Rabobank Food Loss Challenge Asia announces 20 Startups for the Pitch Day in Singapore

SINGAPORE, Oct. 12, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Food Loss Challenge Asia announces the 20 start-ups who will take centre stage on Pitch Day, 26 October 2018 in Singapore with the Top-5 going to the Finale on 15 November 2018.

Through the Food Loss Challenge Asia, Rabobank aims to look for solutions with its partners to address the global problem of food loss. Diane Boogaard, CEO Asia of Rabobank, comments: "With the population in Asia 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 startups to our corporate and rural clients to help us in our strive to growing a better world together."

Mark van Binsbergen, CEO of Rabobank Singapore and one of the Food Loss Challenge Asia Judges says: "This is Rabobank's first Food Loss Challenge event globally. 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."

"The startups demonstrated an ability to deploy their technology with the awareness of how it would add value to their end-users," says Arindom Datta, Asia Head of Sustainability Banking, and member of the Food Loss Challenge Asia project team. "Whilst 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 small holder farming community. Many startups are trying to provide critical holistic solutions addressing the issue of food loss integrating diverse players in the supply chain," Arindom continues.

The shortlisted start-ups are in the running to win USD 15,000 Jury's Prize and/or the USD 5,000 Audience Prize at the Finale.

The 20 shortlisted companies are (in alphabetical order):

1.       AgUnity Pty Ltd (Farmer Services) (www.agunity.com) - Streamlines farmer co-operative operations by putting a simple distributed cryptoledger mobile app in the hands of every small farmer.
2.       AptaCam (Diagnostics) (www.aptacam.com) - Creates universal test standards for molecular diagnostic using bio-sensing, hardware and cloud infrastructure. Provide high quality diagnostic reagents and portable devices.
3.       BharatRohan Airborne Innovations Private Limited (Precision Farming) (www.bharatrohan.in) - 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.
4.       CropIn Technology Solutions (Precision Farming) (www.cropin.com) - 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.
5.       Distinct Horizon (Fertilisation) (www.distincthorizon.net) - The world's first successful powered applicator for a fertiliser application method called Urea / Fertilizer Deep Placement (UDP/FDP) for rice farming.
6.       Eachmile Technologies (Farmer Services - Fish) (www.eachmile.co) - 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.
7.       Ecozen Solutions Pvt. Ltd.(Solar) (www.ecozensolutions.com) - Provides renewable energy-based products that can store and transport perishables along the value chain.
8.       Elixia Tech Solutions Ltd. (Supply Chain) (www.elixiatech.com) - Provides comprehensive and customised solutions for transportation, logistics and supply chain management across industries by converting accurate and real-time data actionable business intelligence.
9.       Ergos (Storage) (www.ergos.in) - A grid of rural medium and micro warehouses at farm-gate across the geography for storage, credit access, and forward linkages.
10.     Grameen Intel Social Business Ltd.(Farmer Services - Soil) (www.tsi.com.bd) - 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.
11.     HARA (Data Exchange) - A global & open blockchain-based data exchange for the food sector that incentivises and enables everyone from farmers to manufacturers to retailers to make better data-driven decisions.
12.     Impact Terra (Farmer Services) (www.impactterra.co) - Develops, implements, and teaches mobile-based solutions for farmers, agribusinesses and other agricultural stakeholders to improve food security and the livelihoods of rural populations.
13.     Intello Labs Pvt. Ltd. (Analytics) (www.intellolabs.com) - 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.
14.     Jayalaxmi Agrotech Pvt Ltd (Farmer Services) (www.jayalaxmiagrotech.com) - A unique combination of hardware, software and data solutions that reduces the information gap in agriculture by communicating with farmers in their regional languages.
15.     KrishiHub (Farmer Services) (www.krishihub.com) - An AI-powered mobile app which helps farmers explore crop prices and weather forecasts, create and monitor their farms on app, and get tips for growing crops.
16.     MyCrop Technologies Pvt. Ltd. (Precision Farming) (www.mycrop.tech) - A strongly interlinked top-down interface where the activities and output at the individual grassroot level can be monitored and analysed to achieve optimum results.
17.     Promethean Power Systems (Storage) (www.promethean-power.com) - Manufactures and supplies cold storage and milk chilling equipment for 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 1000 litres of milk.
18.     Pula Advisors (Farmer Services) (www.pula-advisors.com) - Develops and distributes bundles of financial and agronomic services for smallholder farmers. The bundle includes agricultural inputs, insurance and precision agronomic advisory.
19.     Solentum B.V. (Precision Farming - Potatoes) (www.solentum.com) - 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.
20.     Tun Yat (Sharing Economy - Equipment) (www.tunyat.com) - An online platform which connects farmers (who want to rent agricultural machines) and machine suppliers (either big suppliers or individual suppliers).

