Cerve Receives $2m, to Digitize the B2B Food Supply Chain and Address Global Food Waste

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Summary

• Cerve automates and digitizes the ordering process in the B2B food supply chain
• Beyond improving operations of producers, distributers, and buyers, Cerve provides the transaction transparency needed to address the large global food waste problem
• Lead investors Orkla Ventures were joined by MP Pensjon and nFront Ventures
• See Cerve’s website for additional product information

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Full Story

Cerve, a Swedish based food-tech startup, has successfully completed its Seed financing round, totaling $2 million.

Today, most wholesalers and buyers transact manually via phone. Some have started adopting digital channels such as food B2B web shops and marketplaces.

Via Cerve’s ordering platform and wholesaler ERP integrations, wholesalers and business buyers can transact digitally with personalized products, prices and offers, without any additional work by the wholesaler.

To maintain the long-standing relationships between buyers and wholesalers in the B2B market, Cerve spins up a new store for each buyer, and automatically pulls the purchase data (products, prices, discounts, etc.) for that buyer directly from their wholesalers’ ERPs. This varies drastically from the many-to-many approach of typical food marketplaces.

Cerve’s backend technology can communicate with any wholesaler’s ERP, to collect, standardize and calculate personalized product and purchase information, on a per buyer level. As a result, a zero-touch digital sales experience is brought to the wholesalers.

Any food marketplace can take advantage of Cerve’s technology to fully automate its wholesaler interactions, positioning the company to become the infrastructure that drives the entire food marketplace ecosystem.

Cerve’s own front-end buyer portal already comes with the company’s unique backend technology from the offset.

Using Cerve, wholesalers have achieved 17% new buyers, 23% increased order value and 64% reduced expenses, without any additional platform management work.

Beyond solving inefficiencies in the food supply chain, Cerve’s goal is to provide the transparency and data visibility necessary to address the massive food waste problem throughout the entire supply chain.

The financing round was led by Orkla Ventures, with MP Pension and nFront Ventures also joining the cap. table.

Dan Mazig, CEO & Founder of Cerve commented: “For the last two years, we’ve built enterprise technology that is working daily for over 700 organisations. I look forward to working with our new investors to scale-up Cerve’s commercial activities. The capital injection will allow us to continue growing the team, expanding our geographical presence, and add a suite of additional wholesaler integrations.”

Daniel Holth Larsen, lead investor from Orkla Ventures added: “Cerve hits the nail on the head with its proven value proposition and has the potential to truly change behaviors in B2B food industries. We look forward to supporting the team on their journey.”

To learn more about how Cerve digitizes the food supply chain, check out their website.

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About Orkla Ventures

Launched in 2016, Orkla Ventures is the VC-arm of the Orkla Group, a leading branded consumer goods company headquartered in Norway with operations worldwide. Orkla Ventures is a European seed stage investor in IT-driven companies, digital platforms, and software solutions with a focus on digital health, sustainability, food tech and SaaS solutions that leverage opportunities across the Orkla Group’s industries and value chain. The firm always co-invests, and have invested in companies like Tise, Farmforce and Bower.

About MP Pensjon

MP Pensjon is a Norwegian private pension fund with approximately $2.8 billion under management. The fund invests in public and private companies and is one of the most active seed stage investors in the Nordics, having invested in companies like Kahoot!, Farmforce, Pickatale, Play Magnus, and several others.

About nFront Ventures

nFront brings capital and operational support to companies across various stages of development. The core focus is on fast-growing, capital-efficient, software propositions in Europe and the U.S., raising between €1m and €20m. As its strategy, nFront helps companies prepare and execute strong fundraising rounds, before investing alongside leading VC funds and HNWs in its network. With 12 years of international VC experience, nFront brings in-depth industry knowledge and an active co-investor network of over 600 VCs and HNWs across Europe and the U.S.