Participated · Series B · Mar 2023

SideChef offers a cooking, shopping and meal-planning app with more than 20,000 “smart recipes” and over 12,000 shoppable recipes that can be added to a cart for delivery or in-store pickup. The app is free to download and offers a $4.99 monthly premium tier with recipes from SideChef culinary experts; users can also upload and share their own recipes. SideChef has partnered with retailers and delivery services (Walmart, Instacart) and appliance makers including Sharp, GE and LG to embed step-by-step cooking and smart-kitchen features. The company says it doubled its revenue growth three years in a row, growth that was boosted by increased home cooking during the pandemic. New funding is intended to expand an end-to-end cooking platform and smart-kitchen technologies, including image-recognition devices for automated cooking and additional monetization via online grocery purchasing, contextual marketing and data insights. SideChef is a mobile cooking app that displays detailed photography and written instructions to guide users through recipes. The app offers more than 1,000 recipes sourced from over 100 food bloggers worldwide. Its recipe library covers diverse cuisines and accommodates special diets including gluten-free, vegan and low-fat options. Launched in March 2014 by CEO Kevin Yu, SideChef focuses on expanding its content and user reach. The company plans to use newly raised funds to create partnerships with various U.S. companies and to grow its network and content offerings, including cooking techniques.

Participated · Series A · Aug 2018

Karma is an app-based marketplace that lets local restaurants and grocery stores sell unsold food at a discount directly to consumers via iOS and Android apps. Users register their location, browse participating merchants' discounted listings, pay through the Karma app and pick up items before closing time. The platform aims to reduce food waste while boosting sellers' revenue and offering consumers discounted meals. Since launching, Karma works with over 1,500 restaurants, grocery stores, hotels, cafes and bakeries and has 350,000 users; it counts three of Sweden's largest supermarkets and several major brands as partners. The company expanded to the U.K. in February and is already working with over 400 restaurants in London. Karma recently raised $12M in a Series A (bringing total funding to $18M) and plans to use the funds to develop its product range—especially within supermarkets—and expand into new European markets while growing headcount. Karma is a Swedish social enterprise that reduces food waste in the cafe and restaurant industry. Its platform lets users find cheap eats nearby using GPS and enables restaurants to offer food that is close to expiring at deep discounts. The company has been described as having a globally scalable model for tackling one of the world’s biggest environmental problems. Founded in 2015 by Mattis Larsson, Elsa Bernadotte, and Ludvig Berling, Karma connects consumers with discounted surplus food from cafes and restaurants. The company plans to use new funding to expand its operations in Europe; the article reports a new investment of between €3–4 million from e.ventures and eEquity.