Areca Ventures

Our Mission

Accelerating the transition towards a more healthy, environmentally friendly, and socially conscious FMCG industry

Our Work

What we do

Support beyond funding

We help companies with seed funding, and occasionally series A. More importantly, we are real partners for entrepreneurs to be successful at scaling their businesses.

Experience as founders

We have firsthand experience with founding and growing start-ups

Expertise across key fields

Sales & Marketing: Our team has extensive expertise in building brands and sales organizations, for startups and bigger FMCG brands – this allows us to professionalize the approach for sales and marketing
Finance: Our team has taken multiple CFO roles for startups and is experienced in setting up solid finance strategy
Sustainability: As sustainability is key for us when we invest, we can help you to remain on the forefront of sustainability across dimensions

Target Companies

Mission-driven companies with ~€1M in sales looking for support to further accelerate within the FMCG space

Who we are

Philippe Poelaert

Founder

Philippe is driven by two of his core passion: an environmentally friendly healthy lifestyle and sports. This lead him to co-found Ventures, where he supports portfolio companies with financial and strategic advice. Philippe is also a co-founder of Golden Set Analytics, a leading data analytics company in professional tennis. Before his journey into entrepreneurship and investment, Philippe worked at Bain & Company, a global management consulting firm.

Magali Deryckere

Investor

Magali is an Expert Associate Partner at Bain and is specialised in the intersection of sustainability and consumer products. She is very knowledgeable on bringing sustainability into brands, decarbonisation etc. Her passion for sustainability and impacting the world drove her to participate in Areca so she can help disruptors in their early phase.

Stephane Ronse

Investor & Strategic Advisor

Stéphane is the founder of Foodbag, the most delicious food box in Belgium, with investments of Colruyt. His experience lays in growing startups and scale-ups, marketing and communication, consumer centricity. Passionate by helping other Belgian startups and growing the sustainability movement. He advises and co-invests regularly with Areca.

Bernard Deryckere

Strategic Advisor

Bernard is the ex-CEO of Alpro from 2001-2017 and has built a passion to change the world during his career there. He has extensive knowledge on building and growing purpose led brands mainly the marketing, sales, portfolio side of it. Bernard advises startups and gives workshops on these topics to help them accelerate.

Portfolio past investments

One of the most nutritious berries in the world! Açai from Holy Berry contains the highest concentration of nutrients that intensely nourish the body. Get started with their products and experience the benefits of Açai for yourself!

VISIT WEBSITE

Turtle offers all products you need for a nutritional and healthy breakfast. Glutenfree, natural (no added sugar, unprocessed) and organic and vegan cereals, spreads and granolas for your whole family. Turtle wants to be a good company. Which is good for you, by offering you healthy and quality products. But also which feels good all along its path before it ends up in your bowl.

VISIT WEBSITE

O’yo is a healthy vegan brunch, lunch and coffee bar with lots of delicious meals. It fills the gap of healthy food in catering establishments. O'yo brings good food with a good mood by good people.

VISIT WEBSITE

Kale United is a public holding company making impact investments in pioneering plant-based companies. Kale United’s investments are diversified through a broad spectrum of companies that have scalable solutions for increasing production as well as consumption of plant-based food.

VISIT WEBSITE

Successful sale of Futureproofed to Sweco

Futureproofed is a SAAS-platform for companies, cities and municipalities to measure, track, and reduce their carbon footprint.

Areca Ventures invested in Futureprofeed in 2020 and played an active role as strategic and financial advisor. Areca participated in the advisory board, supported the team for financial reporting, and helped prepare funding rounds as well as a successful sale to Sweco.

Sweco concludes an agreement with Futureproofed

Successful sale of Pachagreens

PachaGreens is a professional grower of microgreens. Pachagreens grows all its microgreens from organic seeds and using recycled wood mulch as a substrate. Pachagreens sells via various distributors and retailers, including Delhaize.

Areca Ventures invested in Pachagreens in 2021 and supported as strategic advisor until the sale of Pachagreens was concluded in early 2024.