Melissa Facchina’s Journey from Juice Production to Siddhi Services
Working for her family’s juice production company early in life gave Melissa Facchina the drive for operational efficiency. Facchina saw a dramatic change in customer expectations inside the food system as she grew older. People wanted items created with higher-quality ingredients and more openness in the supply networks. Facchina came to the realization that her family’s company and other big consumer packaged goods (CPG) corporations were failing to meet these changing demands.
Facchina started Siddhi Services, an outsourced operations consulting company, in the early 2010s after gaining this insight and leaving her family’s company. Having been involved in more than 500 food and beverage projects and 93 successful company exits, Siddhi Services gained recognition rapidly. The company’s main goal was to help firms with scaling issues; investors were very interested in this service.
Facchina saw what she considered to be unhealthy ties between investors and the firms they financed as she dug more into the world of investments. She saw investors often making unrealistic demands, including wanting firms to develop quickly without having the know-how to scale a CPG business. When these expectations weren’t met by the firms, investors would frequently lower values or demand that management be changed. Some businesses misled their boards and investors as a result of this fear-based atmosphere, which Facchina found concerning.
The Rise of Siddhi Capital and Its Strategic Shift in Investments
Facchina co-founded Siddhi Capital, an operationally oriented growth equity firm that specializes in investments in the food and beverage sector, in response to these problems. The company’s portfolio includes a number of cutting-edge products, such as Magic Spoon cereal, Thistle meal delivery, Mid-Day Squares chocolate treats, and Aura Bora sparkling water.
Steven Finn, who has a family office and a wealth of investing knowledge, is Facchina’s business partner. They oversee a group of twenty-four experts collectively. Raising about $70 million for Siddhi Capital’s first fund in less than an hour was their first noteworthy accomplishment. The influence and connections of Steven Finn’s father, Brian Finn, the former CEO of Credit Suisse USA and current chairman of Siddhi, are credited by Facchina for this quick success. Thanks to Brian Finn’s contacts, they were able to obtain funding from some of the world’s most renowned individual investors.
Even though their initial fund closed quickly, Facchina admits that running a growing fund, especially one headed by a woman, has its share of difficulties. According to the Venture Capital Journal, just 3% of the $107 billion that venture funds globally raised last year came from women-led funds. But Facchina and her group garnered a lot of attention and support for their special combination of abilities and strategic vision.
Siddhi Capital has closed a $135 million Fund II, building on the success of its previous fund. Fund II took two years to secure, in contrast to their first fund, which closed in an hour. Global events, particularly the conflict between Russia and Ukraine, had an impact on this lengthy period of time and created a great deal of uncertainty in the investment environment. However, over 98% of the Fund I limited partners made further investments in the second fund, demonstrating their high level of trust in Siddhi Capital’s strategy and output.
Siddhi Capital persisted in making investments during the fundraising phase, expanding their portfolio by ten firms. Prominent investments include Future Fields, a manufacturer of recombinant proteins, and Ingrediome, a firm that specializes in lab-grown protein components. Fund II intends to concentrate on allocating greater sums into fewer, more established firms, whereas the first fund concentrated on early-stage enterprises. Siddhi Capital intends to invest $5 million to $10 million in businesses with $25 million to $100 million in annual revenue.
The strategic shift made by Siddhi Capital demonstrates their dedication to long-term expansion in the food and beverage industry. They want to fulfill the growing customer demand for transparency and quality by concentrating on a smaller number of enterprises with established income streams and offering the support these companies need to develop successfully.
