London tech firm secures £16m investment to fight against food waste

A London-based sustainable food waste reduction platform has secured £16m to accelerate its contribution to fighting food waste.

Oddbox delivers fresh fruit and vegetable boxes with produce from farms which is at risk of going to waste, to sustainably conscious consumers.

Leveraging technology to enhance customer experience, the company also provides customers with tailored recipes and data analysis highlighting a personalised measurable positive impact on the planet.

Oddbox was founded in 2016 by wife and husband team Emilie Vanpoperinghe and Deepak Ravindran. The company has registered an exponential six-fold year-on-year growth in revenue in 2020 and has a highly loyal and engaged community.

BurdaPrincipal Investments (BPI), has invested in the platform comprising a combination of primary and secondary investment.

Amelia Townsend, principal of BPI, said: “We are very inspired by Emilie and Deepak, the Oddbox founders, with their clear and authentic purpose to tackle food waste and the impressive and scalable platform they have built to enable this.”

Emilie Vanpoperinghe and Deepak Ravindran, co-founders, Oddbox commented: “With our recent growth we’ve identified key areas for Oddbox to develop and further our mission to fight food waste.

“So while we continue to retain majority stakes, we wanted an investor to help make these developments happen, and importantly who also shares our vision that business is a force for good.

“We’ve found that in Burda, as they’re committed to long-term sustainability, a principle at the core of Oddbox.”

In the UK alone over 3m tonnes of food is wasted at farm level for being ‘too’ big, ‘too’ small, or ‘too’ many. When food goes to waste, so does the energy, water and time that went into growing it. This means that if food waste was a country, it would rank as the world’s third biggest contributor to greenhouse emissions, behind only China and the USA.

To date, Oddbox has rescued 18,834 tonnes of fruit and vegetable, prevented 20,830 tonnes of carbon emissions and saved 2,028m litres of water.

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