Unique Startup Business Models – Story – 9 – Lumitics – Seamless Food Waste Prevention Solution Backed By Modern Technology

Singaporean Food technology startup Lumitics is a company that tackles food wastage in businesses. The company provides smart food waste tracking systems that leverage state of the art technology to identify and measure the amounts of food wasted by restaurants, kitchens, catering enterprises and other businesses.

Lumitics -The Inception

The company was founded in 2017 by Keshav Sivakumar and Rayner Loi and is a platform dedicated to tackling and minimizing the issue of food wastage in industrial space. Their main product is a food waste tracker that can integrate with standard garbage bins used in kitchens. This device uses cutting edge technology, with sensors that detect the waste and proprietary AI image recognition technology that identify and classify the food thrown away. 

The basic function of the technology is to identify and measure food wastage and provide that information. Clients can then utilize this information to reduce food wastage, optimize ingredient orders, working time, and end up saving time, money, food and energy. 

Lumitics -About The Company

Lumitics is a company born out of a passion for the environment, and saving people. We waste almost a third of all the food we produce while many countries and communities across the globe face severe issues related to food scarcity. Famines, starvation, malnutrition and many other problems can be solved by reducing the food wasted around the world. 

Lumitics offers an easy, efficient and tech-focused solution to this problem. Their product, when coupled with the industries that produce, distribute and subsequently waste food, can lead to a significant improvement in the status quo. They provide a smart tracker for food waste and many services that can help clients leverage the data acquired from the setup. 

They offer their Learner Kitchen program which train chefs and restaurant owners to optimize their kitchen. They also help optimize the cooking and serving processes, reduce wastage via trimmings, and provide smarter purchase as well as menu management solutions. 

All these services combined can assist kitchens around the world to reduce their food wastage, save money, and help to improve the world with their actions. They also gain the advantage of leveraging cutting edge technology and utilizing it to improve their businesses. 

Broadening The Scope 

The company has evolved from an enterprise food waste management solution to a leading voice in reducing food wastage across businesses. They have given talks to Ministers and is one of the 25 winning startups in the UN World Tourism Organization’s Sustainable Development Goals Startup contest. The attention and goodwill attained by the company play a pivotal role in their expansion and future works. 

They have also raised over SGD 1 Million, including their early 2020 seed funding round that attracted over SGD 750,000 for local expansion. The firm wants to focus on improving its product, and expand to more companies, including ones in the Transportation sector. The investment mainly came from angel investor Frank Courmont, a veteran in the hospitality industry, and ReadyVentures. 

The Verdict

While there are a lot of new solutions in terms of sustainable development for enterprises, Lumitics occupies a niche tackling a mostly ignored problem. Preventable food waste is considered to account for 15-20% of food costs for hotels and has consequences beyond mere economic losses in the big picture. Preventing these losses will help tackle the existing food crisis, and the company aims to minimize the wastage on this front.