Should you’ve all the time wished to do your half in addressing the unethical strategies used to harvest the meals you eat, Singapore-headquartered know-how startup Glife may very well be your answer.
Caleb Wu’s curiosity in meals, animals and their relations to society was piqued throughout his college days when he visited a slaughterhouse with an animal welfare group he was volunteering with.
“For me, this led to a burgeoning curiosity within the meals ecosystem and later the meals supply chain. I ultimately wished to align my profession aspirations with a trigger I felt a robust connection to,” Caleb recollects, and he wasn’t the one one.
Caleb’s pal from junior school, Justin Chou, who co-founded Greendot and has in depth expertise within the F&B business, was additionally curious concerning the meals supply chain and questioned the place his produce got here from.
Collectively, they held discussions concerning the meals supply chain — how farmers are concerned, and what the journey from harvesting to promoting was like for each produce — and realised there have been many gaps within the business.
“We realised your complete ecosystem was not clear and farmers could also be at an obstacle given the a number of middlemen concerned,” Caleb shares, including that this realisation contributed to their determination to work collectively to make a change.
Together with Wayne Goh, whom they met at one in every of Quest Enterprise’s networking periods, the trio launched Glife Applied sciences in 2018 to join stakeholders throughout the meals worth chain on a single platform to deal with the normally ambiguous seed-to-table supply chain distribution.
Tapping on prior experience
Earlier than founding Glife Applied sciences, Caleb, Justin and Wayne pursued completely different profession pathways.
Whereas Caleb took on finance and funding and co-founded MTC Consulting Group (which focuses on expertise acquisition consultancy and recruitment companies throughout Southeast Asia), Justin targeted on his first enterprise enterprise Greendot, a vegetarian restaurant chain.
Being a vegetarian since younger, Justin helped Caleb achieve extra understanding about completely different diets and meals decisions folks undertake, which proved helpful of their thought technology on how they might carry change to the present meals ecosystem.
However to realise their imaginative and prescient, they want a product first, which was why they reached out to Wayne. He has a deep experience in tech and product, particularly within the tech start-up ecosystem.
In truth, Wayne co-founded All Offers Asia, an aggregator for e-commerce firms and brick-and-mortars that helps attain potential shoppers, which has since been acquired by Indonesia’s Lippo Group.
I’m grateful to be on this journey with Wayne and Justin. Every of us have our distinctive set of expertise and have one thing completely different to carry to the desk.
What we now have in frequent is an entrepreneurial spirit, figuring out we will make a distinction [through] Glife. It was solely along with them, and the Glife Applied sciences workforce at giant, that we have been in a position to develop our firm.
– Caleb Wu, co-founder and deputy CEO of Glife Applied sciences
With a robust workforce on the core, Glife Applied sciences was created to finally feed SEA sustainably via the empowering and uplifting of farmers, suppliers, service provider and F&B companies within the meals and agriculture business.
Feeding SEA sustainably with the usage of know-how
These objectives set out by Glife to obtain aren’t straightforward to attain. The present SEA meals supply chain has many inefficiencies that trigger points similar to meals wastage, risky meals costs, and pointless a number of middlemen.
Caleb believes these points are current due to a mismatch in supply and demand, which is attributable to the shortage of transparency and inefficiency within the ecosystem’s data stream.
Glife seeks to deal with these issues by driving the adoption of digital options for eating places. Utilizing their tech-enabled farm-to-table community, Glife offers an end-to-end meals and recent produce logistics that distributes recent fruits, greens and plant-based merchandise to the resort, restaurant, cafe (HORECA) business.
Their digital enterprise additionally offers software-as-a-service (SaaS) options to digitally remodel smallholder farmers and F&B companies all through the meals supply chain.
On the identical time, Caleb understands that demand from F&B prospects can be essential, because it determines the correct quantity of produce to be provided. To perform this, Glife strategically invested in and partnered with Novitee to digitise the stream of provides from manufacturing to consumption and drive know-how adoption amongst eating places and retailers.
With greater than S$1 billion in transacted worth, Glife’s leverage on Novitee’s huge knowledge output permits the usage of synthetic intelligence (AI) and predictive evaluation to decide the supply and demand of substances a restaurant would wish with each order made out of a diner.
This probably will increase the supply chain effectivity by aggregating buy calls for from F&B companies and connecting them straight to farmers and suppliers.
Caleb shares that the becoming a member of of forces between its proprietary B2B Meals Supply Chain OS GlifeWare and Novitee via data-sharing have led to the upcoming launch of NoviMarketplace later this yr, which encapsulates Glife’s imaginative and prescient of a greater B2B meals future.
It not solely advantages farmers and eating places, but in addition suppliers in different classes, as they’ll additionally digitally join with F&B retailers on a single platform to develop their companies inside the ecosystem.
“In the end, we purpose to develop and nurture a greater meals future at Glife. We envision the way forward for [the] meals ecosystem in SEA to be truthful, safe, extra environment friendly and sustainable,” emphasises Caleb.
Remodeling the meals supply chain from end-to-end
Concerning agritech startups and corporations, the very first thing that most likely pops into one’s thoughts can be precision farming and vertical farming, when in precise truth, your complete agritech ecosystem is far wider.
Glife Applied sciences cements itself as a business-to-business (B2B) meals know-how firm with a give attention to digitally reworking the meals supply chain of the business that gives vertically built-in meals options supplier utilizing know-how and digital options.
Since their enterprise mannequin is backed solely by know-how, Glife can function an environment friendly farm-to-table mannequin by eliminating middlemen prices in addition to working a tech-enabled operation.
From managing the sourcing, packing, distribution inside the worth chain to working with farmers within the software of distinctive applied sciences to assist with their farming strategies, Glife oversees all of it.
