Neel Premkumar

PepsiCo Urgently Overhauling Portfolio Under Activist Pressure "PepsiCo Inc. said it is working to cut costs and overhaul its portfolio to meet consumers’ shifting tastes, while it engages in discussions with an activist investor. "PepsiCo said in prepared remarks Thursday that it has been cutting the number of its individual products to “reduce supply chain complexity” and will continue to drive that number lower. The company also said it has accelerated its cost-reduction efforts and that it expects more headcount reductions in its Frito-Lay US business before the end of the year." #pepsico #shareholdervalue #activistinvesting https://lnkd.in/gTc9PtQe

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I mentioned in a previous post that Siddhi is all about high value targets in food tech. Let's dive into the why. Chasing novel food tech at scale, most people think to start with the biggest market they can find. Chicken might be a trillion-dollar category. But in a world with no infrastructure, what matters most isn’t TAM, or even gross margin. It’s margin dollars. Let’s take the ultimate lightning rod: cultivated meat. Lets not even discuss the competition against various types of animal meat, which would make my argument way stronger. This is just a math exercise! Many cultivated companies start with chicken because it’s seemingly the biggest opportunity. But high-end wholesale chicken is maybe $3–7/lb. More often it’s under $1. Costco sells a cooked 3lb bird for $5 at retail! That’s your competitive baseline. Now imagine you’ve designed and built a magical bioreactor. A black box that gives you 100% gross margin on cultivated chicken. Unrealistic, but bear with me. Even in that magic world, you’d rather have built the box that makes tuna toro ($75–100+/lb wholesale price), even at just a 10% gross margin. 10% on toro gives you more margin dollars per pound than 100% on chicken ($7.50-10 vs $3-7). As a bonus, from the same infrastructure investment, you now generate 10–20+x more revenue to validate your early market. That unlocks everything faster: stronger demand signals, infrastructure-backed financing, real paths to scale. If the markets are big enough, it’s not a question of toro vs. chicken. It’s about who gets to cash flow and infrastructure leverage first. I’d bet on the toro company expanding into scaled chicken after laying the infrastructure before the chicken company can even scale their chicken. This is why Siddhi is laser focused on high value food tech when what you're doing is novel enough that the infrastructure isn't out there waiting for you to tap into it. Discuss!

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In uncertain times, consumers gravitate towards reliable brands. In a recent Take On the Week podcast episode by The Wall Street Journal, Markus Hansen shared insights about how food brands historically fare well during recessions, partially because consumers will remain loyal to their comfort foods (like Coca-Cola and Oreos) in times of economic distress. That makes total sense. So if you're a F&B founder, this is my reminder to you that now is the time to show up for your customers and double down on building and maintaining your relationships. Now is the time when marketing matters most. https://lnkd.in/gaemkTED

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Consolidation is proving to be a viable alternative for some companies in the once-hot food tech space. David 🤝 Epogee PepsiCo 🤝 poppi Flowers Foods & Subsidiaries 🤝 Simple Mills The Hershey Company 🤝 LesserEvil Brand Snack Co. FoodYoung 🤝 MeliBio Big Idea Ventures 🤝 Vevolution Venture funding for food tech has fallen sharply in recent years, but M&A activity in the space appears to be on the rise. The funding and dealmaking trends indicate that in the face of declining investor interest, consolidation is proving to be a viable alternative for some companies in the once-hot food tech space. Nathan Cooper of Barrel Ventures shares, “Many of the companies that were funded were years, if not decades away from commercial viability. They were seeing tech valuations, and required substantial amounts of cap-ex, when at the end of the day what they were selling was a CPG (consumer packaged goods) product and should have been valued as such.” Andrew D Ive of Big Idea Ventures commented, “Valuations have normalized compared to two years ago, creating an attractive window for strategic buyers to acquire de-risked, well-funded companies with validated technologies — often at reasonable prices.” This is a great article by Crunchbase highlighting the consolidation activity of the foodtech space. My tip to startups who are struggling to fundraise. Start having serious M&A conversations because you might be surprised at the partnerships you may find! https://lnkd.in/gHVJ35nm

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NextFoods, Inc. ,Parents of GoodBelly+ Cheribundi just raised $10M led by ECP Growth If you build in functional CPG, this is a great mini case study in how growth actually gets funded and what operators should pay attention to. 1) Doors matter… but turns are the business They’re reportedly sitting at 24,000+ points of distribution nationwide and grew footprint about 10% in the last two months. That’s solid. But here’s the real lesson: door growth only works if velocity shows up. 2) A brand refresh can be a revenue lever (when it creates clarity) GoodBelly’s recent packaging/brand refresh was tied to a reported 40%+ lift in retail velocities. “Brand” isn’t colors and fonts it’s speed of understanding at shelf. If a shopper gets it faster, conversion goes up. Period. 3) The shot category is crowded so specificity wins GoodBelly reformulated its 2oz Wellness Shots and launched them nationally at Whole Foods. The formula callout that jumped out to me: 3g of prebiotic fiber. The lesson: in crowded formats, you can’t be “general wellness.” You need to own a job (gut, sleep, recovery) and build your product + messaging around that single outcome. 4) Innovation + retail expansion is the 1–2 punch They’re aiming that capital at innovation across gut health, recovery, and sleep, while also pushing deeper into national retail. And there’s more in the pipeline: they’ve previewed a quart-sized GoodBelly item with 11g plant-based protein targeted for Q1 2026. My founder takeaway: capital doesn’t fix a business it amplifies it. If your positioning is crisp and your product delivers, funding helps you scale faster. If not, it just helps you burn faster. If you were deploying $10M in functional CPG heading into 2026, what’s first: velocity, innovation, or sharper positioning? #CPG #FunctionalBeverages #Wellness #TrevorHague

