Farmy secures CHF 6 million to boost its online produce market and software licensing business

23.11.2022 15:57, Morgane Ghilardi

The online market for regional and organic produce announced the closing of a funding round that involved both previous backers and crowd investors. The company was voted a TOP 100 Swiss Startup from 2015 to 2019 and a TOP 100 Swiss Scale-Up in 2021.

Swiss consumers buy around 3% of their groceries online. In the UK and South Korea, the figure is at 10 and 20%, respectively.  "This shows where the journey is heading," says Roman Hartmann, co-founder and CEO of Farmy.

Optimizing its position in light of constantly growing demand, Farmy has been investing in vertical integration in the past two years: since mid-2021, the in-house Farmy Bakery has been offering freshly baked bread; at the beginning of 2022, the Zurich-based company acquired the online retailer Blumenpost.

In parallel, the Zurich-based company expanded its software licensing business: Alnatura, a German retailer of organic and sustainable products with more than 143 stores and EUR 1.1 billion in sales, has been using back-end and front-end solutions from Switzerland since October.

The company now announced that it raised new capital two years after its last financing round in August 2020. An agreement with the previous investors and a crowd-investment campaign brought in a total of CHF 6 million. The company is expected to reach the break-even point in two to three years according to Hartmann.

Even though the company "closed the hot phase of fundraising at the end of October," according to Hartmann, there are still opportunities to invest.

Farmy turned over CHF 32 million last year and currently employs about 160 people. The company sees itself as the third national supplier of fresh products alongside Migros and Coop.

A jury of investors and experts voted the startup one of the TOP 100 Swiss Startups from 2015 to 2019 and a TOP 100 Swiss Scale-Up in 2021.


Farmy founders Tobias Schubert and Roman Hartmann

(Source: startupticker.ch/MG)