MIT Solve

Solution Overview

Solution Name:

NUTY - Nutritious & Tasty Food

One-line solution summary:

Sustainable fresh ready-to-eat food supply chain to provide affordable, nutritious and balanced diet for Indian urban population.

Pitch your solution.

NUTY (NUtritious & TastY) foods has developed an innovative low-carbon supply chain (farm to fork) for providing healthy and tasty ready-to-eat meals.

Our mission is to make good food affordable and accessible to 130 million young urban Indians, an important large consumer segment that lacks skills and/or facilities to make their own healthy meals.

We are the first in India to produce extended shelf-life food using High Pressure Processing technology and to build an ioT and machine learning based food traceability system.

Our meals are portion controlled and are balanced in nutrition. Further, our approach eliminates food wastage and leaves less carbon footprint than conventional methods.

We supply prepared food to consumers directly and through small and independent restaurants & food service providers which account for 85% of India’s $95 Billion food services industry.

What specific problem are you solving?

Minimise food wastage - On average, over 20% of prepared food is wasted. We have developed an extended shelf-life technology that reduces the wastage to 5%.
Supply balanced meals - using nutrition science, we prepare portion controlled meals that are balanced in required nutrients.
Reduce carbon emissions - about 25% of all carbon emissions are from food production. To address this, we are taking several measures. We use solar electricity for cooking, processing and storing the meals. This approach minimises the use of fossil fuels. We also employ energy-efficient storage chillers that use just 80 watts for storing chilled products at 0 -10c.Additionally, we use solar-powered chest chillers.
Economic opportunity - Indian food services industry is largely (80%) run by unorganised small and independent operators who employ three million people. By supplying to such small and independent restaurants/operators, we empower them to sell a wide variety of healthy and hygienic meals. Such high quality products enable them to service large urban workforce.
Pandemic proof - by offering Grab & Go meals that can be purchased from automated smart chillers, we are able to minimise wait times and overcrowding, which is quite common in India given the high population density.

What is your solution?

Our solution involves a clean-food production and distribution process in which raw materials are sourced directly from local growers to the kitchen wherein the food is prepared using standardized production methods that employ proprietary non-thermal shelf-life extension processes to maintain the freshness of food while keeping the nutrients intact.

The prepared food is radio tagged for traceability & shelf-life monitoring and distributed to consumers and businesses.

Who does your solution serve, and in what ways will the solution impact their lives?

Our solution has the potential to impact over 100 million urban workforce who seek healthy and affordable Grab & Go meals during their work days.

By supplying our prepared food to small and independent restaurants and food service operators, we help them to improve the quality of their food and eliminate food wastage, which collectively contributes to a healthy workforce and low carbon emissions for the planet.

Which dimension of the Challenge does your solution most closely address?

Improve supply chain practices to reduce food loss, scale new business models for producer-market connections, and create low-carbon cold chains

Explain how the problem, your solution, and your solution’s target population relate to the Challenge and your selected dimension.

By using clean-food production technology to make extended shelf-life food and by using low-carbon cold-chain storage systems to distribute them to consumers through small restaurants, we are promoting the shift to low-impact and nutritious diets.

In what city, town, or region is your solution team headquartered?

Bengaluru, Karnataka, India

What is your solution’s stage of development?

Growth: An organization with an established product, service, or business model rolled out in one or, ideally, several communities, which is poised for further growth

Who is the primary delegate for your solution?

Ray Nathan, Founder & CEO