Based in Athens and London, BibeCoffee has just raised €2.1 million in fresh funding for its plug-and-play solution for the coffee industry. The startup is aiming to enhance coffee quality for consumers and brands alike and it’s growing fast.
The coffee industry is worth an estimated $225 billion. It’s a massive market that benefits from global reach and near-constant demand – for most people, reaching for a daily cup (or more) of coffee is a part of everyday life, and that isn’t something that’s going to change anytime soon. In fact, the demand for quality coffee has been increasing, with consumers increasingly looking for coffee that is produced more sustainably, has a more delicate flavour balance and has an overall better quality. Put simply, the coffee competition is still hot.
Whilst coffee brands and producers have been investing significant resources in research and development to improve the quality of coffee, reinventing all production stages, the same hasn’t been done at the final stage – when the coffee actually meets the consumer’s mug. Taking a digital approach, BibeCoffee wants to change this and they’ve now just secured new cash to do it.
Funding details
- €2.1 million was raised just 15 months after closing the seed round
- The funding was led by Eleven Ventures
- Existing investors Venture Friends, Uni.Fund and strategic Silicon Valley-based angel investors are also joining the round
Ivaylo Simov, Managing Partner at Eleven: “Bibecoffee is taking an industry serving 2 billion cups of coffee per day into the next age. The team has great experience and chemistry, which has helped them land some of the biggest enterprises in the sector as customers, a prerequisite for the company to become the preferred solution in the industry. Eleven is excited to help the company conquer the coffee market first, laying the ground for further rollout into adjacent categories, such as beers and other beverages. This is our second investment alongside Almacena in only a few months in a coffee-related business. The two companies naturally complement each other as they both contribute towards sustainability, efficiency and traceability along different aspects of the value chain.”
Founded in Athens in 2018, BibeCoffee has developed an IoT real-time monitoring solution for coffee machines. Designed for coffee shop owners, coffee chains, and coffee machine makers, BibeCoffee transforms professional coffee machines into smart connected terminals, in order to enhance the quality of the coffee, reduce waste, maximise revenues, detect fraud and coffee dilution, predict coffee machine malfunctions, streamline maintenance, and transform business models.
The tech essentially means that end-to-end coffee production at the coffee shop is performed on the standards set by roasters, associations, and coffee chains.
Since its launch, the startup has launched a new enhanced generation IoT device that allows its customers to get enriched data while offering two-way communication with the coffee machines. This enables them to remotely manage, control and configure the whole fleet of machines without needing to visit each one. This allows technicians to predict malfunctions, and manage and configure everything on the go, while at the same time helping baristas ensure each cup of coffee is of the utmost quality.
Currently, the startup is trusted and approved by some of the biggest names in the coffee machine business and it counts customers from over 20 countries.
Moving forward, this cash boost will go towards further R&D efforts to enhance its AI-based decision-making capability, developing white label solutions for coffee machine manufacturers, and expanding the team in the US and Asia.
BibeCoffee’s co-founder and CEO, Vasilis Apostolopoulos: “Growth for BibeCoffee for the upcoming years is very promising and we are already experiencing high customer demands. Our planned coffee machines installations are to have tens of thousands by the end of 2023 and reach millions of installed machines in the upcoming years. The investment from Eleven, as well as the continued support of VentureFriends and Uni.fund, together with strategic Silicon Valley-based angel investors, contributes to further increase our footprint in existing markets and expand our global presence.”
