Shama Lee

Shama Sukul Lee is a New Zealand entrepreneur and the founder of Sunfed, the plant-based protein company that set out to make meat from pulses.

Lee’s first career was in software engineering. An existential crisis about climate and food systems led her to conceive Sunfed in 2014 and incorporate the company in 2015, pursuing a fundamentally different approach to plant-based protein: whole-cut products with genuine meat-fibre structure, built from simple, clean-label ingredients rather than the highly processed formats common in the category.

Sunfed’s first product, Chicken-Free Chicken, launched in New Zealand supermarkets and was followed by Boar-Free Bacon, Bull-Free Beef and Fish-Free Tuna. The company raised approximately NZ$1.5 million in early funding to scale manufacturing and in late 2018 secured a NZ$10 million Series A led by Blackbird Ventures and NZVIF. Lee’s work attracted international attention as an example of how New Zealand’s food-innovation capability could extend beyond traditional agriculture.

In April 2024, Sunfed announced it would shut down after investors declined further funding, a casualty of a broader pullback in plant-based investment globally. The closure does not diminish what Lee built: a genuine product-innovation company that pushed the boundaries of what plant-based protein could be and demonstrated the ambition of New Zealand’s food-tech sector.

Lee’s profile is noteworthy because she left a successful tech career to tackle one of the hardest problems in food, making plant-based protein that could compete with meat on texture and taste and built a company that raised serious capital and attracted global attention from New Zealand, even if the market moved against her.

Shama features in our look at what New Zealand food-tech learned the hard way.

Sources: Idealog · BusinessDesk · Blackbird