French baby food startup Yooji raises €7.5 million funding to boost operations

French baby food startup Yooji raises €7.5 million funding to boost operations

Published: 30-09-2020 15:59:39 | By: Bob Koigi | hits: 4885 | Tags:

French-based baby-food company Yooji has secured €7.5 million funding to make highly nutritional and sustainable baby food easily accessible to parents, despite the business of day-to-day life. After years of perfecting their unique product, Yooji says it is ready to scale.

While the traditional food industry tends to favor cost efficiency over quality, today’s consumers increasingly focus on healthy produce, sustainable production and local ingredients.

For parents, there is a growing concern about the quality of the food they feed their babies as well as an increasing awareness about the long-term effects of healthy nutrition in the first 1,000 days of a baby’s life. Parents are more and more looking for easily accessible alternatives to ready-made industrial baby food.

Yooji was born out of the dream to develop healthy and tasty baby food, with no additives and made from local products.. While it took years to perfect the flavour, texture and nutrition of the product, Yooji’s products are now recognized to be superior than the available alternatives.

Jeremy Strohner, CEO, Yooji: “Feeding a baby is not just a matter of nutrition, it is above all, about making the baby discover the true tastes of food while positively contributing to the future of the planet on which they will grow.”

Founded in 2012, the France-based Yooji manufactures and sells easy to prepare organic baby from locally sourced ingredients offering pure and transparent products.

Not only does Yooji appeal to those who want healthy, tasty and convenient baby food, they also aim for higher standards of sustainability throughout their production and transportation process. The company aims to minimize their footprint with waste reduction plans, sustainable packaging, responsible employment and 100% renewable energy sources.

The funding was led by  Pymwymic (Put Your Money Where Your Meaning Is Community), food multinational CVC Danone Manifesto Ventures, food-tech investor CapAgro and family investor Caravelle.

Monique Meulemans, Investment Manager Pymwymic: “Yooji has created a unique and sustainable offering: tasty, healthy, no additives, transparent and with care for the environment. We proudly support them to feed our newborns and play their part in transitioning future generations towards more healthy diets.”

With impact at the core of Yooji’s business, Pymwymic says it will support Yooji to continue to push its boundaries of impact: to realize its potential to become an industry influencer for healthy diets for infants while striving for the highest standards of sustainability in all business aspects.

Current shareholders have been supporting Yooji for several years with Danone, frontrunner in creating a more sustainable food system and Capagro, who aims to feed a sustainable planet with its responsible investment approach also strongly supporting Yooji’s impact mission.

Paul Chifflet, Head of Europe, Danone Manifesto Ventures: “At Danone Manifesto Ventures, we are proud of Yooji’s achievements over the past 3 years, and more than ever convinced that their product offer answers the needs of today’s young parents. We are very happy to be part this new fund raising intended to drive growth, in line with our mission to support entrepreneurs who invent the future of healthy and sustainable food.” 

Bénédicte Monpert, Managing Director, Capagro: “Yooji meets both parents and societal expectations for healthy, easy to use and delicious products to feed babies. Capagro’s team is proud to support Yooji for this new exciting development phase and is glad to welcome Pymwymic and DS as new coinvestors.”

www.yooji.fr