Text | Guo Jiajia Editor | Dong Jie
36Kr learned that plant meat brand "Plant Professor" recently completed a round of financing of 50 million yuan, which was exclusively invested by Matrix Partners China and served as the exclusive financial advisor to Echo Capital. This round of financing will be used for consumer penetration, product development, supply chain optimization and team expansion. At the beginning of 2021, Professor Plants received a RMB 10 million angel round of financing, and the investor was a member of the P&G Alumni Association.
Founded in 2020, Professor of Botany focuses on the plant protein food track, targeting urban young women in first- and second-tier cities aged 18-30, and entering the market first with "control card" products. Dumpling products will be listed in the second half of 2020, and there are currently kidney bean corn flavor / kimchi flavor / rattan pepper spicy flavor light dumplings and other products, a total of 6 SKUs, the price is 15-20 yuan / bag.
Plant Professor Product Diagram
The plant meat track was particularly hot in the first half of this year, but most companies in China still specialize in the To B business. At the beginning, Professor Plant focused on the To C business, completely did not do the To B business, and sold products directly on online platforms such as Douyin, Tmall, and Xiaohongshu in the D2C model, and has accumulated nearly 200,000 users.
The founding team of the Plant Professor believes that plant meat is an upgrade to traditional animal meat, not a simple replacement. Based on this logic, the team focuses on exploring the advantages of plant meat and animal meat when developing products, such as plant meat light dumplings. In view of the characteristics of low plant protein fat, the team developed a control card light dumpling, specially customized for the control card population, a meal of about 160 grams, about 300 kcal, is the average adult a meal of 600 kcal half, 3 minutes microwave heating instant food.
According to Kearney, over the next 20 years, plant-based protein foods will be upgraded to replace about 25 percent of traditional animal meat products. Plant professors will use plant proteins to optimize Chinese staple foods, such as dumplings, pastries, rice, etc., and the market size is expected to exceed 1 trillion yuan.
Zhao Xiangjun, founder of Plant Professor, told 36Kr that the scale of 1 trillion yuan is equivalent to recreating 2 Chinese dairy industries, and at present, China's plant meat food enterprises can be compared to Mengniu, Yili, Guangming, Junlebao, Feihe and other Chinese dairy leaders around 2000, which are in their infancy, and even earlier, within 10-20 years, there will be a number of plant meat food brands with a scale of 100 billion and 10 billion.
Zhao Xiangjun believes that the core of the competition in the plant meat track has two points: 1) technical barriers, related extrusion technology and seasoning technology on the market are constantly breaking through and upgrading, but there are still few skilled technical talents; 2) the combination of product taste breakthroughs involves the effective design and collaboration of plant meat and other core raw materials in the production process.
Zhao Xiangjun is currently an flexific vegetarian, has two years of vegan experience, he believes that for modern people, appropriate supplementation of plant protein, can reduce the burden on the body, plant-based products themselves food energy efficiency is higher than animal-based, there is also a positive effect on the environment.
On the market side, plant professors have accumulated 1,000+ head and waist traffic resources and 10,000+ grass notes through the stars and KOLs.
Zhao Xiangjun, founder and CEO of Professor Plant, is a serial entrepreneur in the food field, with more than 20 years of experience in food consumer goods, successively serving as P&G Pipe Trainee, Senior Brand Manager of Danone, General Manager of Brand and Product Innovation of Mengniu Group; CMO Wang Xiaohan has 8 years of experience in international brand marketing management, and has served as the senior manager of Procter & Gamble's Baoshi brand, Coty brand and Mars food. CTO Chen Ying is a Ph.D. in Protein and Lipid Engineering from Jiangnan University and a Postdoctoral Fellow in Biochemical Engineering at the University of Cambridge, with more than 30 years of experience in plant protein and food research and development innovation.