Top 10 Food and Beverage VC (Venture Capital) Funds in South Africa in January 2026

Last updated: Jan 2026 A list of 10 VC (Venture Capital) 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 VC (Venture Capital) Funds in South Africa in January 2026

Investor	Food and Beverage South Africa investments
Cult Food Science	3
Standard Chartered Bank	2
Sustainable Food Ventures	2
Anonymous Trust	1
Alethea Capital Management	1
Kale United	1
HAVAÍC	1
Khulisani Ventures	1
Vumela Fund	1
Twynam Agricultural Group	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, Internet, FinTech
Debt Financing, Post-IPO Debt, Funding Round
Singapore, India, United Kingdom

Portfolio highlights

BW LPG — BW LPG is a leader in LPG shipping with the world's largest fleet of Very Large Gas Carriers. We are listed in Oslo and have offices worldwide
Space Tech Innovation Co. — Space Tech Innovation Co. operates as a space technology company.
Fosun Tourism Group (FOLIDAY) — Fosun Tourism Group provides a one-price, all-inclusive leisure and vacation experience. Their tourist destinations include one-stop entertainment and comprehensive tourism and vacation destinations operated by a company that provides resort operations, tourism destination development, and other related services.

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

POW! Foods — Puta en gandia
Veggie Victory — VeggieVictory is Nigeria’s first plant-based food tech company bringing people a healthier and more sustainable lifestyle through plant-based meats and meals.
High Time Foods — High Time Foods provides shelf-stable and moldable plant-based meat alternatives to foodservice operators. Their first product is a plant-based chicken alternative that does not require refrigeration. The product is moldable and can be used in any cuisine as a substitute for chicken.

Trust

Investment focus

Software, Computer, Market Research
Pre-Seed, Series A, Seed
United States, South Africa, United Kingdom

Portfolio highlights

The Index — The Index is a platform of cutting-edge technology used by clients in the fashion and retail industry to grow their companies and enhance their digital footprints
De Novo Foodlabs — Producing non-animal dairy proteins using precision fermentation
Smart Separations — Smart Separations is a limited company based in London UK that has patented an innovative microfiltration technology to produce ceramic filters with self-assembled controllable pores of uniform size in the range between <1 and 50µm. This tight pore size control and range availability will revolutionise the field of MF with a cost-effectiveproduct.It aims to be the world’s leader in MF and particle separations technology – filling the void gap that exists in the market nowadays.

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 — Scientifically-robust nutrigenomics (personalised nutrition guided by your own genetic stack). Practitioner education & genomic reporting
Lipidio Pharmaceuticals — A Unique Approach to Treating Obesity Precision Targeting of the Skin Exploiting the skin as an endocrine organ Historically regarded as a protective barrier organ, the skin is now recognized as an active endocrine organ capable of synthesizing, and secreting diverse hormones and signaling
SEngine Precision Medicine — The Search Engine For Identifying Personalized Cancer Treatments.

Kale United offers a portfolio of over 75+ plant-based game changers

Investment focus

Food and Beverage, Food Processing, Biotechnology
Seed, Pre-Seed, Funding Round
United Kingdom, Sweden, India

Portfolio highlights

Opalia — Opalia is introducing a new era of dairy: functional, delicious, and sustainable dairy made from mammary cells.
The Pack — Nutritionally complete vegan dog food. Grain-free & developed with food scientists & animal nutritionists, try our delicious vegan dog food now.
Cultimate Foods — At Cultimate, we are transforming the flavor and aroma industry with natural innovative ingredients.

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

Software, Health Care, FinTech
Seed, Funding Round, Series A
South Africa, United States, Kenya

Portfolio highlights

NjiaPay — Payments-as-a-Service platform that will streamline your operations and elevate your online payments across the African continent.
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.
Right Now Response — The future of repairs starts soon. Counting down to smarter tracking in 2025! There are perks to working 24/7, 365 days a year... Like launching the future of repairs ahead of schedule!

Khulisani Ventures is Mineworkers Investment Company’s early-stage investment vehicle, providing capital for businesses that are ready to aggressively expand and increase their market footprint.

Investment focus

Farming, Livestock, Farmers Market
Funding Round
South Africa

Portfolio highlights

Livestock Wealth — Livestock Wealth is a crowdfarmingTM company that allows people to invest in livestock and earn from sale of the offspring.Their unique CrowdFarmingTM concept allows individuals to share the facilities of a commercial livestock farm while our experts look after their cows on a day to day basis.Cows have been a source of pride and a store ofwealth in Africa for centuries. The wealth in cows is based on something real – beef. The company enables anyone to be an organic beef farmer.

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.