Online farmers market Farmdrop receives funding boost from Skype’s co-founder
Farmdrop, a grocery website that allows consumers to buy directly from producers, has secured £3m of investment in its latest round of funding led by Skype co-founder Niklas Zennström.
His investment firm Atomico was joined by a consortium of backers including JamJar Investments, run by Innocent entrepreneurs, Richard Reed, Jon Wright and Adam Balon.
Farmdrop was founded by ex-Morgan Stanley stockbroker Ben Pugh with the aim of putting more of the profits into the pocket of the local farmers and reducing waste by cutting out the middle-man – the supermarkets.
Pugh said the company is on a mission to "fix the food chain by making it easy to buy the best food from the best local producers".
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The Bermondsey-based business has raised £750,000 investment on crowd-funding platform CrowdCube since it launched in 2014 and is also backed by Zoopla founder Alex Chesterman, who invested £100,000 last year.
Zennström, said: “Farmdrop is demonstrating huge ambition by disrupting the established food chain and addressing the growing concerns many of us have about the quality and provenance of our food.”
“We’ve been extremely impressed with the team and their growth so far so we’re proud to become an investor.