Ooooby
Ooooby connects small-scale food producers directly with the households who want what they grow and is growing fast.
Fund: Awhi
Transaction Summary
Fund: Awhi
Date Invested: October 2017
Instrument: Equity
IRIS+ Category: Sustainable Agriculture | Food Systems Education
Why We Invested
Ooooby is a community of independent food producers and merchants building a values-driven, decentralised alternative. Their platform connects small-scale producers directly with consumers across local food networks, removing the intermediary costs that have historically made direct-to-consumer retail unviable for small producers. We backed Ooooby because the problem is structural and the solution is too. A digital model that connects local food networks across markets, scales without centralising, and keeps value where it's generated: with the producers and communities who create it.
Measuring What Matters
Problem:
Centralised food supply chains extract the majority of retail value, leaving independent producers economically vulnerable and consumers paying more for less transparency about where their food comes from and how it was grown.
What:
A federated digital marketplace connecting independent food producers directly with local consumers, reducing supply chain costs and strengthening local food economies.
Who:
Independent food producers and local food enterprises seeking viable routes to market, and consumers seeking high-trust, ecologically sound food at fair prices.
How Much:
Scale: active customers and order volume across the platform.
Depth: improvement in producer viability and income relative to conventional supply chain alternatives.
Duration:
long-term resilience of local food systems supported by the platform's federated infrastructure.
Contribution:
Ooooby provides digital infrastructure that local food enterprises couldn't build independently, connecting them into a network with the scale to compete while preserving the independence that makes them worth supporting.
Impact Risk:
Sustained profitability is necessary to underpin long-term impact. The platform's federated model depends on continued growth in both producer and consumer participation across markets.
Impact Measures:
Monthly order volume. Number of active customers. Producer participation and retention across the platform.
