Food-tech startup Perfect Day scores $140M Series C funding to feed a growing world with sustainable, healthy, humane milk

Perfect Day, a food-tech startup is reinventing the way milk is produced industrially. They believe that factory farms, artificial insemination, and automated milking machines are not the way to go. They’re bad for cows, and they’re bad for the planet. Their animal-free approach, based on the safe and proven techniques that give us beer or vegetarian rennet, will provide consumers and food manufacturers with the same product they all know and love – through a more sustainable, healthy, and humane process.

Today, Perfect Day announced it has closed $140 million Series C funding round to help accelerate its business growth, which includes expanding its production capacity, going deeper with partner opportunities and extending its product portfolio. The fresh capital infusion will also be used to further its commitment to bringing consumers the dairy products they know and love, completely animal-free. The round was led by Temasek with substantial involvement from past investors. The company plans to announce its first commercial partnerships early in 2020.

Founded in 2014 by Perumal Gandhi and Ryan Pandya, the San Francisco, California-based Perfect Day conducts research, development and production of flora-based, animal-free dairy. They are reimagining the dairy supply chain and supporting the evolution of the food system to one that is more sustainable for future generations. As a top Bay Area food-tech startup, they are teaming up with food makers large and small to create a whole new category of animal-free food products — for a kinder, greener planet.

This third round of funding will help accelerate Perfect Day’s business growth—including expanding its production capacity, going deeper with partner opportunities and extending its product portfolio—to further its commitment to bringing consumers the dairy products they know and love, completely animal-free.

“In 2019, we showed that our manufacturing process works robustly at commercial scale,” said Ryan Pandya, CEO and Co-founder of Perfect Day. “We were able to demonstrate with our ice cream launch—which sold out in a single day—that flora-based protein delivers on the dairy experience, and that people are excited about what we’re doing. Our focus in 2020 will be manufacturing and commercializing the protein in multiple continents, through multiple partnerships spanning different dairy product categories.”

Energized by the company entering commercial production, and by the successful limited-edition ice cream launch in July, both Temasek and Horizons Ventures—who led Perfect Day’s Series B funding earlier this year—have returned to support the company’s growth, alongside past investors. This round brings Perfect Day’s cumulative funding to over $200 million.