FoodTech Weekly: Hot Takes – How to Raise Capital In A Down Market
In short
It took ten years of meetings before the IFC backed Omnivore
Mark Kahn, Divya Murthy and Tomas Turner told FoodTech Weekly's Alex Shandrovsky how funds and start-ups still raise in agri-food's downturn, and why it starts years early.
Omnivore met the IFC twice a year for ten years before it invested, Mark Kahn said. Mark, a co-founder of Omnivore, which backs agri-food founders in the global south, offered the story as advice. A fund, like a start-up, is always fundraising. Mark has watched agri-food through years of downs, further downs and dead-cat bounces, and on a live FoodTech Weekly episode about raising in a down market, all three guests kept coming back to relationships started long before anyone needed the money.
Alex Shandrovsky interviews founders who have raised in the past six months and investors who are deploying now, so the host knows that money still moves. The question for Mark, Divya Murthy of Oyster Bay Capital and Tomas Turner of Cosaic was how. Mark began with habits. Venture-backed CEOs should set aside two to three hours a week for 30-minute calls with investors, even straight after raising $20 million, because the best conversations happen when there is nothing to invest in. Mark learned venture from Fred Wilson's blog, which gives a CEO three jobs, to set the strategy, hire the people and not run out of money. The third means never stopping. Between funds, Mark meets LPs with nothing more than an introductory deck, and insists that this is not fundraising.
What gets through the door is another matter. In India, Mark said, the founders who raise now are the ones who got profitable, moving from growth with poor unit economics to generating cash. Indian agri-food also dodged the two themes that went worst in the West. It backed no alternative protein, in a society whose default is vegetarian, and no vertical farming, in a country with plenty of sun and land. For a Series A the bar is higher than ever. A good A, Mark said, gives an investor something to diligence, and a bad one is an overpriced seed round carried by hype.
It is an absolute chase, and it's stupid, and it's non-linear, and it works.
Divya described what a record buys and what it does not. Oyster Bay began raising its $109 million second fund in 2024 and closed it in November 2025, even with good metrics from the first. That fund, started in 2018 when food innovation and talent sat in consumer brands, produced four or five exits and a good DPI, and the partners' own angel portfolios had done well. A first-time manager has none of that. About a month after closing, the team was already preparing the deck for the next fund. So much of investing comes down to one question, Divya said, "Do I want to work with this person for the next 10 years?" LP relationships are only that.
For Tomas, the patience went into a corporate. Cosaic uses yeast fermentation to clean ingredient labels of animal inputs, allergens and additives, and its latest round was led by DSM. Tomas met someone from the corporate's venture team at MassChallenge in 2022 and kept meeting them at events. Work with the business began at the end of 2024, trials ran through 2025, and the round closed about 15 months after that work started. The business relationship, Tomas said, sped up the venture deal. Cosaic's pre-seed lead came through a founder friend, and a later family office through an earlier investor's introduction, a pattern Tomas called trust by proxy.
A fund manager based in the Middle East told the most striking version. An LP there can take 10, 15, sometimes 30 meetings. The manager once flew to Dubai for a three-hour meeting, was invited back and flew again, all for a $50,000 cheque from the head of a billion-dollar family office. That cheque has since opened many doors.
Asked how people outside wealthy circles can reach family offices, Mark said to have a voice. Speak on a panel, organise an event, stay late, talk to everyone and follow every introduction until it happens. "It is an absolute chase, and it's stupid, and it's non-linear, and it works."
Alex closed with a founder friend who, asked how it felt to start a company, said they were sleeping like a baby, waking up every couple of hours crying.
Recorded live at The Drop 2026 for FoodTech Weekly, hosted by Alex Shandrovsky, with Tomas Turner, Mark Kahn and Divya Murthy.