Unilever Ventures, the corporate venturing vehicle for consumer goods group Unilever, has taken part in a £18m ($22.9m) funding round for UK-based meal delivery service Gousto, TechCrunch reported on Sunday.
The round included BGF Ventures, the venture capital arm of the UK government-mandated Business Growth Fund, also took part in the round, as did Angel CoFund, Hargreave Hale, MMC Ventures and social media influencer Joe Wicks.
Founded in 2012, Gousto provides a meal-kit delivery service that sends ingredients and chef-developed recipes to subscribers’ homes each week, enabling them to prepare and cook the meals from scratch.
Following the investment, the company will launch Joe Wicks-branded nutritious meal kits. The round increased Gousto’s overall funding to approximately $100m in total and comes after $39.8m from Hargreave Hale, Angel CoFund, MMC Ventures and BGF Ventures in March 2018.
Unilever Ventures and MMC Ventures took part in the company’s $8.3m series A round in 2014, following about $3m in angel funding and seed capital from MMC Ventures, Angel Co-Fund and assorted individual investors.
The series A investors joined BGF Ventures, Angel Co-Fund and private investor Andi Peters for Gousto’s $13.5m series B round the following year. Unilever, financial services firm Barclays, MMC, Angel CoFund and BGF invested an additional $12.5m in Gousto in 2016.
Image courtesy of Gousto.