, inexpensive and tunable bioscaffolds for the production of cell-based meat products. Novel Farms mission is to craft the taste and texture of the gourmet meats and transform cell-based meat consumption into a sought-after culinary experience for the next generation of consciouseaters.
Minus — A sustainable coffee alternative, combining the taste, look, and smell of coffee with a smaller footprint to ensure a brighter future for coffee and the planet.
Unicorn Biotechnologies — Unicorn Biotechnologies is developing a fully automated manufacturing platform to enable cellular agriculture producers to seamlessly scale products from the lab bench to supermarket shelves. Our full stack platform combines hardware, software and analytics to completely automate cellular agriculture manufacturing, reducing costs and increasingproduct quality. By providing a clear path to scale cellular agriculture from grams to tons, we will improve human and planetary health and drive the transition to animal free agriculture.

Standard Chartered Bank offers personal and business banking services. Their solutions for companies include transaction banking and financial markets solutions. They also offer current accounts, savings accounts, credit cards, loans, and mortgage services.

Investment focus

Financial Services, Telecommunications, FinTech
Debt Financing, Post-IPO Debt, Funding Round
India, United Kingdom, Singapore

Portfolio highlights

Ecopetrol — Ecopetrol is Colombia's largest integrated oil & gas company.
Climate Impact X — Climate Impact X is a global marketplace that provides carbon exchange and credits for investors.
Indorama Fertilizers — Indorama Fertilizers operates a world-class, 1.4 million metric tonnes per annum urea manufacturing facility based in Port Harcourt, Nigeria. The plant has been developed to global environmental, social and construction standards. It plays a key role in supporting the agricultural sector in Nigeria by providing a reliable supply of fertilizers forlocal farmers, thereby enabling import substitution and supporting the diversification needs of the Nigerian economy. Indorama Fertilizers is also advantageously located to serve neighboring West African countries and key Western hemisphere markets, including North America, South America and Europe

SFV backs globally early-stage founders building leading Future of Food companies that are: #Cell-based #Plant-based #Recombinant

Investment focus

Food and Beverage, Biotechnology, Food Processing
Pre-Seed, Seed, Angel
United States, India, Germany

Portfolio highlights

Farmless — A farmless fermentation platform has the potential to create an entirely new food repertoire, producing proteins, carbohydrates, beneficial fats, vitamins, and minerals from the ground up," explained Oner. "We are creating a new interface between food and electricity by domesticating microbes chosen for their food properties and abilityto grow on renewable energy-based feedstocks.
Daisy Lab — Daisy Lab pioneers precision fermentation technology in New Zealand
Atlantic Fish Co — Developing sustainable, cultivated seafood using cellular agriculture

Vumela was established in 2009 by FNB Business Banking and Edge Growth. The objective was to create an innovative model for the development of a sustainable and a financially and operationally independent investment business which invests in high growth small, medium and micro size enterprises with good economic and impact returns.Vumela wascapitalised in 2010. Within the first four years, we’d invested R90 million into eight high growth SMEs, and created a total of 400 jobs. They launched their second fund in 2015, after a further investment of R100 million from FirstRand and R127 million from the Jobs Fund. Within the first year of launching this second fund, we’ve committed R43 million to five investments that are expected to create over 1800 new jobs.The first fund of its kind in South Africa, Vumela’s main goals are to invest in and develop entrepreneurial companies in order to help alleviate poverty in South Africa by creating jobs, and to generate a return for its beneficiaries: the Shalamuka Foundation and the FirstRand Group.

Investment focus

Education, Software, Primary Education
Funding Round, Seed, Debt Financing
South Africa, Brazil

Portfolio highlights

Inoxico — Inoxico is a provider of business-to-business credit risk solutions. We combine quality data and cutting edge technology to deliver predictive analytics.
Kombo King — Kombo King Ventless Fryer Tech removes the need for plumes of steam & the constant eye of an inconsistent employee to Revolutionize & solve the frying industry!
Kusini Water — Kusini Water builds water treatment systems from nanotechnology and macadamia nut shells.

Alethea Capital Management is an SEC-registered investment advisor founded in March of 2011. As an investment management and research firm, the mission of Alethea is simple – to provide the highest level of service and guidance to our clients with honesty, integrity, and transparency. The firm’s services include fee-based asset management,research/advanced quantitative systematization, manager/strategy evaluation, and comprehensive planning. Alethea’s center of operations is in San Diego, CA.

Investment focus

Biotechnology, Health Care, Medical
Series A, Series B, Series C
United States, South Africa

Portfolio highlights

3X4Genetics — The future of healthcare is personalized. Build a more successful practice and transform more lives using the power of DNA-driven health recommendations, through DNA & Genetic Testing!
Lipidio Pharmaceuticals — Lipidio Pharmaceuticals is a healthcare company that focuses on advancing a molecule to treat diseases associated with excess body fat. It includes non-alcoholic steatohepatitis, Prader-Willi syndrome, and antipsychotic drug-induced weight gain. The company was founded in 2018 and headquartered in San Diego, California.
SEngine Precision Medicine — The Search Engine For Identifying Personalized Cancer Treatments.

HAVAÍC is an investment and advisory firm that specialises in early-stage, high-growth African businesses with proven concepts and global prospects, offering investment opportunities to sophisticated investors and international venture capital companies with an interest in Africa. As a complementary offering, HAVAÍC provides corporate advisory andcapital raising services to emerging, internationally scalable businesses.

Investment focus

Health Care, Financial Services, Software
Seed, Funding Round, Pre-Seed
South Africa, United States, Kenya

Portfolio highlights

Talk360 — Talk360 is an easy-to-use calling app that helps people make affordable international calls to any mobile and landline number. They believe that reliable communication and digital services must be affordable and accessible to everyone, regardless of someone's background. Especially people in emerging countries in Africa, who often need theseservices the most, do not always have the necessary banking possibilities. To bridge this distance, Talk360 will launch the world's first single checkout platform for Africa. This platform will combine all locally available payment methods and currencies across Africa, together with over 1.25 million cash points of sales, and will eventually be available to other companies as well. This means that 500 million Africans will be able to purchase digital services they never had access to before.
Sportable — Sportable is a sports data company that changes the game for teams and audiences. With Rugby being their primary focus, they are working with a number of teams and manufacturers to create and develop hardware and wearable devices that enable sport specific data to be collated in real time. Their technology gives the viewer, the team, and thebroadcaster unprecedented insight into the decision making of players.Sportable was founded in 2015 and is based in London, England.
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Michael Jordaan, the former banker now heads up a private investment company, Montegray Capital and lends a strategic-hand to various businesses, including as Chairman of Wines of South Africa (WoSA), Chairman of consumer data buro, Compuscan and as Director on the JSE. Michael also actively invests as a partner in AngelHub Ventures, a SouthAfrican based Venture Capital Fund.In 2014 he co-founded a coding apprenticeship program, ProjectcodeX, to grow highly skilled software developers to fuel the digital economy.