Why venture-backed start-ups are experiencing the most exciting time in Saudi history

Folia, meaning ‘from the leaves’, in Latin, was developed exclusively for Four Seasons Hotels and Resorts, and is the product of a partnership between internationally acclaimed chef Matthew Kenney and Prince Khaled’s KBW Ventures. It has been delighting diners in Bahrain and the UAE, and now visitors to the Four Seasons Hotel Kuwait at Burj Alshaya will be able to enjoy the fare, as will guests at Riyadh Season’s Al Murabaa fine dining Pavilion by Four Seasons Hotel Riyadh.

A known pioneer in tech investing, Prince Khaled was the first venture capitalist in the region to back plant-based food and future food start-ups. He’s among those driving solutions at scale related to food security, human and animal welfare, and the pressing issue of climate change.

Through his various business entities, Prince Khaled maintains holdings across three continents. Honing in on sustainable ventures, the KBW portfolio includes investments in plant-based initiatives, alternative proteins, green technologies, and more.

As an early adopter of plant-based foods and alternative protein, he is at the forefront of global plant-based investing, initiatives, and advocacy. He has developed a deep network of international industry specific contacts, across both private and public sectors.

In an exclusive interview with Arabian Business, Prince Khaled discusses the opportunities which exist for start-ups in Saudi Arabia and his investment strategy.

How do you view the start-up environment in Saudi Arabia?

Ever since Vision 2030 and the activation of capital put to work to foster entrepreneurship and grow the start-up and SME sectors, the environment is strong.

Previously, we had many barriers to entry; everything from bureaucratic red tape, to lack of funding, to psychosocial issues like stigma around failure, and even negative sentiment around not joining your family business to do your own thing.

Prince Khaled bin Alwaleed and Kevin O’Leary at the Misk Global Forum.

The government’s role in setting up the private sector to encourage entrepreneurship has changed everything. Entrepreneurial ecosystems take a long time to transform this effectively; Saudi has done it in a few years.

You don’t have to dig anymore to find news about Saudi start-ups, and it’s hard to keep track of how many homegrown VCs we have now.

I’ve never been more excited about our potential to produce and support globally-relevant start-ups as I am today. I was a judge for the Entrepreneurship World Cup in Saudi last year, and the support given to these start-ups – financially and otherwise – by Misk, the Mohammed bin Salman Foundation, was unparalleled. It was an honour to take part, and I’m looking forward to supporting these initiatives as much as I can on ground in the country.

How do you balance investments in Saudi Arabia and abroad?

KBW Ventures is location agnostic. We are looking for the right ideas, and it doesn’t matter where they are located and where the founders are from.

We’ve invested in so many different geographies now, and every time it came down to the business model, the potential, the founders, and a few more metrics. But none of those factors had to do with location.

KBW Ventures portfolio company Blue Planet Ecosystems signed two MoUs with TRSDC in Riyadh

I’m particularly proud of our investment in Blue Planet Ecosystems, an Austrian start-up, as just last week they signed two MoUs with The Red Sea Development Company. This was super exciting for us as a team, as KBW Ventures invested in Blue Planet two years ago. For a Saudi company to recognise the sustainability edge and the relevance of their technology, well it just was fantastic. It was a great moment for us.

Another of our portfolio companies, a UAE-based immersive video VR app called 360Vuz, just signed a partnership agreement with Saudi Professional League. This was huge for us as well, given the massive visibility of SPL.

How has Covid shaped the business?

For KBW Ventures, we have a very diverse portfolio so the impact of Covid on our company was limited. We are backing some food tech businesses and plant-based products so to be quite honest, in this specific sector, it increased the visibility of a lot of our portfolio companies.

People woke up to the importance of alt proteins and we’ve seen a big shift in awareness around these start-ups. A few KBW Ventures portfolio companies signed strong deals recently, including cell cultivated seafood BlueNalu. Europe’s largest frozen food company Nomad Foods and BlueNalu signed a ‘first of its kind’ agreement in Europe between a consumer-packaged goods company and a cellular agriculture food tech company.

UAE-based immersive video VR app 360Vuz has signed a partnership agreement with Saudi Professional League.

The launch of Folia in Saudi in time for Riyadh Season actually came at a time when so many more people are looking to experience next-level plant-based dining. Post-Covid, there’s so much more interest in nutrition, and incorporating more plant-based meals into the average diet.

Where are the biggest opportunities in the plant-based market? What about food tech?

Seafood and cheese; both segments are really improving in terms of product offering. There’s a massive market out there for both. Cultivated meat has enormous potential when you take into account the meat industry is worth almost a trillion dollars that will only double by 2050.

The vast inefficiency of the traditional meat industry is now being examined more closely, so the huge conglomerates are shifting attention to cultivated meat and dairy.

Dairy is another industry that is growing beyond imagination. Dairy companies are having a hard time keeping up with demand and, again, the vast inefficiencies of factory farming is only fueling the interest in these emerging technologies.

For food tech companies that use cellular agriculture, KBW Ventures has invested in TurtleTree, specialising in milk; Upside Foods, for meat and chicken; and BlueNalu, focused on seafood. We are always considering new investments in the cell-based food tech space, and precision fermentation as well.