This implies as a substitute of buying recent produce from wholesalers or importers like what most conventional distributors do, Glife engages straight with farmers to safe contract farming, giving farmers a secure demand and pricing.
On the identical time, F&B companies stand to benefit with higher high quality produce at a extra aggressive pricing.
Glife’s work doesn’t simply finish as soon as the produce has been delivered to the eating places. Additionally they make an effort to prolong their options inside the meals worth chain with diners and prospects in thoughts, leading to a carefully knit group of F&B companies, resorts and eating places.
“In the end, we’re all about creating options inside the total meals worth chain, connecting nice substances to nice meals with eating places and the diners in thoughts,” Caleb summarises.
Greedy alternatives amidst issues
Getting to this stage was no stroll within the park for Glife.
Caleb shares that the business is pioneered by the older technology that largely is determined by the standard paper-and-pen mannequin.
Getting them to undertake Glife’s companies was difficult because the veterans within the business merely noticed them as a gaggle of younger entrepreneurs on the Pasir Panjang Wholesale Centre who have been merely attempting to navigate via their very own options and choices.
However as we caught via our beliefs and shared data and advantages of our know-how, the veterans turned extra open to us.
We recognised the advantages of know-how and the way it can remodel the business, however it was essential for us to share this with them, our companions and purchasers as properly to perceive the worth we carry to the desk.
– Caleb Wu, co-founder and deputy CEO of Glife Applied sciences
Step by step, the veterans gained confidence of their initiative and believed within the distinction the trio sought to make inside the business. They finally turned thinking about studying extra on how Glife might help their companies.
Nevertheless, the workforce confronted yet one more roadblock to clear: the results from the COVID-19 pandemic. Disrupted logistics in meals worth chains adversely impacted the amount, high quality, freshness, affordability and different key standards of meals accessible.
Coupled with many eating places shutting down in the course of the lockdown phases in Singapore, the demand and supply of produce and meals objects underwent drastic and sporadic adjustments, which gravely affected Glife’s operations as a B2B enterprise.
“In a single day, we noticed a 90 [per cent] drop in orders”, Caleb recalled. He provides {that a} drop in income would rapidly drain up their money stream and scale back their operational runway. Furthermore, capital suppliers have been additionally adopting a extra cautious method given the sudden flip of occasions to the business.
Within the midst of chaos, the Glife workforce realised there was a surge in shopper demand confronted by supermarkets, neighbourhood grocers and grocery-related e-commerce channels.
“We knew that we had to react fast[ly] to flip it round [and] we noticed the disaster as a chance”, Caleb says.
They noticed that the meals consumption stage throughout COVID-19 will stay the identical, simply that persons are opting extra for dwelling eating. On the identical time, they have been additionally conscious that the business beforehand didn’t have the capability to fulfil dwelling deliveries inside a direct discover as many of the last-mile logistics weren’t catered for meals or recent produce supply.
Having pinpointed an issue to remedy within the business, Glife determined to present greater than only a vary of merchandise to rival that of a grocery store. As well as, it created a full chilly chain logistics functionality to guarantee freshness and the connection with farmers to guarantee minimal disruption to supply shortages.
Inside a brief span of time, Glife managed to pivot and switch their B2B e-commerce mannequin right into a B2C direct to dwelling supply of recent produce, staples and condiments, main to the launch of their B2C e-commerce platform Greenies.sg, three days after the primary circuit breaker lockdown in April 2020.
Inside two weeks, Greenies.sg was supplying 300 to 400 orders a day, bringing S$300,000 to S$400,000 in money gross sales, serving to to offset the drop of their B2B gross sales. This was all achieved with out implementing a pay reduce of their workers.
“Whereas we handle[d] to tide via this difficult time, the pandemic additionally amplified the alternatives for Glife to speed up its progress inside the B2B house,” Caleb says, including that 2020 ended up changing into Glife’s best-performing yr since its inception.
Reflecting on these occasions, Caleb feels that the COVID-19 state of affairs make clear the unavailability of digital options for meals suppliers for his or her operations and handbook labour.
Our means to change from a B2B into B2C enterprise mannequin additionally highlighted the significance of continuous funding in know-how. With out know-how, it will not have been attainable for Glife to pivot efficiently.
– Caleb Wu, co-founder and deputy CEO of Glife Applied sciences
Increasing throughout SEA
Right now, Glife at present serves greater than 2,500 F&B companies and HORECA chains, and over 1,000 farmers in Singapore, Malaysia and Indonesia, with GlifeWare powering Glife’s regional operations, managing an annual stream of greater than 3,000 tonnes of produce.
As a vertically built-in meals service answer supplier, Glife expanded its companies in 2021 by offering the total stack of restaurant digital applied sciences for retailers within the HORECA business. Some purchasers they’ve labored with embody Changi Airport Group, Crystal Jade, Don Don Donki, 4 Seasons Resorts, Coca Cola and extra.
Earlier this yr, additionally they strategically acquired Malaysia-based Yolek and Bali-based PanenID as a degree of entrance into new SEA markets.
With Yolek and PanenID’s robust information of their respective markets and the robust connections they’ve with native farmers, suppliers and eating places, Caleb believes the acquisition would enable Glife to achieve a greater understanding of those markets and achieve a foothold inside.
Glife has additionally made a strategic funding earlier this yr with Koina, an agritech startup primarily based in Ho Chi Minh, and are working carefully with them to enter Vietnam as their subsequent key market.
By way of digital options, Caleb shares that they plan to allow the transition of Glife right into a market that permits Glife to change into a central orchestrator of the B2B HORECA market. This aggregates the demand that may benefit each Glife’s supply chain and different meals suppliers within the completely different verticals.
Featured picture credit score: Glife Applied sciences