Better Bite Ventures

Choose the right route

• If you are a food, agriculture or climate startup at the founding, preseed or seed stage, use the standing pitch route. It has no deadline.
• First Bite, the India call for pre-launch and recently launched food and beverage brands, closed on 23 September 2026. Applications are under review, so it is not a way in right now.
• The fund's pages do not say whether the First Bite call will run again. Watch the First Bite page and our listing for a new round.

How the standing route works

• Send your deck to the pitch inbox. The fund says no warm introduction is needed.
• The partners say they read and reply to every pitch.
• The process runs as five steps: get in touch, a first call, digging in, a term sheet, and money wired.
• There is no application form and no cohort, so you can send a deck at any time.

What suits the fund

• It lists emissions in rice, yield improvement with less synthetic fertilizer, food waste reduction, sustainable ingredients and proteins, and algae as its focus areas.
• It backs the founding, preseed and seed stages.
• For First Bite, the fund welcomed solo founders, did not require incorporation or traction, and accepted founders with a small earlier round.

Before you send

• Expect to talk about instruments. The fund likes SAFEs on its home page, and said Indian companies would use instruments common in India, such as compulsorily convertible preference shares or a convertible.
• Be clear in your first message about where you are based and which of its focus areas you fall in. Its pages give Asia Pacific as the region.
• Write to the role inboxes on its site rather than to individual partners.

Better Bite Ventures is an early-stage venture fund that invests in food, agriculture and climate technology startups across Asia Pacific. It is run by Better Bite Management Limited, and its careers page says the fund is domiciled in New Zealand. It was created by two operators turned impact investors, Michal Klar and Simon Newstead, who are listed as its Founding Partners. Founders can pitch it directly through its website, and in 2026 it ran First Bite, an investment call aimed at Indian food and beverage startups.

What Better Bite invests in

The fund says its focus areas include food and agriculture: reducing emissions in rice, improving yields while using less synthetic fertilizer, cutting food waste, and new sustainable ingredients and proteins, including algae. The pitch page lists the stages it backs as Founding, Preseed and Seed,.

Its positioning is described in more than one way across its pages. The home page leads with alternative protein, while its careers page calls it a food-agri and climate tech investor. The First Bite call went to a different kind of company again: consumer food and beverage brands such as snacks, supplements, spices and condiments. Read it as a fund with a broad food and climate remit rather than a single-category fund.

How founders reach the fund

There are two routes. The first is the standing pitch route. The home page says no warm introduction is needed: a founder sends a deck to the pitch inbox, and the partners say they read and reply to every pitch. It describes a five-step process: get in touch, a first call, digging in, a term sheet, and money wired. No deadline or application window is attached to this route, and it is not a cohort or an accelerator.

The second route was First Bite, a one-off call for India. Better Bite ran it with the support of Suhasini Sampath, co-founder of Yoga Bar. It was open to India-based founders of pre-launch or recently launched consumer food and beverage brands. Solo founders could apply, incorporation was not required, and neither traction nor an introduction was needed. A founder who had already raised a small early round, or had one in progress, was still eligible. Applications closed on 23 September 2026 and the team says it is reviewing them. Shortlisted applicants are contacted for a conversation. Questions went to the First Bite inbox.

Terms

The fund invests for equity, and its pages describe two different instruments. The home page says it likes SAFEs and suggests a standard Y Combinator-style SAFE. The First Bite page says that for Indian startups it would use standard early-stage instruments common in India, such as compulsorily convertible preference shares or a convertible, with the valuation and structure agreed startup by startup. The pages do not say which applies to an Indian company outside First Bite, so ask the team.

The fund states cheque sizes and a maximum for First Bite on its own pages. We do not repeat them here, because such figures change.

Track record

The figures below are Better Bite's own, and its pages do not quite agree. The home page says it has invested early in 34 startups, while the First Bite and careers pages say 30+ startups backed across Asia Pacific. Both fit a portfolio of a little over thirty companies, but treat the count as approximate. The First Bite page also says its startups have since gone on to raise substantial follow-on funding, a claim we have not checked.

The fund says it is backed by impact investors, growth-stage fund managers, family offices and food and tech entrepreneurs from Asia, the United States and Europe. Its portfolio company names are listed on its home page.

Asia Climate Hub

Better Bite also helps run Asia Climate Hub, an open database of climate startups and investors in the region, free to use. The site says the hub tracks over 2500 climate-tech startups and investors in Asia Pacific and adds new entries each week. That count is the hub's, not Better Bite's own portfolio.

Who runs it

Michal Klar and Simon Newstead are the Founding Partners. The pitch page names Michal, Simon and Eshan as the people who read and reply to pitches. The site also has a careers page.

Where it is based

Better Bite invests across Asia Pacific. Its careers page states that the fund is domiciled in New Zealand. No page we read gives an office address or names a city for the team, so we do not list one. The First Bite call was for India only, and the First Bite page says the fund invests across Asia Pacific, including India. Whether India-based founders can use the standing pitch route is not spelled out on the pitch section itself, but nothing there rules it out.

Contact

The general inbox is hello@betterbite.vc. Pitches go to pitch@betterbite.vc, and First Bite questions went to firstbite@betterbite.vc.