KfW Capital honours outstanding personalities from the venture capital (VC) ecosystem with the KfW Capital Award, which is being presented for the first time this year. The prizes will be awarded to personalities in the categories “Best Female Investor” and “Best Impact Investor”. The KfW Capital Award “Best Female Investor” honours female VC investors who successfully invest in start-ups and innovative technology companies in Germany. The KfW Capital Award “Best Impact Investor” focuses on female and male investors who have defined impact as an integral part of their investment strategy and invest, among other things, in start-ups and innovative technology companies in Germany. The prizes are each endowed with 5,000 euros and will be awarded on 19 October 2022 in Berlin. The KfW Capital Award is integrated as a special prize into the KfW Entrepreneurs’ Award, which has been honouring founders for 25 years.
“Best Female Investor”: Dr Manon Sarah Littek and “Best Impact Investor”: Extantia Capital
The jury made the following statement on Dr Manon Sarah Littek, co-founder of the VC fund Green Generation Funds: “Dr Manon Sarah Littek brings extensive investment and portfolio management experience to the role and has demonstrated over many years that she is a very successful investor who is consistently able to identify outstanding business ideas and entrepreneur personalities. For more than six years she has primarily invested in food tech companies who focus primarily on more sustainable and healthier nutrition and thereby positively transform consumer behaviour.”
Pioneer in food tech and a lead investor in Europefor 15 years: Dr Manon Sarah Littek
Dr Manon Sarah Littek is KfW Capital Award Best Female Investor 2022! Littek holds a PhD from the Free University of Berlin and studied at Oxford University. Together with serial founder Janna Ensthaler, she founded the impact fund Green Generation Fund, which has already raised €100 million from over 30 renowned investors after an oversubscribed first closing. The Green Generation Fund makes early-stage investments in food tech and green tech startups. Littek is no stranger to the venture capital industry: She is a pioneer in food tech and has been a lead investor in Europe, the U.S. and Israel for 15 years. Littek was CEO of Katjesgreenfood and Managing Director of DLD Ventures (Hubert Burda Media), where she helped to secure successful deals with Spotify, Houzz and many more. She sits on the board of Upfield, the world’s largest plant-based food company. “Food tech and green tech are where the solutions to the biggest problems of our time lie,” Littek says. So how does one become a successful venture capital investor? Manon Littek: “You have to be visionary and able to anticipate future topics, as well as have deep knowledge and unconditional passion for the topics.”
The jury commented on their selection of Extantia Capital as follows: “The team of Extantia is fully behind the mission to push forward decarbonisation to contain climate change. The team’s personal and professional experience in the areas of investing, company building and portfolio management, its focus on climate tech and Extantia Capital’s engagement in the VC ecosystem show that impact is an integral part of their strategy. Extantia Capital has demonstrated in an exemplary manner that commitment to sustainability and market orientation are not mutually exclusive but harmonise well and are increasingly co-dependent in the long run.”
About Extantia Capital:
The winner of the KfW Capital Award Best Impact Investor 2022 is the VC fund Extantia Capital, whose name derives from the Latin term existentia, existence. Extantia Capital invests exclusively in start-ups whose product makes a significant technological contribution to reducing CO2 emissions.”We want to find solutions that are capable of saving 100 megatons of CO2 on a day X in the future,” says founder Sebastian Heitmann. In doing so, Extantia Capital expects the same returns as conventional VC funds as an impact fund. The tailwind from investors has long been there – and not just since the war in Ukraine. This made it even clearer that Germany needed alternative solutions in the energy sector. Heitmann considers the potential in the climate tech sector to be very high: “The universities produce very good engineers, and we support them in becoming successful entrepreneurs. That, too, is impact.” His team includes three other partners and – as of this year – a female partner: “Our team is complementary, and that makes it strong.”
You can find further information on Dr Manon Sarah Littek at www.greengenerationfund.com and on Extantia Capital at https://extantia.com.
Information on the KfW Entrepreneurs’ Award and the KfW Capital Award can be found at
KfW Award Gründen at kfw.de (in german)
Read KfW Capital press release here.
