Amsterdam-based Kumasi Drinks raises Seed fund to scale its sustainable soft drinks

Amsterdam-based Kumasi Drinks, a soft drink company that prevents food waste and fights poverty, announced on Thursday that it has raised an undisclosed amount in a Seed round of funding.

Unknown Group founders Edward de Jager and Hendrik Halbe invested in the Dutch startup through Impact Tech Ventures, an investment fund that has received the Seed Capital facility of the Netherlands Enterprise Agency, de Rijksdienst voor Ondernemend Nederland (RvO). RvO is a government agency which operates under the supervision of the Dutch Ministry of Economic Affairs and Climate Policy.

Co-founder of Kumasi Drinks, Lars Gierveld, says, “Unknown Group believes in our ability to change the status quo of the cocoa industry. We’re thrilled to have a professional investor with a global reach and emphasis on impact measurement like Unknown join the Kumasi movement!”

How was Kumasi born?

Kumasi Drinks was founded in 2021 by Lars Gierveld, Linda Klunder, and Rogier Power, although the idea for it was hatched in 2018 when Gierveld, a TV host, visited Ghana’s Ashanti area to film a report on the cocoa business.

There, he came face to face with the fact that the majority of farmers are completely dependent on the sale of cocoa and are living in poverty. A small number of companies control the majority of the market and set the rules for the sector. The supply chain’s multiple tiers of middlemen make sure that farmers only receive a small portion of their revenues. 

Kumasi Drinks was founded with the intention of changing this situation. Along with a group of farmers, they began gathering cocoa fruit juice close to Kumasi (which incidentally, is the capital of the Ashanti region in Ghana).

The company’s drinks went on sale in January 2021. And in less than two years, Kumasi Drinks have expanded to more than 1000 outlets throughout the Netherlands, Germany, France, Italy, and Spain.

Kumasi also has agreements with leading grocery chain, Albert Heijn, and with department shops, Hema, in the Netherlands to make their selection of beverages available on their shelves. 

Co-founder, Rogier Powers, says, “Retailers today are trying to make their catalogue more in line with the values and mindset of their customers. Since we launched, we’ve been contacted regularly by retailers that want to put a drink that is good for you and good for the planet on their shelves.”

Kumasi Drinks – less food waste, less income waste

The cocoa industry is solely interested in the seeds of the cocoa plant (cocoa beans), which are used to make chocolate. As it turns out, the juicy fruit pulp surrounding the cocoa bean is healthy and extraordinarily tasty. It doesn’t taste like cocoa or chocolate but like a kind of mix of lychee, mango and white peach.

Kumasi says it develops a variety of 100 per cent natural, nutritious, and delicious drinks from the extra cocoa juice. The soft drink that Kumasi makes is available in two variants: the thirst-quencher Sappi and the tantalising Gassi. Both consist purely of juice and water, without additives. The juice contains Magnesium, Vitamin B1, Potassium, and Zinc.

The company buys its juice with its technical partner in Ghana directly from farmers. This way, the cocoa farmers receive immediate additional income – up to 30 per cent extra per kg – from selling the pulp and juice byproducts from their cocoa production process they would have typically thrown away.

Capital utilisation

Kumasi Drinks says it will use the funds to expand internationally and develop more products that are true to the Kumasi ethos. “We are exploding with ideas on how we can help more farmers and expand our product line”, says co-founder Rogier Power.

Kumasi will also use the funds to set up a specialty drinks bar at Unknown Group’s new innovation hub, Titaan, at the Binckhorst in The Hague. Opening in early 2023, Titaan will be a 13,000 m² innovation hub to house startups and scale-ups that are creating a better world.