Singapore-based farm-to-table startup connects farmers to F&B businesses

Singapore agritech firm Glife announced today that it has raised S$1.6 million (US$1.18 million) in seed funding from Global Founders Capital and 500 Startups. A few groups of angel investors took part in this round, including F&B and tech veterans such as Royston Tay, the co-founder of Zopim.

The digital business-to-business (B2B) agritech firm said that it will use the funding to enhance the user experience for restaurants. This includes building a consolidated invoicing system to deal with perishable goods and greater traceability of produce from farmers. It is also pilot-testing an on-demand logistics technology for last mile delivery fulfillment, as well as to scale and strengthen the technology team in Singapore.

Glife’s farm-to-table platform seeks to redefine end-to-end agricultural food supply chain. It claimed that it has got more than 150 local F&B businesses connected directly with farmers within their ecosystem for fresh produce needs.

“Democratising green and wholesome living have always been our mission. With the changing tastes and demands of consumers, this drives the adoption of international standards of transparency and sustainability in food sourcing. Through Glife we aim to uphold these standards and provide affordable access to healthy and sustainable lifestyle choices to the market while achieving high food security standards and ethical ways of production,” said Justin Chou, CEO of Glife Technologies.

With the Southeast Asian internet economy expected to exceed US$100 billion in the study shown by Google and Temasek, technology plays a growing role in building an efficient, resilient, and sustainable agri-food supply chain in delivering fresh food to the consumer market.

Demand for vegetables is growing among Southeast Asia’s roughly 600 million consumers, making the region’s agriculture ecosystem ripe for technology disruption.

The challenges of climate change, urbanisation, and rapidly evolving dietary needs are creating an urgent demand for sustainable solutions to increase resilience and optimise farming processes. The hope is to minimise waste and achieve supply-chain traceability and efficiency.

“The food supply chain has been traditionally inefficient and long. Adopting a digital commerce platform for agricultural products will reduce friction and waste while delivering better margins to farmers, lower prices to restaurants and more sustainable farming practices,” says Tito Costa, Partner at Global Founders Capital.

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Currently, the company said it tries to tackle the problem of numerous middlemen to bridge the gap between these two groups within the food supply chain.

Glife soft-launched its platform’s farm-to-table operations in Singapore last May. Previously, it received funding by Quest Ventures in their pre-seed round of funding, .
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