The Orange Chef Company, a US-based maker of connected kitchen items, has secured $1.2m seed funding led by Google Ventures, the corporate venturing arm of internet firm Google, and seed stage venture capital fund SparkLabs Global Ventures; funding participants included Bertelsmann Digital Media Investments, the corporate venturing unit of Germany-based publishing group Bertelsmann, Kima Ventures, The Social+Capital Partnership, Graph Ventures and angel investors.
The funds will be used for ramping up product development and to launch a new product in February 2014 – the ‘Prep Pad’, an iOS-enabled bluetooth food scale which provides real-time nutritional information.
Frank Meehan, co-founder and general partner of SparkLabs Global, said: “I am very excited by our investment in The Orange Chef. Their smart food scale is one of those rare products that gets a WOW reaction from everyone we’ve shown it to.”