Why women-led innovation must scale
Most people would look at food industry waste and see a problem. Ninna Granucci saw an opportunity. While researching fermentation technologies during her PhD, she became fascinated by a question that sits at the heart of many of today's food system challenges: how can we produce more from the resources we already have? Instead of treating by-products from food production as waste, she saw the potential to transform them into valuable ingredients.
Fast forward, her PhD research became Green Spot Technologies, a biotech startup helping to create new value from resources that would otherwise be discarded.
Today, her work has earned international recognition, including being named European Woman Innovator of the Year. It’s a story of success, yet it remains the exception rather than the norm when it comes to who receives investment, visibility and opportunities to scale.
At a time when Europe needs more innovation to strengthen food security, competitiveness and resilience, overlooking promising founders means overlooking promising solutions. When promising ideas struggle to access capital, visibility or markets, the entire food system loses.
As Richard Zaltzman, CEO of EIT Food, notes, investing in women entrepreneurs is "not only a matter of equity, but a strategic imperative for Europe's competitiveness and long-term resilience."
Building a more resilient food system will require innovation ecosystems that recognise, support and scale talent wherever it emerges.
Europe cannot afford to innovate at half capacity
At first glance, agrifood performs relatively well compared with many other sectors. Since 2019, it has been the fourth most funded industry for women founders among the sectors analysed, with the share of venture investment going to women-founded companies above the European cross-sector average. (1)
But gender inequalities continue to influence who innovates, whose ideas attract investment and whose solutions reach the market. Women-founded agrifood companies have attracted only around 13% of total agrifood venture capital in Europe since 2021. (1)
The challenge becomes particularly visible when companies try to move beyond the earliest stages. Of the 740+ VC-backed women-founded agrifood companies identified in “The State of Women-Led Agrifood Companies in Europe 2025” report, developed by EIT Food in collaboration with Dealroom, more than 700 are still at pre-seed, seed or Series A. Women-founded businesses account for a comparatively larger share of the early-stage agrifood pipeline than they do among late-stage companies and the sector’s biggest outcomes. (1)
This means that Europe is succeeding in bringing more women into the beginning of the entrepreneurial pipeline. But unless those founders can access the capital, networks, markets and leadership opportunities required to progress through it, much of that potential may never translate into companies operating at scale.
For a food system facing complex challenges, widening the pool of people shaping innovation helps increase the sector's capacity to develop solutions that are relevant, effective and capable of scaling.
The numbers reveal both progress and persistent barriers
For years, discussions about women entrepreneurs in agrifood have relied on anecdotal evidence. Studies and reports commissioned by EIT Food have sought to change that, creating a shared evidence base about women's participation in Europe's agrifood innovation ecosystem. The findings reveal a sector experiencing both remarkable momentum and significant structural barriers.
Today, Europe is home to more than 740 venture capital-backed agrifood companies with at least one woman founder across 27 countries. Together, these businesses represent more than €10 billion in enterprise value. Since 2019, women-founded agrifood companies have collectively attracted €2.7 billion in venture capital investment. (1)
Perhaps most notably, women-founded agrifood companies are also creating value at a notable pace. Excluding HelloFresh, their combined enterprise value has grown 4.7 times since 2019, more than twice the growth rate recorded across the wider agrifood innovation ecosystem. (1)
The pipeline is also expanding. The share of venture-backed agrifood startups with a female founder doubled from 17% among companies launched between 2015 and 2019 to 34% among companies founded between 2020 and 2025. (1)
Yet this growing participation has not translated into equal access to capital, and a significant funding gap remains.