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..its a tremendous opportunity to build an AI first company solving real problems for Suppliers and Operators. F&B Insights is helping suppliers build brands in the volume and impact accounts that shape our industry. EMERGING Fund has invested $750,000 directly into local tech platform F&B Insights. The investment follows a $1.8 million investment Emerging made in May and furthers the firm's commitment to back "AI forefront companies" in the food and beverage space https://lnkd.in/gFPfGhWD

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Thrilled to share that Eggoz Nutrition has raised $20M in our Series C, led by Gaja Capital, with strong participation from IvyCap Ventures, Rebright Partners, Avaana Capital, NABVENTURES Fund, Merisis Venture Partners, Artek Surfin Chemicals, Arvind Thakur, S Ramodarai, Blue Dot Capital and others angels. When we started Eggoz, the goal was simple: build a trusted egg brand in a $12B+ unorganized market where more than 95% are sold in loose. Today, we’re doing just that—powered by tech, traceability, and a supply chain that puts farmers and consumers first. This capital helps us go deeper and wider—more cities, more innovation, and a stronger farm-to-plate ecosystem to accelerate shift to better protein in India. Grateful to our customers, farmers, partners and proud of the team driving this mission forward. Still Day 1. Thanks to all advisors and consultants involved in ensuring a smooth transaction. #Eggoz #SeriesC #ConsumerBrand #AgriTech #Nutrition #ProteinForIndia #StartupIndia Aditya Singh Puneet Bansal Shekhar Sharma Gopal Jain Imran Jafar Sushane Chopra Kaustubh Kumar Mukund Kothari Vikram Gupta Ashish Wadhwani Harshit Tahiliani Takeshi Ebihara Hammad Maddekar Mahesh Kumar Brij Singh Bindu Eswara Reddy Shruti Srivastava Anjali Bansal Sandeep Singhal Rahul Bhapkar Ashish Choudhury Ankit Bhatnagar Deepit Purkayastha Anuj Goenka Vinayak Burman Vikrant Anand Shagun Rathi

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Why does it still seem so challenging for larger food and beverage players to successfully incorporate their emerging brand acquisitions? I’ve been around these types of efforts for nearly 15 years – across multiple deals, acquirers and contexts (i.e. categories, channels, etc.). And I find the exercise of trying to effectively combine (I will avoid the word integrate) an emerging brand with a larger-scale organization fascinating. Yet over this time, it seems that this journey has remained just as daunting as ever – despite:  • A growing collection of well-known case studies  • Enhanced communication tools and supporting technology  • A closing ‘knowledge gap’ between the playbooks of upstarts and those of legacy brands The more these issues persist, the more I feel the challenge isn’t about trends, cycles, or systems—but instead stems from several 𝑝𝑒𝑟𝑣𝑎𝑠𝑖𝑣𝑒 conditions: 🔹 𝗗𝗶𝘀𝗰𝗼𝗻𝗻𝗲𝗰𝘁 𝗯𝗲𝘁𝘄𝗲𝗲𝗻 𝗱𝗲𝗮𝗹 𝗺𝗼𝗱𝗲𝗹𝘀 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗿𝗲𝗮𝗹 𝗽𝗹𝗮𝗻𝘀  • Teams building acquisition models usually face time pressure and limited data  • The need to “win” the process can create models that justify a top bid, while also setting an untenable baseline for the acquired brand before it even arrives 🔹 𝗛𝗶𝗴𝗵 𝗿𝗮𝘁𝗲𝘀 𝗼𝗳 𝗼𝗿𝗴𝗮𝗻𝗶𝘇𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻𝗮𝗹 𝗰𝗵𝗮𝗻𝗴𝗲 • The ever-present churn of leadership roles and org structures at larger players can often make consensus around a plan for the acquired company fragile at best  • Each shift risks resetting priorities and reporting lines, or even ‘walking back’ previous agreements on approach 🔹 𝗢𝗿𝗴𝗮𝗻𝗶𝘇𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻𝗮𝗹 𝘂𝗿𝗴𝗲𝗻𝗰𝘆  • Larger (especially public) companies live under constant quarterly measurement  • When results lag—or even appear that they might—pressure builds quickly, often favoring quick fixes over more patient approaches that better preserve an acquired brand’s culture and momentum 🔹 𝗦𝗵𝗶𝗳𝘁𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗺𝗲𝗮𝘀𝘂𝗿𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝘀𝘁𝗶𝗰𝗸𝘀  • Pre-acquisition, emerging brands are hyped by potential acquirers as growth engines, talking points for analysts, boards, and employees  • Post-acquisition, the narrative often shifts to their “immateriality” versus core portfolio brands—especially when unique permissions or policies are needed to support them 𝗦𝗼 𝘄𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝗻𝗼𝘄? There’s no simple fix for the challenge of bringing emerging brands into larger organizations. But any approach that can’t acknowledge these conditions—and make an honest attempt to mitigate them—is almost certain to instead fall victim to them. #FoodAndBeverage #Innovation #MergersAndAcquisitions #CPGStrategy #GrowthLeadership

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