Green Pod Labs: Transforming Food Technology with Sustainable Solutions
What if someone said we don’t need refrigerators for fruits and veggies?
What if I told you we don’t need cold supply & storage for fruits and veggies?
Speaking of increasing shelf life, methods like freezing, cold supply, and chemical preservation have been used in some cases.
But ever heard about plant extracts saving the day, to increase their shelf life?
What if I told you, you could use tiny sachets for your groceries to stay fresh?
Yes. Certainly, there is a way.
And that would be the topic that we are discussing today.
GREEN POD LABS is an Indian startup founded in 2019 with nature-inspired solutions for fresh produce loss by active packaging.
We share the insights of the interview after conversing with Mr. Deepak Rajmohan — Founder & CEO of GreenPod Labs.
Let’s begin by exploring the inception of this novel concept.
Why Agricultural Engineering?
The story of Green Pods begins with a simple yet powerful idea:-” Finding an untapped niche in agriculture.“
Mr. Deepak Rajmohan himself hails from Chennai.
Agriculture wasn’t a big part of his daily life, though he wanted to explore a niche where he could go deeper and learn more about it.
This led him to choose agricultural engineering.
Even though the future wasn’t clear to him initially, he believed agriculture was a field with enormous untapped potential.
After his undergraduate degree, he went to the US to pursue a Master’s in Food Science because he wanted to be trained in advanced research in the same field.
“Before starting, I looked at the syllabus and things were very interesting, very new, things that were never explored. So I thought I will give it a shot.“
How was the journey from food science to starting Green Pods?
After completing his Master’s in Food Science in the U.S., Deepak delved deeper into food-related challenges.
It was during this time that he became acutely aware of the staggering issue of food waste.
This problem was prevalent even in India — the world’s second-largest producer of fruits and vegetables.
After which it became a personal mission.
This problem of food waste would nag him every day.
He explored various aspects of the problem and began addressing challenges within the food industry.
He worked as a Food scientist for a major US food corporation — Nurture Inc. which is where he gained additional real-world insights into the problem of food waste.
He worked there for about 2 years before moving back to India.
He felt that the massive amount of food waste that happens in India was ripe for some entrepreneurial disruption. Specifically, he wanted to address food loss issues in fresh produce.
His initial plan was to build a cost-effective alternative to cold storage. But, he wanted to assess the ground realities — to truly appreciate the problems farmers faced in the field.
He did extensive travels across Tamil Nadu, where he engaged with farmers, traders, exporters, and retailers, it became evident that cold storage and supply chains were insufficient to solve the problem.
This realization led to the exploration of other solutions — something that would not disrupt the existing logistics phase to alter the supply chain.
Eventually, he realized the viable solution would be “Active Packaging”. Once he had this epiphany, he and his team promptly delved into the science behind it.
The novel idea behind this technology was to create a defense mechanism for fruits and vegetables, inspired by their natural ability to withstand stress.
Temperature and handling was the only point of view that was dealt with to keep the produce stand for a long time, where the common solutions employed were cold chain transport, individual packing, and freezing.
But there could be various points of stress induction in plants and hence this needs a fresh approach.
This approach marked a turning point.
They dedicated themselves to developing sustainable plant products for preserving fresh produce.
What was your R&D experience like?
Until 2019, Deepak spent time dabbling and understanding the problem and understanding pain points of the stakeholders.
He and his team zeroed down on “Active Packaging” as a solution.
In Feb 2020, Deepak came across the idea of using defense mechanisms from fruits and vegetables against the stress factors causing spoilage.
By mid-2020, he and his team were ready with their first prototype.
Deepak’s philosophy for market entry was — “Be close to the customer”.
If the market wants your product it will sell and scale.
In fact in his words:
“R&D can be lab-scale and until you understand what is the pain point from the customer side, there is no way you can scale from here.”
So Ðeepak spent much time with their target customer even during the prototype phase.
Their early prototype showed promising results — they were able to increase the shelf life of a few commodities for a significant amount of time. This validated their hypothesis about this technology. From there on, they increased their investment in R&D.
