Santiago-based biotech company Done Properly uses fermentation to produce healthy and sustainable food alternatives, including meat and additives. Mexico City-based climate tech VC Savia Ventures invested in the firm earlier this month.
Done Properly works with large food companies like Nestle to replace harmful additives with healthy ones, helping corporations transition to non-animal proteins. The company claims its products, including a fungi-based protein, use 10 times less energy, 20 times less water and 150 times less land than traditional alternatives, while reducing sodium and sugar by up to 40%.
Another Santiago-based lab-grown food producer, NotCo, raised $70 million in 2022, bucking the continuing downturn in financing for plant-based food startups (for context, see, “Plant-based versus lab-grown meat”).
Latam’s climate opportunity
The investment in Done Properly is the fifth from Savia, whose portfolio includes timber-based biocomposite firm Strong by Form, tire-life extending startup Ruedata and AI-based grid optimization company Splight.
“Latin America is the largest untapped climate market opportunity right now,” Savia’s Andres Beahr told ImpactAlpha at FLII (video). Beahr cites lower valuations, abundance of natural resources and nearshoring trends in northern Mexico and Central America.
“All of that will need solutions that reduce the amount of energy, optimize logistics and use better processes,” he says. “And all of that is climate tech.”