About Food Loss Challenge Asia

The Food Loss Challenge will see start-ups pitch their ideas to reduce food loss to food & agri industry leaders and investors. The Challenge takes on the global problem of food loss, keeping an eye on the target of UN Sustainable Development Goal 12.3, which aims to halve food loss by 2030. With the world's population expected to reach nine billion by 2050, curbing waste and loss will play a crucial role in meeting increased demand for food. The Challenge is supported by Rabo Foundation and Partners of Rabobank who all want to contribute to Rabobank's mission of Growing a Better World Together and they are:

• Archer Daniels Midland Company (www.adm.com), one of the world's largest agricultural processors and food ingredient providers, with approximately 31,000 employees serving customers in more than 170 countries;
• Charoen Pokphand Food PLC (www.cpfworldwide.com), a globally integrated agro-industrial and food business that strives to be the "Kitchen of the World" and deliver high-quality products for 4 billion consumers;
• UPL Ltd.(www.uplonline.com) , a leading company with integrated technology based solutions for crop protection, seeds & post-harvest solutions, is engaged with large & small holding farmers, to increase both productivity and farm income. Headquartered in India, UPL Ltd. has a sales turnover of $2.5 billion and is present in 130 countries;
• Olam International (www.olamgroup.com),  a leading agri-business operating across the value chain. Headquartered in Singapore, it is present in 66 countries, supplying various products across 18 platforms to 22,000 customers worldwide.
• Temasek (www.temasek.com.sg), an investment company headquartered in Singapore with a global presence across 11 offices including London, New York and San Francisco.

About Rabobank

With our roots in the Netherlands and Food & Agri, Rabobank is an international financial services provider with activities in 38 countries in the field of retail banking, wholesale banking, private banking, leasing and real estate. Measured by Tier 1 capital, Rabobank Group is one of the world's largest financial institutions with high credit ratings by all rating agencies. As an industry leader in environmental, social and governance (ESG), Rabobank is ranked as an ESG Leader by Sustainalytics, placing Rabobank in the top-5% of its industry peers.

Our mission is "Growing a Better World Together". With our knowledge, networks and financing capabilities we aim to further motivate and facilitate clients in adopting a more sustainable food production practice globally. We do this by concentrating our efforts on four most pressing food issues together with our clients, partners and colleagues worldwide: increasing the availability of food, improving access to food, promoting a balanced nutrition and increasing stability of food supply chains.

Read more about our vision for global food security at www.rabobank.com

About Rabo Foundation

Rabo Foundation is Rabobank's social fund. The Foundation invests in the self-sufficiency of farmer organizations in Africa, Asia and Latin America, by putting up finance and by sharing the cooperative, banking and agricultural expertise that the Rabobank Group has built up over many years. This helps the organizations to achieve their goals of offering small-scale farmers access to financing, savings opportunities, knowledge and new markets.

Read more about Rabo Foundation at www.rabobank.com/rabobankfoundation

Find out more about the Food Loss Challenge Asia at www.foodlosschallenge.asia

For information about the Food Loss Challenge, contact info@padang.com and singapore@rabobank.com

Logo - https://photos.prnasia.com/prnh/20181011/2264898-1LOGO