GOOD Startup, a Singapore-based venture capital firm seeking to remove animals from the food system, has successfully raised US$25 million following the first close of its Good Protein Fund I. The company declined to comment on the total fund size it is aiming for.

The first close of the fund comprises individual investors and family offices. They include Anil Thadani, chairman of investment firm Symphony Asia, and Tan Kim Seng, the co-founder of investment firm Tembusu Partners and founder and ex-chairman of KS Energy. A consortium of senior partners from one of the "Big Three" consulting firms also invested as angel investors.

The fund will back 32 alternative protein companies globally, with 80 per cent allocated to early-stage investments and 20 per cent to late-stage companies. The cheque size will vary from US$250,000 to US$1 million.

To date, the company has invested in six startups - Eat Just, TurtleTree Labs, Avant Meats, Rebellyous Foods, Cultured Decadence and Novel Farms.

Good Protein Fund I will work with companies in a range of operational areas including intellectual property protection, organisation design, scaling up, hiring, and fundraising strategies.

Good Startup said sustainable innovation must happen in the global food ecosystem. Besides feeding the world's estimated 10 billion population by 2050 with a 70 per cent increase in protein demand, stakeholders must also use methods that are less environmentally demanding.

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"The growing role of the biotechnology sector in producing alternative proteins can give us the same food we enjoy with less impact on our environment. This can only be achieved by supporting biotech food companies to scale globally, especially in markets that still depend heavily on meat," said Gautam Godhwani, managing partner at Good Startup.

Managing partner Jayesh Parekh added: "We are especially excited about alternative protein ecosystem's potential in rapidly emerging markets like South-east Asia where we currently have a rich pipeline of deals that we are actively working on and expect to make announcements soon."