From Coffee Beans To Milk, This Singapore-Based Startup Uses AI To Determine Ingredient Quality – CoffeeTalk

ProfilePrint, a Singapore-based tech startup, has developed a patented digital fingerprint technology that can rapidly analyze the identity and quality of ingredients, helping agribusinesses save money and time. The company’s technology addresses the challenge of multiple rounds of physical food samples exchanged between buyers and sellers, which can have significant environmental impacts and compromise the quality of food. ProfilePrint digitalizes food ingredients, reducing logistics costs, overheads, and carbon footprint.

The technology is relatively simple, allowing companies to create their own AI models on the platform, which assess whether the raw ingredient is a good fit for what they are looking for. Traders can also build AI models for specific clients to determine whether the product fits their preferences, based on criteria such as looks or flavor. At its core is a wave detector in the materials combined with AI, which analyzes food samples at a molecular level and recognizes food quality within seconds.

ProfilePrint’s technology has led to huge advancements in solving one of the most challenging issues in the coffee industry: spotting defective products that cannot be seen through the human eye. The end goal is to streamline the whole supply chain and ultimately cut out human error.

ProfilePrint is not alone within the still embryonic pool of food quality and AI startups. U.S.-based startup Aromyx combines biotechnology, data science, and artificial intelligence to help businesses match flavors and scents for product development. Brightseed, a California-based startup, uses its artificial intelligence platform, Forager, to identify compounds in plants and microbes and understand their health benefits. These are then used to create health solutions for food, beverage, and supplements.

The startup’s origins go back to 2017, founded on the back of Lai’s travels through the African continent and China. In Uganda, Lai saw farmers trying to sell food ingredients at bulk prices, as they didn’t have the expertise to make assessment of how good their products are. ProfilePrint is now based in Singapore with 90% of its revenues coming from outside the city state, but it has a global market deployed in over 60 locations across six continents.

By 2018, ProfilePrint caught the attention of several investors, including Yukihiro Maru, the founder and CEO of Leave a Nest Capital, a deep tech startup ecosystem established in 2002 in Japan. Maru believes that ProfilePrint is well placed to help agribusinesses on a global scale.

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