Food loss challenge: Rabobank’s start-up shortlist to help reduce food loss in Asia

15 Oct 2018 --- Rabobank is tackling the issue of food loss throughout the supply chain by focusing on holistic solutions and is running a competition where start-ups pitch their ideas to reduce food loss to food and agri industry leaders and investors. Through the Food Loss Challenge Asia, Rabobank aims to look for solutions to curb food loss from farm to market and is asking start-ups “Do you have an existing tech-based solution that reduces food loss from farm to market in Asia?”

“With Asia's population projected to reach over 5 billion by 2050, we rely on innovative and technological solutions to help us curb food loss along the value chain and promote the sustainable development of rural prosperity in the region. Through our networks, we connect start-ups to our corporate and rural clients to help us in our strive to grow a better world together,” explains Diane Boogaard, CEO Asia of Rabobank.

Mark van Binsbergen, CEO of Rabobank Singapore and one of the Food Loss Challenge Asia judges says the response to Rabobank’s inaugural Food Loss Challenge event has been extremely high. 

“We received an overwhelming number of 127 submissions from 29 countries across Asia, Africa, Middle East and Europe. The quality of submissions is very impressive. We came across many good proposals to address food loss, not only at the producer’s level but also across the whole supply chain,” he says. 

“The start-ups demonstrated an ability to deploy their technology with the awareness of how it would add value to their end-users,” adds Arindom Datta, Asia Head of Sustainability Banking at Rabobank, and member of the Food Loss Challenge Asia project team. 

“While the 127 solutions put forth addressed pain points along the food value chain, notably logistics, storage and refrigeration, many focused on enabling data-driven farm management especially for the smallholder farming community. Many start-ups are trying to provide critical holistic solutions addressing the issue of food loss integrating diverse players in the supply chain.” 

The 20 start-ups who will take center stage on Pitch Day on October 26, in Singapore; with the top five going to the Finale on 15 November 2018. The shortlisted start-ups are in the running to win US$15,000 Jury’s Prize and the US$5,000 Audience Prize at the finale.

The top-20 selected start-ups are; 

– AgUnity Pty Ltd (Farmer Services) – Streamlines farmer co-operative operations by putting a simple distributed cryptoledger mobile app in the hands of every small farmer.

– AptaCam (Diagnostics) – creates universal test standards for molecular diagnostic using bio-sensing, hardware, and cloud infrastructure. Provide high-quality diagnostic reagents and portable devices.

– BharatRohan Airborne Innovations Private Limited (Precision Farming) collects unique data from agricultural farms and converts them into actionable information and reports to enable industrial producers to reduce crop loss, optimize agri-inputs and maximize yield and profit margin using UAV based hyperspectral imaging.

– CropIn Technology Solutions (Precision Farming) – An intuitive, intelligent, self-evolving system that delivers future-ready farming solutions to the entire agricultural sector. With capabilities of live reporting, analysis, interpretation, and insight that span across geographies, their solution digitizes every farm, while data-managing the entire ecosystem.

– Distinct Horizon (Fertilisation) – The world’s first successful powered applicator for a fertilizer application method called Urea/Fertilizer Deep Placement (UDP/FDP) for rice farming.

– Eachmile Technologies (Farmer Services- Fish) – Uses mobile technology to provide fishers and farmers the data they need to improve their livelihoods and connect each link of otherwise fragmented supply chains.

– Ecozen Solutions Pvt. Ltd.(Solar) – Provides renewable energy-based products that can store and transport perishables along the value chain.

– Elixia Tech Solutions Ltd. (Supply Chain) – Provides comprehensive and customized solutions for transportation, logistics and supply chain management across industries by converting accurate and real-time data actionable business intelligence.

– Ergos (Storage) – A grid of rural medium and micro warehouses at farm-gate across the geography for storage, credit access and forward linkages.

– Grameen Intel Social Business Ltd.(Farmer Services- Soil) – Builds innovative tech solutions for social impact in the areas of agriculture, health, and education, bringing the power of technology to the development frontier. The Soil Master has been designed to digitize the guesswork out of soil evaluation, using a combination of sensors and colorimetry to evaluate the level of pH and certain nutrients in the soil in an extremely short time with high accuracy.

– HARA (Data Exchange) – A global and open blockchain-based data exchange for the food sector that incentivizes and enables everyone from farmers to manufacturers to retailers to make better data-driven decisions.

– Impact Terra (Farmer Services) – Provides digital services to smallholder farmers and third parties via it's Golden Paddy digital platform – powered by smartphone, remote sensing, crop simulation, and big-data technologies. Farmers and third parties connect to improve productivity, buy and sell and provide/receive micro-loans.

– Intello Labs Pvt. Ltd. (Analytics) – Helps farmers to grade their produce and empower them to demand a fair price by leveraging advanced analytics tools and techniques (deep learning and artificial intelligence) onto images captured by farmers.

– Jayalaxmi Agrotech Pvt Ltd (Farmer Services) – A unique combination of hardware, software and data solutions that reduces the information gap in agriculture by communicating with farmers in their regional languages.

– KrishiHub (Farmer Services) – An AI-powered mobile app which helps farmers explore crop prices and weather forecasts, create and monitor their farms on the app, and get tips for growing crops.

– MyCrop Technologies Pvt. Ltd. (Precision Farming) – A strongly interlinked top-down interface where the activities and output at the individual grassroots level can be monitored and analyzed to achieve optimum results.

– Promethean Power Systems (Storage) – Manufactures and supplies cold storage and milk chilling equipment for the dairy industry. Its products include milk chillers and cold storage solutions which use patented Promethean thermal storage system technology that uses thermal batteries and solar power solutions and can cool up to 1,000 liters of milk.

– Pula Advisors (Farmer Services) – Develops and distributes bundles of financial and agronomic services for smallholder farmers. The package includes agricultural inputs, insurance, and precision agronomic advisory.

– Solentum B.V. (Precision Farming- Potatoes) – Creates science-based tools and services to increase economic value (e.g., through quality controls or process efficiencies) for companies in the potato value chain.

– Tun Yat (Sharing Economy- Equipment) – An online platform which connects farmers (who want to rent agricultural machines) and machine suppliers (either big suppliers or individual suppliers).

By Gaynor Selby