Disney’s former boss Bob Iger joins board of food tech start-up Perfect Day backed by billionaire Li Ka-shing

The former CEO joins the board of the animal-free dairy company which enjoyed an earlier investment by Hong Kong’s most feted business magnate

Li’s Horizons Ventures led each round of fundraising for the California-based start-up

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Li Ka-shing, one of the richest people in Hong Kong, was an early investor in Perfect Day. Photo: Felix Wong

Published: 9:53am, 22 Oct 2020Updated: 9:36am, 23 Oct 2020

Walt Disney’s executive chairman Bob Iger has invested in food technology company Perfect Day, branching out after relinquishing Disney’s CEO title earlier this year.

Iger will also join the board of Perfect Day, which aims to make dairy products without using animals in an effort to create a more sustainable product, cutting out factory farming, lactose, hormones and antibiotics.

The start-up’s initial series C fundraising totalling US$140 million was led by Li Ka-shing’s Horizons Ventures and Singapore sovereign fund Temasek. A second tranche in July brought Perfect Day’s total funding to over US$360 million. Horizons Ventures has, in fact, led all the rounds since seed funding.

Horizons is a private equity unit owned by Li, one of Hong Kong’s wealthiest and best-known tycoons.

Perfect Day has “enormous potential,” Iger told the Financial Times.

The company is one of many investing in plant-based and alternative proteins. Meat and dairy alternatives have been gaining in popularity, and companies like Oatly AB, Beyond Meat and Impossible Foods have continued to expand.

“We look forward to learning from his decades of visionary leadership experience as we navigate our next stage of growth and create a new category of animal-free dairy,” Perfect Day co-founders Ryan Pandya and Perumal Gandhi said in an emailed statement.

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