USA – Terviva, an Alameda CA-based food and agriculture company, raised $78M in funding.
The round was led by Astera Institute (led by Jed McCaleb), Evans Properties, Trustbridge Partners, The Jeremy and Hannelore Grantham Environmental Trust, Ron Edwards (co-founder SoBe and Blue Buffalo Pet Food), Landis Becker Young and Brace Young (Chair of Social Finance), Mark Tercek (former CEO of The Nature Conservancy), Bryan Meehan (Executive Chair, Blue Bottle Coffee), Brent Magid (CEO of Magid, a leading global consulting firm) and Howard Fischer (Founder of Gratitude Railroad). In conjunction with the funding, Brace Young joined Terviva’s board. The company, which expects to close an additional $24M in equity and debt capital this quarter, for a total of $78M in capital, intends to use the funds to drive the expansion of operations and its business reach. Led by Naveen Sikka, founder and CEO, Terviva leverages natural, proprietary food processing methods to create a golden-colored, buttery cooking oil and highly-soluble plant protein from the beans of the regenerative pongamia tree. The company works with farmers to plant pongamia trees on idle agricultural land that is often difficult to farm due to poor soil or water stress. On this type of land, an orchard of pongamia trees captures 115 metric tons of carbon per acre over 30 years, ranking pongamia among the the most sustainable sources of edible oil and plant protein. Concurrent with this financing, Terviva is launching a new collaboration with Danone to develop new food products that utilize pongamia oil and plant protein. The company will also open a facility in the U.S. in 2022 to produce pongamia-based foods.21/05/2021
