How Forward Fooding Scaled FoodTech Intelligence with DataScouts
On a mission to promote food innovation: Food Tech 500
Forward Fooding is a global network, driven by entrepreneurs, that provides the necessary support and speed to enable collaborations and partnerships between established food organizations and startups. They are on a mission to stimulate food innovation in order to shape our food system in a new way. In short, they believe that entrepreneurship can make a difference in solving some of the biggest problems affecting our current food system. That, combined with the infrastructure and expertise of companies, is the ‘secret sauce’ to creating a better future of food.
At the same time, shifting consumer preferences are putting enormous pressure on existing business models, traditional food companies and brands. Like the magazine Fortune sums up: “Big food is under attack by startup granola.”
As a former executive at a Fortune 500 beverage company, Alessio D’Antino (CEO) is increasingly frustrated by the company’s rigid approach to innovation and their ‘meaningless’ agenda. He decided to move to Silicon Valley in search of inspiration. After being introduced to some brave entrepreneurs who were building highly innovative ventures, he began to realize that startups were going to play a bigger role in solving some of the biggest challenges impacting our global food system. Since then, Forward Fooding has built a global community of innovators in FMCGs and FoodTech. They are now partnering with food and beverage companies of all sizes to help embrace more collaborative models of innovation to create a better future for food.
FoodTech data navigator
Forward Fooding has already published a map and a directory of food startups on their website. However, they saw a greater opportunity in the FoodTech data they had collected over the years. Startups wanted to see who else provides similar services to them or who could be a good supplier, companies were looking for startups to work with, and investors wanted to screen a portfolio of startups. With over 1500 active users and a large network, they felt the need for a real data platform.
In 2019, they introduced the FoodTech Data Navigator, powered by DataScouts. Through the platform, the end-users can discover the latest startups, accelerators, investors and key players in the global AgriFoodTech sector.
Working together for success
At DataScouts, we worked closely with the team at Forward Fooding to launch the FoodTech Data Navigator. First, we have included their expert taxonomy that reflects the food innovation space. During several co-creation sessions, we streamlined the user experience. Finally, we uploaded and further enriched the data and jointly configured the FoodTech Data Navigator to provide valuable insights to startups, companies, and investors engaged in driving food innovation.
The Forward Fooding team launched the FoodTech Navigator with a targeted multi-channel marketing campaign. Right after its launch, users started signing up for a demo period to experience the platform’s capabilities and opportunities.
Meanwhile, the FoodTech Data Navigator contains curated data from 4300+ international AgriFoodTech startup companies, accelerators & incubators, investment funds and business angels.
FoodTech 500
Inspired by the Fortune 500, Forward Fooding has been presenting the official FoodTech 500 since 2020, the definitive list of global entrepreneurial talent at the intersection of food, technology and sustainability.
Forward Fooding shared the key challenges facing the global food ecosystem and answered the question of how FoodTech is addressing the rapid need for change across the food ecosystem. According to Forward Fooding, these challenges call for innovative solutions and the answer is Agrifoodtech.
Forward Fooding saw a truly global response to their call for applicants with over 1,200 applications from 52 different countries across 8 different categories of AgriFoodTech.
For example, according to the key statistics of the 2023 FoodTech 500 companies, 72% of them generate revenue, 95% of companies have received investments, and more than €6.6 billion in funds have been raised over time. FoodTech 500 thus embraces the startup and scale-up success stories that are shaping the future of food.
To compile the official list of the FoodTech 500, the data from each application was processed using the FoodTech Data Navigator’s algorithm combined with DataScouts’ data sources and algorithms to calculate the company size score and a digital footprint score. The sustainability score is derived from a tailor-made model based on the environmental data collected from the finalists.
Business size core
The company size score is generated through a proprietary algorithm that predicts the company’s growth based on several financial performance indicators. These include the number of employees, the funding stage, the amount of funds raised to date, as well as the number of offices from which each company operates.
Digital footprint score
The digital footprint score is calculated through a proprietary algorithm that generates a prediction of the growth of each company’s digital presence, considering each company’s website traffic, social media performance, and follower growth.
Sustainability score
In the absence of a global framework to measure the impact of sustainability on companies, specifically for FoodTech companies, we have chosen, in collaboration with experts from the University of Turin, to create a unique sustainability score that considers selected United Nations Sustainable Development Goals.
