Finnish juice and smoothie company Jungle Juice will soon open its first juice bar in Stockholm. Vaaka Partners, Finnish private equity fund announced that it will invest in Jungle Juice and support its international growth.
Although Jungle Juice is not a startup per se, it was interesting to watch them grow over the past few years. They started as a family business in 2010 and soon grew to multimillion euro company. To date Jungle Juice has 21 bars in Finland, more than 140 employees, and was able to demonstrate 5M euros in revenue in 2016.
“Jungle Juice Bar is an excellent example of Finnish entrepreneurship, courage and perseverance,” says Ville Koskenvuo, Partner at Vaaka Partners.
In 2016, Jungle Juice Bar won Finland’s Best Retailer award from the Nordic Council of Shopping Centers. The owners of shopping centers appreciate the company as a tenant due to its ability to operate flexibly in different kinds of spaces, like under shopping center escalators and in passageways. In June, Noora Fagerström, co-founder of Jungle Juice received the Veuve Clicquot New Generation award, given for the first time in Finland. The award is granted to a successful female leader in the beginning of her career.
In 2013 Jungle Juice participated in the Finnish version of Dragons’ Den to pitch the business idea to investors on national TV. The company raised 60 000 euros and gained two new investors to join its three existing backers.
“We are very happy to have Vaaka Partners join us, enabling us to accelerate our growth pace even further. Vaaka Partners’ team and their industrial advisors have already been an indispensable help in developing our growth strategy and planning our international growth,” comments Noora Fagerström on her collaboration with Vaaka Partners. “We would also like to thank the angel investors that helped us during the early stage’s rapid growth period. As entrepreneurs, we have always decided to use the best possible help and support in order to ensure fast growth,”
