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| | | Back in May 2018 at Future Food Asia Awards - four StartupSG winners were fast tracked to the finale of SLINGSHOT@SWITCH, which just happened earlier in September. SWITCH, a.k.a Singapore Week of Innovation and TeCHnology was co-organized by our partner Enterprise Singapore (ESG) who powered the SLINGSHOT@SWITCH competition. ID Capital CEO, Isabelle Decitre was part of the judging panel for the event and it is with great pride that we saw one of the winners from FFAA emerge as the grand prize winner at the event. Alchemy Foodtech won the S$ 200,000 grand prize at SLINGSHOT with their innovative food additive that lowers glycemic index (GI) in carbohydrate staples like white jasmine rice, bread and noodles to tackle diabetes. The innovation aims at changing the Asian dinner plate and help prevent diabetes, which is a time bomb in this region of rice eaters. At a time where Singapore has declared war on diabetes, setting $15 million aside to support the food industry in developing “food as medicine” solutions, the timing could not be better for Alchemy’s energetic team. |
| | The third runner up was another Agrifoodtech start-up – Umitron. This IoT company is using sensors to analyze fish behavior to optimize feeding. With fish feed representing 50 to 70 percent of fish farmers’ production costs, and excess feed being the most important source of pollution in this industry, Umitron’s business is promised to a bright future. |
| | | For the island nation of Singapore, aquaculture is a part of the urban agriculture thrust the country has been promoting over the years to increase self-reliance for food and agriculture products. Urban agritech was another key theme at SWITCH, with ID Capital VP Abhinav Mehra moderating a panel on technology trends and opportunities in Urban AgriTech, bringing together views of urban farmers and investors alike.
And as good news never comes alone, both companies recently announced substantial fundraising rounds from investors. This echoes early signals shared at Future Food Asia Award 2018 that investors across the board are taking notice of agrifoodtech startups and that by their sheer number these domain-agnostic players will soon become game changers.
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The emergence of these 2 startups as winners among 1000’s from across sectors, provides further impetus to a sector that has long been in the shadow of some others. But these wins do not make for an easy ride for the sector and nor for both these startups. Alchemy will have to educate the everyday customer about GI, which remains a relatively new concept compared to the ‘low carb’ claim. While Umitron has to convince traditionally skeptic farmers of their new technology even before they use it. Every startup in any sector faces challenges. If today we see such great agrifoodtech startups breaking through the clutter, it may have to do with their robust product / market fit. Generally speaking agrifootech is known for its long gestation period, owing to the specificity of this industry, whether it has to deal with the cycles of nature or finicky consumer tastes. When “time is money”, the correct and early assessment of product / market fit directly translates in life expectancy for these startups.
It now has been two years in a row that an agrifoodtech startup has won SLINGSHOT@SWITCH. We look forward to making it a hat-trick next year and thank Enterprise Singapore and IPI for involving us in the event. Special thanks to Mr Ted Tan, Deputy CEO, Enterprise Singapore, for zealousness and enthusiasm.
Last month’s news is a signaling factor that if the food system is ripe for disruption, investors across the board are ripe for it.
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