Outlook Spotlight

Meet Somdip Dey, The Indian Scientist Who Is Changing The World By Fighting Wastage Of Food

Given his experience with food waste and hunger, while pursuing his PhD at the University of Essex, U.K. in 2020, he co-developed the Nosh app, an artificial intelligence based mobile application to help users manage their food better and help reduce waste in the process.

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Somdip Dey, Founder, Nosh Technologies
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Nosh Technologies' founder, Somdip Dey, might not be a household name, but his works are changing the lives of many people around the world. Dey graduated from St. Xavier's College, Kolkata in 2012 and invented the QR code-based degree transcript and certificate mechanism that is mandated by UGC to secure degree certificates from fakes. In 2013, he moved to the U.K. to pursue a master's degree at the University of Manchester. In 2014, while completing his master's his parents in India met a tragic accident that forced him to send back all his money for his parent's treatment, without realising that he doesn't have money to buy food for himself. To survive hunger, he ended up dumpster diving and gathered edible food from bins that are thrown away by others. 

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Given his experience with food waste and hunger, while pursuing his PhD at the University of Essex, U.K. in 2020, he co-developed the Nosh app, an artificial intelligence based mobile application to help users manage their food better and help reduce waste in the process. Nosh became very popular in the U.K. and U.S. and based on the success of Nosh, he co-founded Nosh Technologies with Suman Saha, a computer engineer from Kolkata. Nosh Technologies is a British deep tech company that develops algorithms and software using artificial intelligence, blockchain, cloud computing and edge computing to fight food waste and hunger. 

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Nosh Technologies currently offers three distinct services, namely Nosh Food Management (Nosh app), Nosh Daily and Nosh Shop to reduce food waste and raise awareness about it among the masses. Nosh Food Management app focuses on reducing waste in the household by optimising users' consumption and managing food better by providing recipe options, shopping planning and reminding them to consume the bought food within the expiry date. Nosh has already helped more than 17,000 users to save more than 255,000 food products. On the other hand, Nosh Daily is the news and media content provider for the food industry, focusing on raising awareness of what's happening around the world. Nosh Daily started as a companion blog to the Nosh app as reported by TechCrunch but now it aggregates news from different platforms besides providing content by its own editorial team. The company's Nosh Shop is a service that enables users to buy about-to-expire food at a discounted price while donating a portion of the sales to hunger-related charities. Nosh Shop is currently only available in certain cities and is not yet available around the world. Dey claims that Nosh Shop aims to empower food vendors while reducing food waste.

Dey, who is recently named an MIT Technology Review's Innovator Under 35 Europe 2022 and World Intellectual Property Review Leader 2022 commented, "I co-founded Nosh Technologies to develop technological solutions to fight food waste and improve the sustainability of the planet. Food waste is not just a social issue but an environmental one as it contributes to almost 10% of the global carbon emissions." Dey continues, "With Nosh Technologies we hope to make a difference around the world by reducing food waste and hunger but food waste is such a big issue that we need more people and institutions to join in this fight."

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There are several other companies and apps like Too Good To Go, Olio, Gander and Karma in the food waste reduction space that are also providing different solutions to deal with the issue. However, Nosh Technologies' approach is different from the others as it aims to reduce food waste by progressing the advancement of technological fields like artificial intelligence and blockchain and has already developed several intellectual properties in the area.
 

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