On May 12th 2022, we hosted an amazing conversation among top international startups working in the food waste and supply chain space on making the food system more efficient and sustainable in the UAE and MENA region.

The UAE and MENA Food Systems

At Forward Fooding, our mission is to showcase the global startup talent at the intersection of food, technology and sustainability. This time, we are doing so by diving into a region where the scarcity of water resources, fertile land and food waste represents a major challenge to agricultural production. Also due to their growing population, countries such as the UAE are now seeking to overcome their reliance on food imports and start local production boosted by the latest innovations in AgriFoodTech.

The focus of this webinar, the last episode of a 3 virtual events series, was about Food Waste and Supply Chain Challenges. On this occasion, we focused on technologies tackling Food Waste and making the Food Supply Chain more efficient and sustainable, bringing together international startups already operating in the Middle East and global startups that may be interested in entering the UAE market. 

The insightful conversation sparked between these inspiring founders highlighted current and future trends in the sector, existing and upcoming challenges and what is needed to solve them.

The session was moderated by Anne Le More, United Nations Food Champion, Co-Founder at Chefs 4 the Planet and Advisor at Forward Fooding.

See the full event in this video.

Want to know more about the protagonists of this event? Keep reading!

The Speakers 

Richardos Lebbos, Founder & CTO at Startchy Inc.

Richardos from Lebanon is the Agripreneur of the year 2017 and has been all over the world spreading the positive impact of Startchy. IVLP agriculture trade and food safety alumni, selected by MB100 top leaders. Pursuing his PhD in applied biochemistry.

In addition to being the primary inventor of Startchy, Richardos leads the R&D team of scientists and engineers and also Leads Startchy’s business development efforts in the MENA and GCC regions.

Get to know more about Startchy in this video.

 

H. Burak Karapinar, Founder & Managing Director at QS Monitor

Dedicated to building the leading team of experts in Food and Consumer Products Testing, Inspection and Consulting to keep QSM at the forefront of the Food Safety industry. BA degree in Business Administration and Management, Bosphorus University, Istanbul; Formerly, Executive Board Member and CEO of Invenura Group, leading food safety testing, inspection and certification company in Turkey and Eastern Europe. Prior to that, he was the Managing Director of Ata Invest GCC in DIFC, Dubai; led and originated food security projects for Gulf countries and Sovereign Wealth Funds; held several consulting positions and managed large-scale transformation and strategic projects in Middle East, Turkey and South Africa for Delta Partners and Peppers and Rogers Group. Author of more than 20 articles on global markets, EU and Turkish economy; Columnist for Aksam, Radikal newspapers and Platin Magazine. Speaker for World Economic Forum Davos in 2016 on Crisis Management. Founder of Ekonomistler Platform of Turkey; led workshops for regional and local economic development projects for Turkey with local NGOs, Trade Chambers and universities.

Get to know more about QS Monitor in this video.

David Kat, SVP Business Development at Wasteless

David Kat (Amsterdam, 1971) was the on-line publisher and business developer for various VNU (now AC Nielsen) enterprises in the Netherlands, London and Paris. He’s a business developer, entrepreneur and active investor, since 2004. At Wasteless he’s responsible for bringing retailers, policy makers, and food producers on board with Wasteless’ unique and patented AI solution, that offers an attractive business case for food waste prevention. This six languages speaking father of two daughters, is energized by making this world a better place. His favorite channels of achieving that are business, food and the arts.

Get to know more about Wasteless in this video.

Abdulrhman Elhalafawy, Co-Founder & Managing Partner at CupMena

He is an enthusiastic entrepreneur experienced in business development, Operations, and Project Management with +6 years of working experience with many businesses in different industries; Agriculture, Waste Management, Agri-Tech, and E-Commerce. Abulrhman exploited his passion and activeness about sustainability and Agriculture to Co-found Cupmena. He has a proven record in building and validating, testing, and scaling scalable Agri-Solutions, creating deals, and making partnerships that strengthen the model through various stages.

Get to know more about CupMena in this video.

Olcay Silahlı is the Co-founder &  CEO at Fazla Gida (Whole Surplus)

Olcay Silahlı is the Co-founder and CEO of Fazla Gıda. Since he was a child, he always sought to find solutions to food waste that happened in his grandfather’s and neighbors’ farmhouses.

He had started his work life at Deloitte as a consultant. Before Fazla Gıda, he worked at Unilever Food Solutions as a Brand Manager for six years. Additionally, he managed several food waste responsibility projects in Unilever.

He always placed great importance on volunteering and global problems throughout his life. He volunteered in Kenya to help children and had been delegated by Unleash to attend One Young World to tackle food waste. There he realized, there was no initiative from Turkey that aimed to achieve SDGs. Also, there was no sustainable initiative to tackle food waste. Thus, he decided to create a social enterprise to show young people in the world it is possible to do a job that involves goodness for people and the world.

Starting with the vision to create a social enterprise and show people that it’s possible to do good for the world while earning money, and teaming up with the right people who share the same vision, in 5 years, 30.000 tonnes of food have been saved and 1.100.000 families got monthly food donations and more than 75.000 tonnes of carbon emissions have been prevented in Turkey. In 2018, he was invited to NY UN General Assembly as a speaker and good example as well as Social Good Summit in Geneva. He is also selected as Thought For Food ambassador.

 

The FoodTech Challenge

This virtual event was organised in collaboration with the UAE FoodTech Challenge, which just launched its second edition. This competition, presented by the UAE Ministry of Climate Change and Environment and Tamkeen, in association with ASPIRE, is seeking the world’s most innovative agricultural technology solutions that will help address food security challenges.

It focuses on two critical tracks: 

• ‘Food production’ to address the availability and abundance of food and explore next-gen nutrient-rich alternatives 
• ‘Food loss and waste’ to ensure sustainability across the food supply chain and the planet more broadly

The tracks chosen by the UAE FoodTech Challenge actually perfectly reflect the need for solutions to some of the most pressing Food System issues, not only relevant to the Middle East. Indeed, the challenges faced are not unique to the region and, as we are unfortunately aware of, with climate change consequences becoming more and more evident, the need for solutions is becoming increasingly global.

Winners will be offered the unique opportunity to incubate their technologies in the UAE, with the support of leading local entities, including ASPIRE, ADQ, Silal, Emirates Foundation for Youth Development, Abu Dhabi Global Market, ADGM, Khalifa Fund for Enterprise Development and Catalyst UAE. The total pool prize is valued at up to US $2M, consisting of cash awards and opportunities for R&D grants, incentive schemes, and startup acceleration support.

Ready to rethink the future of food? Apply now UAE FoodTech Challenge.

 

Thanks to all the speakers 

We want to thank all the speakers and the people who are working hard to tackle the current food crisis and the challenges of the modern world head-on.

If you missed the event, you can watch it on our Youtube Channel.

 

Forward Fooding is the world’s first collaborative platform for FoodTech Data Intelligence and Corporate Startup Collaboration.