India’s Ecozen Solutions has won the inaugural Rabobank Food Loss Challenge Asia, highlighting agri-tech solutions to the growing global problem of food loss and wastage from farm to market
Rabobank’s initiative aims to facilitate constructive dialogue across the agri-industry spectrum between solutions providers, food and agriculture corporate and smallholder farmers.
Ecozen Solutions, which focuses on enabling the farm-to-fork movement of perishables by providing solar based cold rooms at the farm level, was chosen from five finalists at the event Finale held in Singapore on 15 November 2018.
Ecozen won both the Jury’s Prize of US$15,000 and the Audience’s Prize of US$5,000. The event Finale was held at Rabobank Asia’s Food & Agriculture Advisory Board meeting, the bank’s premier event bringing together C-Suite level decision makers of leading food and agriculture companies.
Albert Boogaard, head of innovation at Rabobank Foundation, said, “One of the main objectives of the Rabobank Food Loss Challenge was to connect start-ups to investors, users and other stakeholders to stimulate cooperation between them – already our leading entries and top five finalists have been exposed to senior representatives of world-leading food & agricultural businesses and investors.”
Commenting on the agenda, Prateek Singhal, co-founder and chief operating officer of Ecozen, said, “Food Loss is a key issue in all developing countries and we at Ecozen are striving to build solutions to prevent this. This Challenge will help us to reach out and collaborate with like-minded businesses and organisations working towards tackling food loss. Further, it can also provide access to capital which would fast-track our product development and business expansion plans.”
