Singapore-based venture capital firm Teja Ventures and investors from the Angel Investment Network of Indonesia (ANGIN) have backed a pre-Series A financing for Indonesian plant-based food restaurant chain Burgreens, the investors told DealStreetAsia.
The eatery chain is targeting to raise up to $3 million in pre-Series A funding and is looking to rope in more investors to close the round, sources familiar with the matter said. The firm is keen to attract food tech-focused investors.
“We see the potential of Burgreens to be Southeast Asia’s leading plant-based food consumer brand, beyond just an offline F&B chain. The global wellness industry is worth $4.5 trillion and we see the growing consumer demand for healthy food as a reflection of this general trend towards wellness,” Teja Ventures founding partner Virginia Tan said.
Tan said there is a gap in the market for meat-based substitutes in Asia. Burgreens’s strategic advantage lies in its ability to produce plant-based food products tailored to Asian palettes at affordable price points, she added.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, Burgreens launched its first direct-to-consumer frozen food product. Teja Ventures and ANGIN said they have been working with the Burgreens management to strengthen its offline-to-online strategy and increase the capacity of its food labs.
Burgreens secured an undisclosed investment from ANGIN three years ago. In 2018, it bagged additional capital from the angel investor network and new investors such as taxi service provider Bluebird Group’s president director Noni Purnomo and Indonesian actor Arifin Putra.
“We started to shift a bit more to online sales, which involves a new way of doing business, new channels, logistics, from offline to online promotion,” ANGIN managing director David Soukhasing said recently during a webinar hosted by Venturra Discovery.
He said members from ANGIN network re-invested in Burgreens to support them during the pandemic.
ANGIN has invested in 62 Indonesia-based startups over the last five years. The firm is also an early investor in logistics startup Kargo, and donation platform Kitabisa, which was bought by Gojek.
Last year, Teja Ventures also invested in Chinese keto-based food and drinks company Tonx. The VC firm’s portfolio is primarily based in Indonesia; it has also made a few investments in China and India.
There is increased VC interest in health food startups in Southeast Asia. Singapore-based foodtech startup Shiok Meats recently raised $3 million in a bridge funding round from Agronomics, US-based VegInvest, UK-based Impact Venture, and UAE-headquartered Mindshift Capital Fund, bringing its total funding to date to $7.6 million.
Phuture foods, a Malaysian plant-based food startup, raised its seed round last year while Singapore’s plant-based meat startup Karana recently secured $1.7 million in seed funding from several investors across the region.
