Only one company in the whole of Spain is these days presenting its project at Disrupt Alley in San Francisco, organised by TechCrunch. It is the Valencian firm Freshdeal, which a year ago launched a B2B platform that puts buyers and sellers in the food industry in touch. They are selling fresh veg, frozen food, prepared food, spices, nuts... a long list of products that require accurate and rapid management so that they do not go off.
It is the brainchild of Luis Galdón, the startup’s cofounder, partner and current business development manager, who had years of experience in the import and export side of the sector, especially in Asia. “I knew what the market was like, what its needs were and I thought that it was the right time. I mentioned it to two colleagues who are now founder-partners, we looked at it, we made an app in beta stage, we got in touch with players in the market and we saw that the idea was viable,” he says. And that is how, in September 2016, Freshdeal came onto the market.
The company operates in 123 countries and handles almost 2,000 operations by more than 3,000 users
The company was set up by seven founder-partners, although Galdón says that only three of them devote all of their time to the firm, with the other four on the board. The team is made up of six people who run a platform that operates in 123 countries and handles almost 2,000 operations by more than 3,000 users.
Making up for the market’s deficiencies
Freshdeal merely brings companies together. In other words, it puts people in touch, such as the producer, the intermediary, the trader, the cooperative or anyone else involved in buying and selling. “We do a follow-up on the operation, but we do not get involved,” he says, insisting that his work is to maintain “trust” in a sector that has both good and bad elements: “The product is always getting worse.”
Freshdeal verifies users to avoid fraudulent operations
Galdón insists that it is a market in which there is a lot of fraud, because the products have to be bought and sold very quickly. To avoid this, they verify users and prevent the entry of players who operate negatively and thus ensure the trade is carried out successfully and with secure payment.
Contacts for a growing business
Two months after starting, the company merged with an American firm that offers similar services. The difference between them was their sphere of action. While Freshdeal operated on a national scale, the US firm only worked in the United States. “Our vision was more global, they were more about intermediary operations, especially in Mexico. That’s why we reached an agreement, we saw that fighting at some point in the future over the US market was absurd,” he argues.
The second turning point came in February, with the investment by a German fund that is helping them to keep going until a second funding round arrives. It is money they want to devote to developing new services that will allow them to make money, as they still haven’t monetised anything yet.
The Disrupt Alley fair is a good opportunity. They know there are three stages: a first day pitch, a second day of networking and the third is the prizegiving. “We would really like to get to the final, but we know that first we have to get through each of the stages,” says Galdón, “what we are clear about is that the most important thing is the first two days, when we can make important contacts.”