Rabobank’s Food Loss Challenge Asia has declared its top five finalists of the inaugural Asia-based open innovation challenge aiming to identify innovative AgTech start-ups to help solve global farm-to-market food loss problems. The winner will be awarded at Rabobank’s annual Asia Food & Agribusiness advisory board meeting in Singapore later this month following pitches by the final five.

They are as follows:

CropIn Technology Solutions: 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.

Eachmile Technologies: 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: Provides renewable energy-based products that can store and transport perishables along the value chain.

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

Pula Advisors: Develops and distributes bundles of financial and agronomic services for smallholder farmers. The bundle includes agricultural inputs, insurance and precision agronomic advisory.

“As the world’s population continues to grow rapidly, the demand for food is set to rise considerably, causing food availability to be an unneglectable concern especially in Asia wher the population is projected to grow over 5 billion by 2050,” says Diane Boogaard, CEO of Rabobank Asia.

The top five finalizes will present their food loss solutions to a panel of judges at Rabobank’s annual Asia Food & Agribusiness advisory board meeting. The panel of judges will include Rabobank Asia and Rabo Foundation, as well as partners of Rabobank such as Archer Daniels Midland Company, Charoen Pokphand Group, Olam International, Temasek, and UPL Ltd.

“Food loss is another alarming issue particularly in South and Southeast Asia wher around 59 percent of food produce is spoiled or damaged before making it to the dining table.”

“This was why we initiated the Food Loss Challenge Asia, in partnership with our clients, to identify and help develop startups with innovative solutions to contribute to our commitment to helping halve food loss by 2020.”

Albert Boogaard, Head of Innovation of Rabo Foundation, adds: “In today’s technology-enabled world, we put innovation at the core of what we do. We continuously look for new ways to help our clients grow enough food to feed the world’s growing population sustainably.”

“Through the Food Loss Challenge, we look to identify partners to develop innovative solutions to address pain points along the post-production food and agribusiness value chain across logistics, storage and refrigeration to help alleviate food loss.”

”We are impressed by the sophisticated solutions presented at the challenge. We are particularly encouraged by the high-quality ideas geared around what and how consumers and smallholders can pay for and benefit from.”

Inaugurated in August 2018, the initiative received 127 submissions from 29 countries across Asia, Africa, the Middle East, and Europe. Each finalist has been awarded a US$1,000 prize.