The United Nations estimates that 17% of the food available to consumers goes directly into the bin. Globally 923 million tonnes of food is wasted each year. 60% of this wastage happens in the home. Addressing this massive societal problem is London startup OLIO, a food sharing marketplace that lets neighbours share excess food by taking a photo, which is then available on the platform for neighbors to pick up. The simplicity of the app has made it quite popular; OLIO has handled 25 million+ portions of food and three million non-food household items that would have ended up wasted. The pandemic has served as a tailwind for the company, with a 5x increase in listing, as people reconsidered their relationship to the environment and sustainable choices.
London TechWatch caught up with OLIO CEO and Founder Tessa Clarke to learn more about the genesis of the company, strategic plans, latest round of funding, which brings the total funding raised to $53.1M, and much, much more.
Who were your investors and how much did you raise?
Our most recent raise was a $43M series B round – the raise was led by VNV Global, with Lugard Road Capital, DX Ventures (the venture arm of Delivery Hero), Accel, Octopus Ventures, and Rubio also participating.
Tell us about your product or service.
OLIO is a community marketplace that connects neighbours with each other to help them share more and waste less. To use OLIO you simply snap a photo of your spare food or other household item and add it to the app. Neighbours then receive an alert, can browse through the listings, request what they want, and then pop round to pick it up. Half of all food listings are requested in under 30 minutes, and half of all non-food listings are requested in under 4 hours. Since launch, the app has enabled over 25 million portions of food and three million non-food items to be saved from the bin.
As well as connecting neighbours to give away food and other household items, OLIO also has a ‘MADE’ section where users can buy & sell homemade food and handmade crafts; ‘GOALS’, which showcases over 100 simple swaps to live more sustainably; and we plan to launch brand new features, ‘BORROW’ and ‘WANTED’, within the next six months.
What inspired the start of OLIO?
I’m a farmer’s daughter, and so have always hated throwing away good food. This is because I know from first-hand experience just how much hard work goes into producing it! As a result, the inspiration for OLIO came when I was moving country and found myself on moving day with some good food that we hadn’t managed to eat, but that I couldn’t bring myself to throw away. And so I set off on a bit of a wild goose chase to try and find someone to give it to, and I failed miserably. Through the whole process, it seemed to me crazy that I should have to throw this food away when there were surely plenty of people within hundreds of metres of me who would love it, the problem was they just didn’t know about it. And so the idea of OLIO, a mobile app where neighbours and local shops & cafes can share surplus food, came about.
Once I’d had the original idea, myself and my cofounder Saasha Celestial-One then started to research the problem of food waste more broadly, and what we discovered shocked and terrified us. It’s no exaggeration to say that food waste is one of the largest problems facing mankind today, and needs to be solved in our lifetime given that we have another 2.3B people joining the planet by 2050!
How is it different?
OLIO is the only app in the world that allows not only individuals, but also local businesses, to give away their surplus food to a neighbour with just the tap of a button. OLIO is not only solving the terrible problem of good food going to waste, it is also bringing together local communities and connecting them in our mission to create a more connected, sustainable food future.
OLIO is also unique in that its rapid growth has been powered by our 50,000+ volunteers who have reached out from all over the world to help spread the word about OLIO in their local communities, and who are also collecting unsold food from local businesses and redistributing it to their local communities via the OLIO app
What market you are targeting and how big is it?
OLIO is all about reinventing how we consume, making it local and sustainable, by focusing on utilising the resources that already exist within our local communities. The market we’re going after is therefore enormous, and we’ve set ourselves a massive goal of having 1 billion OLIOers by 2030.
We have people from all walks of life and of every age using the app, although we do find that the majority of our user base is female (two-thirds) and we over-index vs the population as a whole amongst millennials.
What’s your business model?
OLIO generates revenues via our Food Waste Heroes Programme which consists of 30,000+ trained volunteers (Food Waste Heroes) who we connect to local businesses such Tesco, Pret-a-Manger, Compass Catering, Booker, and many more. These volunteers collect unsold food from those businesses at the end of the day, and redistribute it to their local community via the app. As well as generating revenues, the Food Waste Hero programme is also a great way of getting OLIO kick-started in thousands of local neighbourhoods very quickly.
How has COVID-19 impacted the business??
After an initial dip, the pandemic saw explosive growth for OLIO, with listings on the platform increasing 5-fold last year, and we’ve now grown our community to 5 million members. That’s because the pandemic created a step-change in terms of how people thought about their local community and sustainable living.
As we were remote-first prior to COVID too, the impact of the pandemic in terms of ways of working was minimal – which was lucky, as it allowed us to continue focusing on executing against our mission in ways that other businesses may not have been able to.
What was the funding process like?
Challenging, exhilarating, and exhausting! But ultimately it has been an incredible experience both for me and for the business. The funding we’ve received is going to make a huge difference to the work we are able to do – so we’re incredibly grateful to all our investors.
What are the biggest challenges that you faced while raising capital?
Fundraising is definitely a challenge. We’re a tech for good company and our mission is very important to us so we’re looking for a very specific type of investor which immediately narrows down the pool we’re looking at. Add to that the fact that we’re a female-founded business (typically only 2% of global venture capital goes to female-founded businesses), and we’re still very early in our monetisation journey and you start to see the challenge.
What factors about your business led your investors to write the check?
I think all our investors recognise that consumers are rapidly waking up to the climate crisis and so are looking for small easy actions they can take to improve the sustainability of their households. They’re also incredibly excited by the potential for the Food Waste Heroes Programme as businesses are now on the race to Net Zero which means that food waste is no longer acceptable. As a next-generation community marketplace with the potential for truly global reach, I think they understand that we are perfectly positioned to service this sustainability movement – which has prompted their backing.
What are the milestones you plan to achieve in the next six months?
Expanding internationally is absolutely on the cards for us – and something that we’re hugely excited about. We’ll be focusing on Latin American, Northern European, and Asian markets, targeting one billion OLIO users by 2030.
We also want to rapidly accelerate the rollout of OLIO’s Food Waste Heroes programme in the UK and other international markets, and of course will continue to invest in improving the quality of our product, and increase our investment in marketing activities.
What advice can you offer companies in London that do not have a fresh injection of capital in the bank?
Given that capital equals runway, and runway equals a greater probability of success, it’s absolutely critical to keep your business extremely lean. I also live by the motto ‘ABF’ – always be fundraising – as I’ve found it incredibly helpful to build relations with investors ahead of time.
Given that capital equals runway, and runway equals a greater probability of success, it’s absolutely critical to keep your business extremely lean. I also live by the motto ‘ABF’ – always be fundraising – as I’ve found it incredibly helpful to build relations with investors ahead of time.
Where do you see the company going now over the near term?
At the moment we’re very busy recruiting for our c-suite of talent, and have been overwhelmed by the calibre of applicants we’re receiving. Another near-term focus is launching ‘BORROW’ which will connect neighbours to lend and borrow everyday household items. In parallel, we’re continuing to focus on unlocking the very full pipeline for the Food Waste Heroes Programme and starting preparations for international expansion.
What’s your favourite outdoor activity in London?
Going for a run with my dog round Clissold Park! It’s such a beautiful park and easy to forget that you’re in the heart of such a vibrant city as London.
