Praesidium Agri-FoodTech
Praesidium invests and partners with ambitious and visionary entrepreneurs to support innovative companies solving the challenges of sustainably feeding the planet, whilst respecting its natural resources.
What We Do
Feeding the world sustainably will require dramatic changes to the entire agricultural and food value chain. We believe that disruptive technologies will shape the world of tomorrow.
Praesidium invests directly into companies partnering with ambitious and visionary entrepreneurs and founders to address the challenges which the agricultural and food industries are faced with.
We invest into companies along the entire value chain, with a specific emphasis on technologies that make a difference to revolutionize the industry and improve people’s lives and the environment.
Our focus lies on investments in earlier phases (specifically Seed, A and B financing rounds), but we also consider funding companies at a more advanced stage, and support their accelerated growth using the power of our network.
Areas of Investment
While we invest along the entire value chain, our focus areas for investment include:
Reinventing Farming
Enhancing existing farming, making it more efficient and reducing the stress it puts on resources using break-through technologies like AI, IOT, sensors and monitoring. New ways of reinventing the idea of farming such as sustainable aquaculture, innovative animal feed, novel crops and technologies allowing new farming systems.
Clean Food
Producing food without increasing the pressure on resources and the environment through the application of novel technologies which allow to “grow” sustainable, traceable and nutritious food ingredients and novel foods.
Alternative Protein Sources
Providing enough protein for the increasing world population as replacement or an alternative to meat, dairy and other products.
Functional and Personalized Nutrition
Using data and new technologies to provide functional ingredients and foods to address specific health concerns and lifestyle diseases (e.g., gut health) and to develop optimized personal nutrition.
How we support
Actively supporting our portfolio companies in successfully developing their business lies at the core of our investment philosophy. Our team consists of experienced managers and investors in the agricultural and food space and the Praesidium Club Members include leading entrepreneurial families, many of whom are from the food industry, as well as professionals from the Private Equity and Management Consulting world. We specifically can support in:
Product Development
We have established partnerships with leading R&D specialists and corporate partners, which open their research facilities to our portfolio companies. We also foster knowledge exchange with experts and entrepreneurs in the food industry within our network.
Navigating scale-up
Our team has first hand experience operating and advising businesses of different sizes and leading the process growing them from research to production scale.
Business Development
Through our network of Praesidium Club Members with their broad industry expertise and international networks, we bring significant value-add to investments and can support with concrete business development opportunities.
Fundraising and Exit Strategy
Our excellent connections to the world’s leading Venture Capital firms and leading family offices and charitable endowments, can provide access to additional funding in follow-on rounds. We furthermore have experience in navigating the public markets in the agri-food space.
Our team
Link to: Katrin Brökelmann
Katrin Brökelmann
Partner, Chief Operating Officer, Member of the
Portfolio
Link to: Wellfish Diagnostics
WELLFISH DIAGNOSTICS
Sustainable Aquaculture
United Kingdom
Series A
2023
Company Partnerships
HI-FOOD
Exclusive partnership with Hi-Food, a leader in the development of innovative food ingredient solutions, backed by successful serial entrepreneurs and located in Italy’s “Food Valley” where the EFSA (European Food Safety Authority) is also based.
Hi-Food is granting Praesidium Agri-FoodTech portfolio companies access to its new state-of-the-art, 6,000 sqm ingredients processing factory, with 7 fully-equipped pilot plants dedicated to various food segments:
- Conventional bakery
- Gluten-free bakery
- Beverages & plant-based drinks
- Sauces, innovative fats and fat replacers
- Protein extrusion and co-processing of ingredients
- Savory, gastronomy and plant-based food products
- Ice cream and frozen desserts
- Dairy analogue
Areas of Support
- Technical validation
- Testing of ingredients/technology in specific applications
- Co-development of technologies with support of Hi-Food facilities and staff
- Regulatory matters
An exclusive Investors’ Club with an innovative model for investing “thematically” in Private Markets