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kindrik partners advises plant-based meat alternative startup karana on $1.7m seed round
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Kindrik Partners recently advised Singapore-based alternative meat foodtech startup Karana on its $1.7million seed funding round.
Participating investors include Henry Soesanto (CEO of Monde Nissin Group), agtech investment firms Big Idea Ventures and Germi8, and angel investors Kevin Poon and Gerald Li (both Hong Kong entrepreneurs with experience in the food and beverage industry).
Founded in 2018 by Dan Riegler and Blair Crichton, the company’s processing method uses jackfruit sourced from Sri Lanka to create a texture that replicates minced and shredded pork more closely. This texture makes it easier than other meat substitutes to use in dishes like dumplings, char siu bao or bahn mi.
“In the future, we will launch products using other regional ingredients that will enable us to expand beyond pork,” the founders said.
Chris Wilson, Kindrik Partners partner, says of the deal, “We are seeing a lot of momentum in the foodtech and meat substitute industry. Following this round Karana is well placed to take advantage and are we are excited to watch their continued growth.”
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Kindrik Partners advised VC firm Illuminate Financial on its investment in Singapore-based AI-driven data processing and automation company bluesheets. Illuminate led the US$6.5 million series A round. Other returning investors included Insignia Ventures Partners, Antler Elevate, and 1982 Ventures.
Illuminate invests in B2B fintech and enterprise software companies that build solutions for the financial services industry. Backed by global financial institutions such as Citi, JP Morgan, Barclays, Jefferies, Singapore Exchange Group, and BNY Mellon, Illuminate uses its extensive network and industry knowledge to help their portfolio companies achieve their full potential in addition to providing capital.
bluesheets offers AI-driven data processing and workflow automation software that helps businesses digitise and automate their bookkeeping processes. It plans to use the funds to further enhance its AI capabilities and accelerate growth in key APAC markets, including Singapore, Thailand, ANZ, and Hong Kong.
We’re happy to have advised Singapore-based synthetic data company Betterdata on an oversubscribed seed round of $1.65 million, led by Investible.
The company was founded in 2021 by Dr. Uzair Javaid and Kevin Yee and allows clients to share data faster and more securely in compliance with stricter data privacy regulations being introduced around the world. Betterdata uses generative AI to convert real data into synthetic data that looks, feels, and behaves like real datasets. These synthetic datasets retain the structure and correlations of the original data while eliminating the privacy and security concerns that come with holding and sharing sensitive data.
Betterdata plans to use the funding to publicly launch its product, hire more staff as the company scales, and improve its technology stack, with the aim of providing support for single-table, multi-table, and time-series datasets. The company also plans to expand across the Asia-Pacific region over the next two years.
