This week we are happy to announce our co-investment in Lyfa, a Rockstart AgriFood portfolio company. The pre-seed round was led by Swiss Startup Group with Rockstart as co-investor and Mirko Kerschbaum as an informal investor. Lyfa is a Rockstart AgriFood portfolio company and this funding round marks Rockstart’s second investment in the company. The startup plans to use the funding to further fuel its growth as it expands its operations and product range.
Lyfa was founded in 2019 in Basel, Switzerland. The “zero-waste supermarket” currently offers around 250 different products all completely waste-free in reusable packaging. With a strong focus on convenience, Lyfa offers home delivery and collects empty packaging from customers during subsequent deliveries, meaning Lyfa’s customers can live waste-free with next to no effort.
Commenting on the round, Mark Durno, Managing Partner AgriFood, Rockstart states:
“We invested in Lyfa because we believe it is a sustainability imperative to have solutions that reduce food waste. Lyfa’s combination of e-grocery and zero packaging is simple and impactful. The founders, Michael and Lewys, were able to showcase their abilities during and after the Rockstart AgriFood program and this gave us the confidence to invest a second time with strong new partners, the Swiss Startup Group.”
Michael May, CEO and co-founder, Lyfa states:
“Lyfa’s purpose is to make it simple, accessible and convenient for anyone to live waste-free. Since launching in 2020, we’ve made huge steps towards product-market fit and see this as the perfect time to build out our service by expanding our team and our infrastructure. Our aim is to reach operational profitability by the end of 2021 while also expanding out of Basel to Zürich and Bern.”
Max Meister, General Partner at the Swiss Startup Group also commented:
“Lyfa convinced us because they cover two very strong trends. E-groceries and sustainability. Both topics will develop very strongly in the future. In addition, the complementary and motivated founding team convinced us. Last but not least, we liked the compelling implementation of the MVP.”
The AgriFood fund is Rockstart’s first fund launched in 2019. In May 2021, Rockstart announced the closing of the fund at €22m with the participation of Vaekstfonden’s Green Future Fund, alongside informal investors and global dairy cooperative Arla Foods. Rockstart AgriFood has invested in 20 startups since its launch in mid-2019, making the fund one of the most active AgriFood investors in the world. The Rockstart AgriFood portfolio companies have collectively raised >€10m in total thus far. Rockstart AgriFood received more than 600 applications in the last three months and is planning to make new investments this summer.
