India’s Ecozen wins inaugural Rabobank Food Loss Challenge Asia

India’s Ecozen Solutions has won the inaugural Rabobank Food Loss Challenge Asia, launched to highlight agri-tech solutions to the growing global problem of food loss and wastage from farm to market.

Rabobank invited submissions from regional agri-tech start-ups as an initiative to facilitate constructive dialogue across the agri-industry spectrum between solutions providers, food & agriculture corporates and small holder farmers.

Ecozen Solutions, which is 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 USD15,000 and the Audience’s Prize of USD5,000. 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 & agriculture companies.

Prateek Singhal, Co-Founder and Chief Operating Officer of Ecozen, said: “A win at the Food Loss Challenge Asia is a validation of our efforts and product offering. 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 organizations working towards tackling food loss. Further, it can also provide access to capital which would fast track our product development and business expansion plans.”

“Rabobank has been very supportive in preparing for this challenge, mentoring and guiding at every stage. Our business model of leasing of cold rooms to farmers and connecting them via platform to organised buyers who are looking to source perishables from them was well appreciated by Rabobank and the audience. We are looking forward to collaborate with them in future to scale this model.”