THIS™ closes £4m Seedrs round

Andy Shovel and Pete Sharman
UK plant-based meat company THIS™ has closed its Seedrs crowdfunding campaign, which was publicly live for 2.5 days, before hitting its £4m stretch target.
 
Venture capital firms involved in the round include Backed, Five Seasons Ventures, Idinvest Partners, Seedcamp and Manta Ray Ventures, alongside footballer Chris Smalling.
 
Andy Shovel and Pete Sharman THIS™ co-founders commented:

“After 3+ weeks of not sleeping because we thought no one would invest – we broke loads of records on Seedrs! We were publicly live for all of 2 days, before we hit our £4m overfunding limit. We haven’t clicked refresh that often since our online dating days.” 

On a mission to shatter meat-eaters’ preconceptions of plant-based food, one rasher or nugget at a time, vegan investment fund Veg Capital has also invested in the latest Seedrs campaign. The THIS™ Seedrs campaign is also the fastest FMCG business to hit target ever and fastest ever campaign to hit £1.5m+.
 
Andre de Haes, Founder of Backed VC stated:
“THIS is capitalising on the most important trend in nutrition: strong demand for tasty plant-based meat alternatives, for all those who are increasingly conscious about the detrimental health, climate change and animal welfare impacts of mass meat production. This macro trend alone doesn’t explain THIS’s success; it is unprecedented to see a startup food product achieve widespread supermarket distribution right after launching. The team at THIS blend executional hyper-efficiency with both ground-breaking R&D and innovative marketing. THIS’s achievement as the fastest campaign in Seedrs history for a round above £1.5m is well deserved.”

Chris Smalling, Professional footballer & Co-Founder of ForGood added:

“I’ve been really impressed with what Andy & Pete have achieved in such a short time. They’ve created a killer brand with amazing products. Thrilled to be part of their journey”

 

With the aim is to accelerate growth, this investment will be used to:
– Expand their innovation function – the team plan to invest £1m in a London-based innovation centre, housing sensory, textural and other processing equipment. A team of world-leading food-scientists, engineers and flavourists will staff the centre. They are also planning to launch 10 products per year for 3 years across a number of categories
– Boost manufacturing capability
– Build a category leading team of plant-based pioneers
– Create even bigger and naughtier marketing stunts

 

The campaign is the:
– Fastest FMCG business to hit target
– Fastest campaign ever to hit a £1.5m target
– Highest number of investors in an FMCG round in a week  
 
Set up by meat lovers, Andy Shovel and Pete Sharman, who successfully exited beef burger chain Chosen Bun. They channelled their in-depth knowledge of meat to create THIS™, arguably the most realistic chicken and bacon meat-alternatives in the world. Following two years of research and development, partnering with world-leading texture scientists and flavourists, THIS™ mimics meat in taste, texture, appearance and smell, but without the ethical or environmental impact, instead using peas and soya beans as the base.