Consuming food is a daily affair for every person. But with increasing global population growth, there is a huge pressing need to provide more solutions in food production.
But what is Singapore working on in the area of technologies on food? To understand the state of food tech in Singapore, I speak to three Singapore food tech startup players for their insights.
Foodtech encompasses a wide range of solutions
Dr Sherman Ho, co-founder and CTO of Hoow Foods, starts off by explaining what FoodTech is.
“Foodtech plays several important roles in society as a whole and has far-reaching effects globally. Current foci in food tech are health, sustainability and accessibility.
The first encompasses new ingredients and products that are beneficial for health, such as fibres, sugar substitutes and GI lowering products
The second focus is represented by alternative proteins, be it insect, plant or fungi proteins, upcycled ingredients and also environmentally conscious packaging.
The last focus is one that the general public would likely associate most with foodtech, and they include POS systems which enable quick food delivery to consumers’ doorsteps.
The utopian vision of foodtech would be a world where people have easy and economical access to quality food made from healthy ingredients without straining the planet’s resources and environment.”
He anecdotally sees the familiar few faces at foodtech-related technology conferences. But the scene is heating up where he notes several food tech startups concluding successful funding rounds.
Darren Ho was a previous agri-tech startup founder and is now an agrifood consultant across geographic regions involving livestock and crops. He sees a similar trend where food tech in Singapore is starting to ripen as an industry.
Ho noticed 5 years ago food tech was relatively slow and the consumers were not quite ready. However, in the last 2 years, he saw a considerable increase in both interests and activities from both the demand and supply side.
Darren cites biotech companies such as Alchemy to the last-mile food logistics company such as Redmart and Deliveroo and even hawkerpreneurs giving old school dishes new food recipe twists are giving the food tech scene a shake-up.
He is enthusiastic about these developments as Singapore has neglected this sector for a long time. To him, it is a crucial part of every nation’s industry to ensure food and provenance are kept high in the priority for innovation and development.
Rayner Loi, CEO and co-founder of Good for Food, joins in agreement with the others about the food tech scene rising in recent years.
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