Dragons’ Den star Steven Bartlett has made a $2.5m (£2.1m) investment in personalised nutrition specialist Zoe via his newly launched $100m Flight Fund investment vehicle.
Zoe, launched three years ago and now available in the US and UK, has a “mission to improve the health of millions” by using scientific data to personalise customers’ diets.
The company secured $38m in a Series B extension round in December and is backed by international investors Accomplice and Balderton Capital.
The latest investment from Bartlett’s Flight Fund, which aims to find and back European companies with the potential to grow into £1bn unicorn businesses, brings the total invested to over $92m.
The funds will be used to scale Zoe’s operations and science to bring its service to “millions of people globally”.
As part of the investment and strategic partnership, Zoe will work directly with Bartlett and gain access to Flight Fund’s network, which includes his podcast The Diary of a CEO and his marketing company Flight Story.
Zoe, which offers at-home tests that analyse blood sugar, blood fat responses and the gut microbiome to generate individual nutrition plans, was founded by Professor Tim Spector of King’s College London, data scientist Jonathan Wolf, and entrepreneur George Hadjigeorgiou.
“Once in a while I come across a company that truly has the potential to move the world forward in a profound way,” said Bartlett. “It takes a great team, with a bold vision and a well-executed product roadmap to do so. That is exactly what I found in Zoe.
“It’s a company that represents the future – health science, driven by big data, that enables us to extend not just our life-span, but more importantly our health span. I’m deeply proud to be an investor and now an ambassador of a company that I truly believe will change the world by leading the nutrition-science revolution.”
Hadjigeorgiou, Zoe president & co-founder, added: “Since my co-founder, Professor Tim Spector, was on The Diary of a CEO talking Steven through key Zoe principles, such as no calorie counting and the impact of gut health on wellbeing, we’ve had huge interest in Zoe and our personalised nutrition programme.
“From working with Steven and having him use the Zoe programme first-hand, we know he aligns with our mission to double down on health science to help more people get control of their health and improve the health of millions.”
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