DigitalFoodLab will release the 28th of March at 7am CET (embargoed until this date), its sixth yearly report on the state of the European FoodTech.
This report has been made possible with the support of Nestlé!
If you want more data or direct access to the preview of the report, please contact Matthieu Vincent, co-founder & Partner of DigitalFoodLab directly at [email protected] or +33 6 82 48 92 91
We can also plan a quick chat to discuss the report's findings or set up a meeting. Here are some available slots on my side: https://calendly.com/matthieu-digitalfoodlab/echange
After a boom year, FoodTech investments decreased by 36% between 2021 and 2022. Still, €5.9B were invested in European FoodTech startups in 2022, almost twice as much as in 2019 and 2020.
In such a context, one could think that investments would concentrate on a handful of big and already profitable startups.
Actually, as it is mostly large deals that suffer, investments in early-stage startups were much less affected.
Indeed many startups without any realistic prospect of reaching profitability were left behind. These will have a hard time financing themselves in 2023 and beyond. As some already have, we expect many of them to simply go bankrupt.
In short, this means that investments in the « future of the ecosystem » are preserved, with many new ventures being well-financed. Even more importantly, this also means that investors, many of them corporate VCs, are still seeing FoodTech startups as long-term profitable bets.
2021’s boom was mainly correlated to the explosion of grocery delivery startups. It is no surprise that this has been the most affected FoodTech category, with a 68% decline in investment in delivery startups (with still almost €2B invested in these startups).
On the other hand, 2022 has been positive, almost surprisingly, given the context, for other FoodTech categories. Indeed, investments in the FoodTech ecosystem rose by 21% when delivery startups were excluded. Investment in AgTech, foodservice, and supply chain startups has notably driven this increase.