Why the gap persists
Capital is one of the clearest indicators of inequality because it can be measured, but funding is also the outcome of a much wider system. Investment decisions are influenced by networks, referrals, visibility, previous entrepreneurial experience and who participates in investment itself. Moreover, investors highlighted the importance of ecosystem support in helping startups move from technical validation to commercial success. (2)
The EIT Community’s 2026 handbook on gender-smart innovation describes this as a “leaky pipeline”: women’s participation declines as people move from education into research, entrepreneurship, innovation leadership and investment. It identifies persistent barriers around capital, networks and visibility alongside underrepresentation in leadership and decision-making. (2)
Women are already strongly represented in parts of the food sector, yet barriers remain when it comes to leadership and integrating gender into innovation itself. Addressing these barriers therefore requires systemic change, not just individual programmes. That means looking across the whole innovation journey: education and skills, entrepreneurship, access to investment, influencing how talent is identified, how funding is distributed, how programmes are designed and how success is measured.
As Małgorzata Druciarek, Gender and Diversity Senior Manager at EIT Food, explains: “EIT Food’s gender equality and D&I agenda is driven by evidence and knowledge: we are making significant efforts to understand gender-related challenges in the agrifood sector across Europe.”
That evidence matters because systemic change begins with understanding where people are being lost from the pipeline, and then intervening at those points.
Building the conditions for long-term change
This systems perspective sits at the heart of EIT Food's approach, recognising that the foundations are built much earlier: through education, confidence, entrepreneurial skills and opportunities to participate in innovation.
By working with the entire food system’s ecosystem, from industry to policymakers, EIT Food creates pathways that help more innovators enter, grow and lead within the agrifood sector.
- Through initiatives such as Girls Go STEM, the EIT Community is helping girls aged 14-18 develop digital and entrepreneurial competences while applying them to challenges including circular food systems. Since 2021, the initiative has reached more than 58,000 girls across 35 countries, increasing interest in STEM education while challenging stereotypes about who innovation is for.
The interest is also strong from women learners already studying or working in agrifood, reflected in the percentage of female learners across EIT Food’s education courses: 59% female learners versus 41% male learners. However, education is not enough to solve what happens further downstream where promising founders need support to turn ideas into viable businesses.
- EWA, EIT Food's flagship Empowering Women in Agrifood programme, combines personalised mentoring, entrepreneurship training, investor access and local implementation, providing targeted support for early-stage founders.
Since 2020, the programme has supported more than 600 women entrepreneurs, contributed to the creation of 60+ startups, helped participants attract more than €13.5 million in funding, and built a community of over 1,000 members. More than 80% of participants report a positive impact on their careers and entrepreneurial confidence. (1)
The programme has deliberately worked across European regions where inequalities in entrepreneurial participation remain particularly pronounced.
Now in its seventh year, EWA is moving from a single programme pathway towards a more flexible three-module model so that entrepreneurs can access support suited to where they are in their journey. Effective ecosystem support needs to follow entrepreneurs through those different transitions rather than acting as a single intervention.
Supporting women to progress to leadership is another part of strengthening the pipeline. Since 2019, EIT Food’s WE Lead programme has trained and built a network of more than 900 women leaders across Europe’s agrifood sector, supporting impact in startups, new opportunities and career progression.
At investment level, Europe also needs to look at who makes investment decisions.
That is the logic behind SUPERNOVAS, a cross-EIT initiative managed by EIT Food, 28Digital and EIT Urban Mobility tackling the underrepresentation of women in entrepreneurship and venture capital. Rather than addressing only women entrepreneurs, the programme works on both sides of the investment ecosystem: helping women-led startups grow while also creating pathways for more women to become investors.
Between 2022 and 2024, the programme supported 100 women-led startups, showcased more than 1,150 ventures to investors, trained 524 women in venture investing, and helped participating startups attract more than €87 million in investment. (2)
These initiatives reflect a systemic approach that strengthens the entire pipeline from talent development and entrepreneurship to leadership and investment.
What happens when barriers are reduced?
Women entrepreneurs across Europe, supported through EIT Food programmes, are demonstrating what becomes possible when access to networks, mentoring, expertise and visibility improves.
- At the agricultural production level, startups like Kybele's Garden are exploring how algae biotechnology can reduce reliance on synthetic fertilisers while improving agricultural resilience. Founder Aygen Savas credits EIT Food's ecosystem support with helping strengthen the company's position in conversations with investors and partners.
