Food sharing app OLIO raises $43M Series B to fight food waste

London-based sharing app OLIO, which allows neighbours to share food and household items with each other for free, announced today that it has raised $43 million in its latest Series B funding round. 

The round was led by VNV Global and Lugard Road Capital / Luxor, with participation from Olio’s existing investors Accel, Octopus Ventures, Rubio, Jason Stockwood and Lord Waheed Alli as well as its new investor DX Ventures which is Delivery Hero’s food delivery arm.

OLIO was founded in 2015 by Tessa Clarke and Saasha Celestial-One to ‘connect neighbours with each other and with local businesses so surplus food can be shared, not thrown away.’ The app currently has 5 million users worldwide and almost half of them began using it during the pandemic. 

Co-Founder & CEO Clarke wrote in a Medium post that they would use the funding money to grow OLIO’s team, improve the app adding new features such as ‘Borrow’ and ‘Wanted’, and accelerate its Food Waste Hero Programme which helps restaurants and businesses to share their surplus food with their local community using the OLIO app instead of throwing away.  

The company will also use the money to expand into 10 ‘most promising’ markets in Latin America, Asia & Northern Europe.  

“OLIO has grown five times over the last year, reflecting a step change that’s taken place as businesses and citizens look to be more sustainable and connect with their local communities,’ Clarke told TechCrunch. ‘’We’re beyond thrilled to have raised this capital from a brilliant set of investors who are backing our vision of reinventing consumption for more than one billion OLIOers by 2030.’’

‘’We have this enormous ambition because humanity cannot continue to puzzle over how to keep global warming within 1.5 degrees and feed a population of 10 billion – whilst continuing to throw away one-third of the food we produce, and consuming as if we have 1.75 planets,’’ Clarke added. ‘’In solving these twin problems we aim to build one of the most transformational companies of our generation.”