Switzerland's Planted Foods Raises CHF 7 Million to Scale Production of Plant-based 'Meat'
23.10.2019
The ETH Spin-off creates tasty plant-based meat that mimics the taste, texture and mouthfeel of animal meat. The investment from Blue Horizon Corporation, Hiltl, Good Seed Ventures, Mica Ventures, Joyance Partners, the ETH Foundation and private investors, will scale production, accelerate R&D and expand Planted beyond the Swiss market.
 Planted Foods' Lukas Boeni and Pascal Bieri
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Sixty billion chickens are grown and killed annually. Zurich-based Planted makes animal-free 'meat', using plants instead of chicken.
The team of food entrepreneurs and scientists from ETH Zurich and the University of St. Gallen, aim to change the perception of meat, by offering consumers a sustainable and cruelty-free alternative source of protein, and diversifying consumer choices from gluten- and soy-based foods. The team received CHF 50,000 pre-seed funding, training and support from Venture Kick earlier this year.
"Venture Kick really helps us to get better," said co-founder Pascal Bieri, "redefining our business model, great challenges, great questions, great experts that we learn from every day and can make Planted as a business case, but also as a product, better over time.
"Venture Kick really helps us to get better," said co-founder Pascal Bieri, "redefining our business model, great challenges, great questions, great experts that we learn from every day and can make Planted as a business case, but also as a product, better over time.
Planted's proprietary extrusion process converts protein and fibers from yellow split peas into a structure that mimics chicken. The ETH spin-off already sells its produce to restaurants in Zurich and Bern ranging from a casual Vietnamese banh mi eatery to a hip Peruvian restaurant, and recently launched its own meatless cookbook.
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Venture Kick caught up with Christoph Jenny to learn more about the process of fundraising in food's international and fast-moving space.
How did you gather and selected your investors?
We used different accelerators, the ETH platform, a few mentions of the funding round in relevant media as well as our personal network to generate leads. During discussions with investors we focussed first and foremost on the alignment in regards to our mission and how they can make us stronger. Key was to focus on the alignment. Work out how a particular investor can make us stronger. The function of that is the diverse investor base with industry-focused investors, proven entrepreneurs, and strong private investors.
What particular factors did you take into account?
First and foremost alignment on our mission to create the tastiest plant-based meats, to retain the positive attributes of traditional meat while removing the negatives of large-scale livestock farming. Secondly, we focussed on value-add of the investor in regards to production scale-up, R&D and converting the strong demand into sales.