The initial team of scientists working with Deepak started to focus on customizing the product for field usage.
By June of 2021, they brought in an R&D director, who had a PhD and Post-doc in Plant Biotechnology and post-harvest management to bring in expert knowledge.
In 2022, they started to monetize their product — thanks to the close connection they maintained with customers.
Please share some technical insights into your Active Packaging technology.
Here we will quote directly, as he explains the technology in his own words:
- Fruits and vegetables before harvest can communicate between different plants. If there is any predator coming in, it can give cues to the other plants signaling or caution.
- When that cue reaches the next crop it activates the immune system within the crop. It helps fight against the other predators coming in that can also be temperature, it could be drought, it could be pests or it could be anything.
- We understood that communication system and how we can replicate that communication system through our product. So every food has different defense pathways that are related to certain spoilage.
- We do look at the cross spoilage and backtrack to see what are the potential pathways that are influencing this spoilage.
- We counteract these products by using our pathways so our product releases those volatile compounds when it comes in contact with the food that activates these pathways.
- Resulting in reduced spoilage.
- So it could be slowing down the ripening rate or minimizing the metabolic growth or it could be anything of that sort but it tries to solve that pain point.
The product / the active plant ingredient sachet contains 3 layered nano-encapsulated plant extracts. This sachet activates the defense system of the fruit or the vegetable against ripening or spoilage by microbial attack. According to Deepak, the GREEN POD LAB’s active ingredient sachets when placed inside/ along with the stock have an extended shelf life.
What is unique about Green Pods?
According to Deepak, there is little competition in India because the R&D behind their product is complex.
Secondly, they have developed their product for ambient temperature — which is a challenging problem to solve.
Finally, they customize packaging products — THE ACTIVE INGREDIENT SACHETS — for each commodity which also increases their shelf life by 40–60%.
A set of mangoes, denoted as A (the control group), and another set of mangoes packed alongside GREEN POD Sachets, denoted as B, were left at ambient temperature for a period of 10 days. Observations were made at 5-day intervals. The results, depicted in the image, reveal that the A (control) mangoes displayed signs of spoilage, while the B set of mangoes exhibited reduced and controlled ripening indicators.
Deepak concedes that there is competition in the US and Europe, but according to him their models still centers around cold storage and cold supply chain.
“THE EXCLUSIVE EDGE MODELS OF GREEN POD ACTIVE INGREDIENTS”
- Because in ambient temperature the spoilage is 3X more solving the scenario, Green Pods has a unique advantage in the market that gives green pod products their edge.
- These sachets are portable and the formulation of the active ingredients varies according to the stock of the fresh produce and its volume, they are economical at a price range of about 7–15 INR per sachet.
- Green Pods products can adjust to an existing supply chain.
Deepak wants to keep working on technology in an agile fashion to make their product easier and easier for their customer to use.
What has been the marketing strategy of Green Pods?
Deepak disclosed that there is no dedicated marketing team within the organization. He personally takes charge of outreach and business expansion, and a substantial portion of their growth has been organic.
What helps Green Pods according to Deepak is seeking mentorships. So he keeps trying to get into accelerator programs and gets into collaboration with universities.
According to him, media attention is not very useful for a B2B company as eyeballs don’t necessarily translate into contracts.
However, the accelerator programs have still gotten unexpected media attention.
Because it is a B2B product, they want to focus on how Green Pods can associate with more universities, more accelerators, and more support systems, to improve their products.
That’s the focus on. The media attention is just a by-product of the same without any planning.
Once again, we would like to quote Deepak:
“We only have R&D, operations, and business development. We are a team of 23 people spread across the 3 departments and we are an R&D-heavy company so 50% of it is R&D, we have not even put 1$ into marketing.”
“We focus on working with other collaborators and other ecosystem players who can help us scale to the next phase during the journey we get these opportunities to express about our work.”
Green Pods and Sustainability. How do you see them together?
According to Deepak, the environment is evolving and it’s not evolving on the positive side.
“The next two generations are gonna experience it the day they are born.”