Being part of the EIT Food ecosystem provided a level of external validation that strengthened our credibility when engaging with investors, partners, and stakeholders.
At the intersection of science and commercialisation, leaders such as Bianca Forte are helping translate scientific breakthroughs into practical solutions for farmers. Through SugaROx, she is supporting the development of biotech products designed to improve yields, strengthen resilience and address sustainability challenges across agriculture. Bianca’s journey from internal innovator to commercial leader was shaped in part by her participation in EIT Food’s WE Lead programme in 2019.
- In the food biotechnology sector, entrepreneurs including Ninna Granucci, founder of Green Spot Technologies, are showing how women-led innovation is helping define the future of food production, and demonstrating how sustainability and commercial growth can advance together.
Others are applying advanced technologies to pressing food system challenges.
Following the ethylene oxide food safety crisis, Asli Solmaz-Kaiser founded iComplai to help manufacturers predict food safety and fraud risks before they become costly recalls. Through artificial intelligence and regulatory intelligence, the company is helping move food safety from a reactive to a predictive discipline, working with large companies such as Mars and Nestlé.
- Meanwhile, entrepreneur Iratxe Perales is bringing advanced microscopy closer to practical applications through Microfy Systems.
Since participating in the programme (EIT Food Accelerator Network), our most important achievement has been the transformation of HoneyAI from an R&D concept into a commercial product.
They are evidence of what becomes possible when innovators receive access to the support structures required for growth.
Building better innovation ecosystems
Creating lasting change requires looking beyond founders and startups. Food system transformation also happens in research organisations, companies, farms, public institutions and communities where women contribute in different capacities and where their participation affects how the food system evolves.
Projects such as FURKAN Gdynia show another form of leadership. Developed in Poland as a network connecting urban consumers with rural producers, the initiative combines research, citizen participation, education and local leadership rather than focusing on a single technology.
It has trained 24 Food Urban-Rural Ambassadors, engaged 475 participants, involved 23 community allotment gardens and carried out research with consumers, producers and experts. Strong female participation and intergenerational learning are part of a broader model built around inclusion and community-led change.
Elsewhere, initiatives such as READJUST are examining how the green and digital transitions affect groups including women farmers, while programmes such as AMPLE have combined food-security interventions with opportunities for women and women entrepreneurs. By bringing these perspectives into policy discussions, innovation becomes more responsive to current challenges.
Removing barriers, unlocking innovation potential
Closing the gender gap in agrifood entrepreneurship means shaping the conditions that determine which ideas receive investment, which companies achieve commercial success, and which solutions reach the market. It creates real, tangible opportunities for investors, policymakers, corporates and innovation organisations.
The 2026 EIT handbook “Making Gender-Smart Innovation Happen” recommends integrating gender equality into organisational structures, budgets and programme design; improving gender and diversity data; expanding long-term mentoring and alumni support; and strengthening access to investors and inclusive networks. Crucially, it argues that lasting equality requires systemic transformation rather than expecting individuals to adapt to existing structures. (2)
Building a more inclusive agrifood ecosystem is one of the most effective ways to unlock the innovation Europe needs to create a more resilient, competitive and sustainable food system. Because the next breakthrough may already exist today, waiting for the investment, support and opportunity that will allow it to scale.
After all, Green Spot Technologies founder Ninna Granucci began with a simple idea: looking at something others dismissed as waste and seeing value instead.
References
- EIT Food. (2026, January 29). The state of women-led agrifood companies in Europe 2025. https://www.eitfood.eu/reports/the-state-of-women-led-agrifood-companies-in-europe-2025
- EIT Community Supernovas. (2026, May 21). Making gender-smart innovation happen: A handbook of good practices in gender mainstreaming across the EIT Community. https://supernovas.eitcommunity.eu/eit-community-supernovas-launches-new-report-on-gender-smart-innovation-across-europe/
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