Chapter 9: Denmark: Aviaja’s Agrain by Circular Food Technology

One grain at a time is the slogan of this ambitious start-up. Aviaja Riemann-Andersen is the co-founder and chief executive officer (CEO) of Agrain by Circular Food Technology. A calculation that 10 percent of the global food deficit could be covered by up-cycling a by-production of brewing beer encouraged her to leave L’Oréal and dive into the entrepreneurial life. How could she allow nutritious, tasty, delicious spent fiber to go to waste?

However, she soon learned that up-cycling a new ingredient is an uphill battle in the well-established and powerful food industry, particularly in Europe where the process is just being established. This posed challenges as she set out to produce a new type of ingredient. To start the business, she had commercial knowledge and was used to politics, but she needed to set up a team to handle other business areas, from production and finance to legal compliance and sustainability accounting.

Setting up the team was an enormous challenge which was not about hiring and on-boarding as many people as possible but careful strategizing. Aviaja invited business angels who invested their time, experience, and money into the company. A crowd-funding initiative through Coop, a large Danish grocery chain conglomerate, created initial awareness of her product, leading to double-digit millions later raised from European venture capitalists. This case concerns introducing a new product, changing an industry, and preparing for a favorable exit for all.