So he feels it is a moral responsibility to minimize that impact in whatever way one can.
And he feels that food-based wastage is not something that should happen.
Because as of now it’s like we burning 15% of our money. To elaborate, food wastage is on such an insane level that it is like if you get 100$, then you are burning 15$ out of it.
According to studies, when one ton of food-based food loss is preserved you save about 2.5 tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions.
Right now food waste contributes to about 8% of the carbon footprint.
At 8% it is one of the significant contributors, and if Green Pods can help reduce, it will long-term benefit everyone.
But there is a lot in this area that has yet to be solved both from a production perspective as well as from the environmental perspective.
What is the greatest challenge that you faced in your startup journey?
As with any startup, Green Pods has faced its share of challenges.
Educating customers about their innovative solutions has been a significant hurdle.
Even though the customers are well aware of the food loss problem they need to be better aware of the solutions.
Their thought process is that cold storage and a cold supply chain is the only solution.
Convincing a market accustomed to cold storage that there’s a viable alternative for preserving produce at ambient temperatures requires time and persistence.
They have to put it up in such a way that reduces their pain points and increases benefits.
No one is gonna buy a product because there are some sustainability efforts.
The customer will buy it only if there is an economic benefit for them.
Hence Green Pods focuses on how can they increase their customer’s revenue by increasing the life through our product.
Luckily, food waste is also one of the major contributors to economic losses.
However, building trust through continuous education and demonstrating economic benefits have been the key challenges.
And what about the funding?
Green Pods, operating in a niche within the agricultural sector, faced unique challenges in securing funding.
After a successful pre-seed round of 550K USD in 2022, the company also secured another set of grants from India and abroad.
These funds have been crucial in advancing their mission.
Regulatory Rigor: Ensuring Safety and Compliance
Ensuring the safety of their product has been a top priority for Green Pods. All ingredients are US FDA TRAS/GRAS compliant.
Also, the company worked closely with India’s regulatory body, FSSAI, to establish a new category called Shipment Extension for Food.
Compliance with international regulations is a step-by-step process, with each country presenting its unique requirements.
Treasured Milestones: From Vision to Reality
For Green Pods, every commercial success is a milestone.
So far they have already commercialized 2 products in the market.
By working with over 170 pilot customers and bringing their products to market, they’ve not only extended shelf life but also demonstrated the economic benefits of their solution.
But the happiest moment according to Deepak is when a customer sees the value in your product.
One of the customers had told them that for every dollar they put in Green Pods, they get 7–8$ in return as an increase in revenue.
Looking Ahead: The Future of Green Pods
The future for Green Pods is both broad and International.
GREEN PODS is not only making the active plant ingredient for fruits and vegetables it is also covering grains, cereals, and much more which are all in the pipeline of processing.
Their horizontal expansion includes developing products for various commodities such as grains, seeds, milk, meat, and food products across the different segments.
Simultaneously, they plan to expand their presence into international markets, particularly in Africa and Asia.
Pointers for the Entrepreneurs of Tomorrow
“Identifying a problem you are genuinely passionate about and dedicating time to learning and understanding your chosen field are fundamental to success.”
Because according to him the glossy side of entrepreneurship that comes from the media about the opportunities and making it big is not the reality.
“The reality is hard-hitting, to be back persevering every day you need to be committed to doing it day in and day out.”
But alongside passion, preparation is equally important.
For example, before starting the company Deepak spent about 5–6 years understanding different aspects of the business and the company, reading a lot of books, speaking with a lot of founders listening to a lot of podcasts, and building up his understanding of how to start-up.
“Whatever you do about building that foundation is very very critical. But passion comes first. If you have a passionate problem to work on, you will get the rest of it.”
The journey of Green Pods is an inspiring tale of innovation, sustainability, and perseverance.
By reimagining how we preserve fresh produce, this company is making strides toward a more sustainable and efficient agricultural future.
“Finally, When someone says we would not need a cold supply or refrigerator for fresh produce, you can trust them on this. The future of sustainable storage is here and it is growing with nature-inspired solutions around the world.”
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