Our Story

A story of ingenuity
and passion

Explore our journey

Vanilla Vida was founded

Three co-founders with three unique backgrounds – representing three generations – came together to be the first team ever to develop a successful commercial natural vanilla supply chain that is stable and sustainable.

Established our agricultural R&D center

We built the most advanced R&D facility for vanilla research worldwide, focused on leveraging technology to optimize yields.

First POC

We accomplished an industrial-scale pilot with leading F&F companies and were recognized as the most vanillin-concentrated product on the market.

Round A

We raised $11.5 million in our Series A round, backed by strategic investors, including leading food companies, and Venture Capital funds specializing in agri-foodtech investments. By the end of 2023, we will raise approx $20M in total capital.

Launched our data-driven curing facility

A novel concept with automated production processes that enhances operational efficiency and optimizes
cost-effectiveness. Our tech unlocks each bean's full aroma potential through image processing on the single-bean level.

Won the FIE innovation challenge

The FIE Global Startup Innovation Challenge highlights companies breaking new ground in the food industry. At FIE 2022, we won the award for “The Most Innovative Processing Technology”.

Trusted by

Our secret compound

Founders

Oren Zilberman

CEO & Co-Founder

Oren’s experience as an investment specialist, along with his vast business planning, management, and leadership experience were pivotal to his success in the start-up industry. Coming from a family of farmers, agricultural innovation is dear to Oren's heart.

As CEO, Oren uses his business savvy and management expertise to keep the company moving forward, building the team, securing investments, facilitating global development and transitioning from R&D to production scalability.

Shlomy Kadosh

VP Agriculture & Co-Founder

The company’s first entrepreneur, Shlomy is an agritech innovator and international agriculture expert. He has over 40 years of hands-on experience in building large-scale projects worldwide, and managing hundreds of employees and accumulated budgets.

Shlomy's professional expertise ranges from greenhouse planning and plant production to farm establishment, plantings, and crop marketing. Over the years, he has employed his end-to-end management capabilities across many disciplines, positively impacting the lifecycle of large-scale farming projects.

As the company’s VP Agriculture, Shlomy leads the agronomists & agricultural business development teams. His leadership allows them to achieve the most advanced growing protocols in the world, while building strategic collaborations with farmers worldwide.

Dr. Raz Krizevski

CSO & Co-Founder

Raz is a highly motivated and skilled researcher and entrepreneur, who loves tackling the problems of technology, science, and management in new ways.

With an MSc in agronomy and a PhD in functional genomics and biotechnology, Raz devoted his time and energy to studying plant-specialized metabolites and aroma compound formation. He also has an MBA in bio-management.

As the CTO and co-founder of Vanilla Vida, Raz focuses on creating new solutions to common - and uncommon - technical challenges that arise from working in the food-tech and ag-tech industries. He currently leads the laboratory team and analytics department, while working closely with the operations team to achieve the business scale-up goals.

Board of Directors

Yoni Glickman

Managing Director, PeakBridge

Yoni is a seasoned C-level executive whose vast experience included serving as President of Natural Solutions at Frutarom and IFF.

In his role as President of Natural Solutions at Frutarom, Yoni had overall P&L responsibility for all Natural Solutions Business Units and was pivotal in leading partnerships and integrations for the business around the globe. Currently, he serves as managing partner of FoodSparks, PeakBridge’s early-stage fund.

Jonathan Berger

CEO, "The Kitchen"
FoodTech Hub

Jonathan has been leading "The Kitchen", the first Israeli FoodTech incubator, since its inception in 2014.

The Kitchen, owned by the Strauss Group and supported by the State of Israel, has been investing in early-stage Israeli FoodTech start-ups aiming to support better industry, better food, better world. Jonathan has a unique combination of experience in hi-tech and food businesses, serving in leadership positions in both, and he is a director at Copia-Agro, an AgTech fund.

Alessandro Boccardo

Investment Director,
Taseo Capital

Alessandro is Taseo Capital's Strategic Agri&Food Investment Director. He has spent the majority of his career working with Agri, FoodTech and Food production with some of the biggest names in the industry in several geographies (Western and Eastern Europe, South America, Africa and Australia).

He served as the Land Acquisition & Agricultural Projects Principal at Fedesa, General Manager at Agri Australis (Ferrero Group), and was the Hazelnut Business Development Manager at Ferrero.

Advisory Board

Howard-Yana Shapiro, Phd

Principal, Double Helix Consulting

Howard has been involved with sustainable agricultural and agroforestry systems, plant breeding, molecular biology and genetics for over 50 years. He has worked with indigenous communities, NGO’s, IGO’s governmental agencies and the private sector around the world.

A Senior Fellow of the College of Agricultural & Environmental Sciences, Department of Plant Science at the University of California, Davis, Howard’s academic career spans 45 years. He holds a number of esteemed titles in the agricultural and business field, including Distinguished Senior Fellow, CIFOR-ICRAF, Bogor and Nairobi, and Venture Partner of TO VC. He also served as a the Co-Chairperson for the 1st World Congress of Agroforestry.

Meir Assulin

Owner of Eligam Agriculture

Meir is a seasoned expert in the field of agriculture and has hands-on experience working the land, with numerous farms throughout Israel.

As the founder of Eligam Agriculture, Meir has a first-hand view of the problems that farmers deal with when planting, producing, and curing their goods, and brings a real working knowledge of how to optimize each of these processes.

Patrice Colin

Seasoned Executive
Sales Manager

With vast experience in the vanilla market, Patrice played a pivotal role for a decade in building sales strategy and retail expansion for a leading vanilla company. He will leverage years of proven sales capabilities to advance our global expansion.Seasoned Executive Sales Manager

Having worked in the natural food ingredients industry for the past 30 years, Patrice has established deep relationships with leading players worldwide. His warm personality, reliability, and decades of experience that have brought him to professionalism in his field are significant assets.