Israel's Douxmatok Raises $8.1m Series A for Sugar Reduction Technology
Summary
Israeli sweetener-alternative startup, Douxmatok has raised an $8.1 million Series A round from Israeli life sciences and food tech investors.According to the company, Douxmatok allows food companies to use 40% less sugar in their products while achieving the same level of sweetness, with no aftertaste.The round was led by Pitango, an Israeli life sciences and healthcare VC, with the participation of existing shareholders, including Gil Horsky, global innovation lead at Mondelez International, and FoodLab Capital, an Israeli accelerator and early-stage food tech investor.Douxmatok has boosted the amount of sweetness perceived per gram of sugar by binding the sucrose molecules to the mineral silica, a commonly used anti-caking agent that is approved by the FDA and the EU. This binding process causes the sucrose molecules to hit the taste receptors at higher concentrations, increasing the brains perception of a sweet flavor. The younger Baniel is looking to mitigate some of the issues with past alternative sweeteners including sucralose, stevia, and sugar alcohols like erythritol.Since its founding in 2014, the company has been developing recipes for bakeries in Israel and some multinational food companies, that couldnt be named due to the terms of the existing contracts.Since sugar is an important structural element of many baked goods like muffins and cookies, baking with less of it requires some element of trial and error as well as introducing other ingredients to make up for the bulk lost. Baniel said that a happy result of this is that the end products usually end up with more dietary fiber as a result.There is an element of education because you may need to adapt the way you use sugar, he said, adding that US companies are currently developing recipes using Douxmatoks sugar in packaged baked good and baking mixes so far.And there are other products in the pipeline. But any further products they develop will likely still only be for industrial use since Baniel says it would be difficult to compete with sugar on price at retail.Furthermore, Douxmatok is working on applying the silica solution to other sweet molecules like glucose and even corn syrup.Baniel says that some of his customers are pushing to get a Douxmatok-sweetened product on the market by the end of 2018, and since the ingredients are just sugar and silica, there are likely to be few regulatory hurdles, if any.