September 26, 2018

Singapore-based venture capital fund VisVires New Protein (VVNP) is planning to launch their second fund next year – a $100 million fund dedicated to backing food tech innovations.

The development follows upon the closing of the firm’s first fund at $40 million in June.

VVNP is particular, in that it is one of the only venture capital firms in its region that focuses its investments within a narrow niche – technologies that apply to the global food and animal feed supply chains.

VVNP founder Matthieu Vermersch told Deal Street Asia that historically, for the past 150 years, the bulk of investments have been made either at the farm or consumer levels – indicating an opportunity to deploy capital with the goal of solving issues at other points on the chain.

“What we need today is an entire change of the global food system,” said Vermersch. “The technology, the science, the business model within the food industry. We try to identify bottlenecks that are really important for the industry and find solutions from there.”

VVNP’s debut fund secured backing from family offices and undisclosed corporate investors, and has made three investments to date.

The first in YNSECT, a Paris-based mass-scale breeder and producer of insects for the livestock, pet, and fish feed markets. VVNP participated in the startup’s $15.2 million Series B led by Future Positive Capital, Quadia SA, and Bpifrance Ecotechnologies, in the fourth quarter of 2016.

The second is Nuritas, an Irish food and biotech company that uses artificial intelligence, deep learning, and DNA testing to identify food components called peptides that impact specific health benefits. Other investors in Nuritas include Cultivian Sandbox, Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff, BASF SE, and angel investor Ali Partovi, as well as U2 band members Bono and The Edge. Nuritas’ latest round was a $20 million Series A closed in January of this year.

The third investment, which was only announced this past August, was in Mitte, a startup that purifies and enhances water through a proprietary distillation-based process using minerals.

Looking ahead, VVNP plans to beef up its portfolio, bringing the total number of investments by the end of this year to eight, and is currently closing two as-of-yet unannounced deals in Israel and the Netherlands.

Vermersch noted that finding the right startups suitable for venture capital funding is a process; that the food and feed tech sectors do not currently offer the same exit opportunities as other sectors; and the nature of investments made in these sectors often require a longer commitment. The makeup of the startup team is also a critical consideration.

“We want the most forward-thinking team we can find,” said Vermersch. “Just having good technology and science is not good enough for us,” said Vermersch. “Some teams are not looking to carry their project to the size that really matters, so we turned them down.”

-Lynda Kiernan