Building a Food Tech M&A Database Across Europe

Rashi was tasked with building a comprehensive M&A database for a VC client operating in a specific segment of the food tech industry across Europe. The client needed to understand the average exit multiples in their space over the past decade, and the database had to be built from scratch within a month.

She started by pulling company and deal data from PitchBook, Capital IQ, and MergerMarkets, gathering a broad universe of M&A activity in the food tech sector. The raw data gave her the starting point, but the harder work was verification: she cross-referenced each deal against press releases and public sources to confirm enterprise values and exit multiples. Of the initial universe, roughly 10% of deals were discarded or re-priced during verification, most commonly due to inflated or unconfirmed enterprise values in the raw database records, leaving a final set of 2,000 deals with confirmed transaction data.

The most consequential decision in the project was defining the inclusion criteria. Some sub-sectors, including food delivery and restaurant marketplaces, sat on the boundary of the client's focus area. Rashi recommended excluding food delivery and restaurant marketplace deals, arguing they diluted the comparability of the multiple for the client's specific thesis, a recommendation the client accepted. That call shaped the integrity of the final dataset.

The project required screening more than 5,000 companies to arrive at a final database of 2,000 verified M&A deals. The resulting exit multiple was in line with independent industry estimates, and the client was satisfied with both the quality and the turnaround time.

This was the first time the client had a verified, bottom-up multiple for this sub-sector, rather than relying on generalist food tech benchmarks that didn't reflect their specific investment thesis.