Cleantech Invest portfolio company ResQ Club aquires competitor and attracts funding from German investors
Cleantech Invest portfolio company ResQ Club and German competitor MealSaver have decided to join forces in fighting food waste. The resulting company has attracted additional financing from among others Munich based Ananda Social Venture Fund and Berlin Atlantic Food Labs (Berlin). Cleantech Invest participated in the funding round and increases ownership from 8.7% to 9.5% after the investment round and after the acquisition.
Both companies have developed “food rescuing services” that allow users to buy quality surplus food from restaurants and other food service-providing venues at a discount.
Their service models are complementary and the merged team aims to develop both approaches further together with their food provider partners. The aim is to be able to reduced unnecessary waste of quality food in as many fields as possible.
Alexander Lidgren, CEO Cleantech Invest and board member ResQ Club comments:
“ResQ Club has grown very impressively since our initial investment a year ago. Restaurant waste in Germany alone represents a multi billion euro market. This market is now the next step for ResQ. Mealsaver are already present in Germany, know it well and have a supplier and user base to start from. We are excited to see this merged company perform and especially excited to welcome the new owners into the company. We know they will add a lot of value in the growth journey ahead. ”
The merged company will act under the “ResQ” brand name. Owners of Resq Club now include Cleantech Invest (Helsinki/Stockholm), Ananda Social Venture Fund (München), Atlantic Food Labs (Berlin), two student-organisation-owned VC funds, and 13 business angels, including Peter Carlsson (CEO Northvolt) and Jonathan Teklu (Forbes 30 under 30).
Oula Antere, CEO of Resq Club comments:
"In MealSaver we saw a passionate and dedicated team that shared our values and culture. When we started our talks it was clear right away that we are both working towards a common goal of food waste reduction and there's no sense in fighting over it. With the help of the polished ResQ product, we'll take the impressive movement MealSaver has built in Germany to the next level."
Contact information:
Alexander Lidgren, Managing Director of Cleantech Invest Plc. Tel. 46 73 660 1007, alexander.lidgren@cleantechinvest.com
Oula Antere, CEO of ResQ Club, Tel 358 45 1141 031, oula@resq-club.com
Access Partners Oy, Certified Advisor. Tel. 358 9 682 9500
About ResQ Club
ResQ Club is a service founded in 2015 that makes it possible to save high quality food from going to waste. The service has over 120,000 registered users and more than 200,000 portions have already been “ResQ’d”. The number of affiliated restaurants, cafés, hotels, and other food service providers is now at about 1000. www.resq-club.com
Cleantech Invest in brief
Cleantech Invest is a Nordic accelerator with investments in growth companies that solve global challenges. The portfolio companies are active in energy- and resource efficiency as well as decentralized renewable energy and are based in Finland, Sweden and Germany. The company management consists of company builders and investors who have been active within the cleantech space for over a decade.The company is listed on First North Finland under the ticker CLEAN and on First North Stockholm under the ticker CLEANT A.
www.cleantechinvest.com
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