Torg, a Berlin-based market network, has secured an oversubscribed €2.7 million seed round to transform food and beverage sourcing with its AI-powered platform, empowering buyers to find suppliers and source products in foodservice and private label categories more efficiently.
The round was led by Connect Ventures and joined by existing investor FoodLabs and new investors including Sondo, Ventures Together, Sameer Singh, Jonas Meynert (co-founder of Lanch and Torg user). With the fresh funding, Torg aims to further develop its platform and expand its supplier database, as well as to build more intuitive tools for buyers to save time and make their jobs easier.
Founded in 2022, Torg makes it incredibly easy for retail and wholesale buyers to discover, connect, and collaborate with 100,000+ high-quality, verified food and beverage suppliers in Europe. To save time and money for both buyers and suppliers, the company streamlines sourcing processes through supplier discovery, communication, negotiation, and financing. In just 14 months, Torg has leveraged machine learning and AI to build the largest and most enriched database of suppliers in food and beverage, already featuring more than ten times as many manufacturers as the largest food fairs such as Anuga and SIAL.
“Buyers have few good ways of finding new manufacturers. They rely on trade fairs which occur once a year and where less than 10% of global suppliers exhibit, or on desktop research, sifting through unverified websites. The market is much bigger than most buyers realize,” said Hans Furuseth, Co-Founder and CEO at Torg. “We democratize private label products by opening up the market, creating more transparent supply chains, and putting less known, quality suppliers on the map. Our goal is to create meaningful business connections for both sides of the market. In a way, we’re Tinder for sourcing.”
Bringing 20+ years of global experience in leading companies across e-commerce, food-tech, and consulting, Hans Kristian Furuseth, Ben Holdham, and Rita Kerbaj founded Torg to solve the inefficiencies of the sourcing process after facing difficulties with finding and verifying suppliers for private label and foodservice projects in their previous careers at companies like Zalando, Delivery Hero, Just Eat Takeaway, and Farmasiet. These experiences drove the team to develop a digital, intuitive platform that dramatically improves and simplifies the process, mirroring the ease of e-commerce platforms they had previously led. Their goal is to enable buyers to focus on their core responsibilities, by leveraging various technologies to streamline otherwise manual and time-intensive work.
Torg’s solution demonstrates the transformative power of AI for sourcing: buyers can now set up a product request in just two minutes and distribute it to hundreds of relevant manufacturers. The company’s platform efficiently captures a wide range of data sources to identify, verify, and vet suppliers. Torg’s supplier database features complete profiles, certifications, product capabilities, and relevant contact information. Handling such large datasets of unstructured data would have been impossible without the advancements in AI in recent years.
“The drivers are clear – consumers are demanding transparency, certifications, and lower prices for the food they purchase and grocers and wholesalers are looking to own more of their supply chain in response. Torg enables this by creating the first digital sourcing platform for private label food and beverage, bringing sourcing decades ahead from where it is now,” commented Sitar Teli, Partner at Connect Ventures.
“At Lanch, we were so impressed with Torg that I had to invest myself. We tried sourcing the traditional way by using agencies and consultants, but after three months, we had only gotten three quotes, all above our target price. We tried Torg and in two weeks, we received 15 quotes from top manufacturers, most below our target price. Not only did we achieve great results, but due to Torg’s efficient tools, we decided against hiring a dedicated sourcing team and now do all our sourcing through Torg,” added Jonas Meynert Co-Founder at Lanch and angel investor.
“Torg is revolutionizing food and beverage procurement and the numbers speak for themselves: over half of Torg buyers receive quotes 30% below their target price. Their platform not only reduces operational burdens but also enables the launch of superior and cheaper private label products, meeting the growing demands of consumers,” remarked Till Hoelzer, Principal at FoodLabs. “Hans and the team have built a best in class sourcing solution. We’re eager to support their ongoing efforts to advance industry-leading products”
