Qoa convinces investors

The Munich start-up Qoa has convinced Cherry and Ecosia to back it. The founders want to produce chocolate without cocoa.

The Munich start-up Qoa is developing a chocolate product that contains no cocoa. The company has now announced that it has raised six million US dollars from investors for the idea. The round is led by early-stage investor Cherry Ventures. The investment firms Fifty Years, Nucleus Capital, Tet Ventures, Trellis Road, Pioneer Fund and the recently launched climate fund World Fund have also invested.

The start-up sees a problem in the global consumption of chocolate. Each person consumes nine kilograms of the sweet food every year. This requires the production of around five million tons of cocoa. In the last decade, millions of hectares of rainforest have therefore been cut down for cocoa plantations. Scientists and siblings Max and Sara Marquart therefore founded Qoa in 2021 to solve the problem.

Qoa claims to want to produce the world's first completely cocoa-free chocolate. Instead of cocoa, the company uses by-products from the food industry, for example from oat or grain production, which are fermented with special microorganisms and then gently roasted.

Qoa claims to be able to imitate the taste and texture of chocolate with the help of this process. The product is vegan and is said to be ten times more sustainable than conventional chocolate.