Chinese venture capital firm Bits x Bites has created ‘The China Food Tech Hub’ to nurture collaboration between startups by partnering with a consortium of multinational consumer food companies, agricultural processors, flavour houses and biotech firms.

The consortium includes companies such as Coca-Cola, PepsiCo Greater China and General Mills.

Other companies in the consortium include Givaudan, Griffith Foods, Louis Dreyfus Company, Novozymes, Nutreco, Puratos and Danone.

Bits x Bites founder and managing director Matilda Ho said that the consortium has agreed to help fast-track the food tech ecosystem in China through teamwork and shared insights.

Ho said: “As China’s first food tech VC, we see an opportunity to bridge and strengthen these partnerships and hopefully make it easier for startups and corporations to share insights and work together.”

Bits x Bites intends to provide a common platform through China Food Tech Hub for multinational companies to cooperate with startups in a smarter way to innovate, tackle business challenges and create new growth opportunities.

Danone Asia Expansion and Innovation Acceleration R&I director David Machiels said: “To maintain our edge in the categories wher we play, we believe that it is key to be able to identify emerging new ingredients, technologies, product formats and business models in order to define new innovation opportunities for our consumers.

“By working with the startup and corporate community through the China Food Tech Hub, we want to contribute to further build the food tech ecosystem in a collaborative way, feed our innovation needs and identify new project opportunities in China.”

Bits x Bites added that all founding member companies in the China Food Tech Hub look forward to expanding their established presence in the Chinese market, as well as increasing their cooperation with early-stage food tech companies.