Day 1 of the essential Summit on smart protein event dived deeper into how enterprise and industry can come together to transform the future of food

Key Highlights:

• India needs to change mindset around smart proteins as it’s a necessity to feed people, says Mr. Narayanan
• It will take time to develop economies of scale to make smart protein genuinely affordable – but the growth of the industry has accelerated tremendously over the last year
• The Smart Protein Summit 2021 is a huge opportunity to bring together the smart protein community across business, science, and policy
• Need of the hour is continued, bold, visionary action towards a more secure, sustainable, and just food system
• In addition to the panels, several roundtable sessions of the Smart Protein Industry Forum, a collective platform to accelerate the sector across all stakeholders with a collaborative mission focus

Mumbai, November 10, 2021 (GPN): The Good Food Institute India (GFI India), the central expert organization and convening body in the ‘alternative protein’ or ‘smart protein’ sector, kicked off its annual flagship event, The Smart Protein Summit today. The Summit is poised to be the most impactful event for the smart protein ecosystem in India. Day 1 threw light on various aspects of the smart protein sector with a Keynote Address from Suresh Narayanan, Chairman & Managing Director, Nestle India Limited, and speakers like Genelia Deshmukh, Founder Imagine Meats, among various budding entrepreneurs and industry experts.

Suresh Narayanan, Chairman & Managing Director, Nestle India Limited, as a key note speaker at the Smart Protein Summit 2021, said, “Smart protein is so vital and crucial to the country. Unfortunately, in India we have a protein deficiency ratio of a fourth to a half – despite the fact that we are the world’s largest grower of pulses, largest producer of milk, and second largest producer of fruit and vegetables. Yet we are protein deficient. First mindset change we have to make is that smart proteins are not only to assuage the moral conscience of people on global warming. It is much more than that. It is a necessity to feed people. It has an impact on economies.”

Mr. Narayanan further added, “We need to look at this as a more urgent and serious issue. In the context of India there are the 5T’s – Triangulation, Technologies, Transferability, Transparency, Tenacity. The important issue for us, as the world’s biggest milk producer, is that any strategy that says to eliminate milk and substitute with plant-based milk is not a viable strategy. It’s not even an ethical strategy. The way to move forward is through synergy between conventional dairy & pulses and smart protein. The whole area of alternative protein merits close cooperation between research, private industry/startups and corporates, and the government. Technology has to be engineered and nurtured over a period of time. We should create protein clusters between farmers, govt, research, and the private sector – to develop indigenous smart protein products. It will take time to develop economies of scale to make protein genuinely affordable. The larger opportunity is to create protein products that can fit into the Indian repertoire of Indian cuisine.”

Mr. Narayanan elaborated on the two incongruences in the context of India that are affecting the development of this industry; firstly, links between farmers or FPOs and enterprises in terms of the sustainability, quality, transparency and economic viability of the produce whether its millets, pulses, etc. There is a need to have more linkages at the sourcing level. Secondly, more investments in the alternative protein space. Incubation between large private players and smaller entrepreneurs is required. Today, the impediment is accessibility and scale. Plant-based protein products for consumers that are nutritionally efficacious and optimal cost, will get acceptance. Transformation of India will happen – when alt proteins become mainstream, affordable, and no longer unfamiliar. Feeding Indians, both today and in the future, nutritious products should be a national mission and a personal mission for all of us.”

The Good Food Institute India lays the groundwork for the smart protein sector in the country, across business, science, and policy. These smart protein foods – whether they’re made from plants, cultivated from cells, or produced from microorganisms like fungi – are demonstrating a model to save the planet. The Smart Protein Summit 2021 is a huge opportunity to bring together the smart protein community across business, science, and policy. Last year, the Summit collectively laid out the opportunity for a Mission for Smart Protein and this year, the focus will be to move further from conversation to action.

Varun Deshpande, Managing Director, The Good Food Institute India, said, “We are at an incredibly exciting time in the world of smart protein – and particularly plant-based foods. Globally, the sector has taken massive strides since it was established only 5 years ago, with startup companies like Beyond Meat and Impossible Foods scaling all over the world and hitting billions of dollars in valuations, food and conventional meat giants like Nestle, Cargill, and Unilever making investments in or launching their own lines of plant-based meats, and the epicentre of the sector increasingly shifting to Asia in recent years. In India we are finally seeing the sector take off, with new launches and partnerships from exciting brands being announced every week. Many more are working on deep tech innovations in fermentation-derived and cultivated proteins, many academic and government partnerships are coming to fruition, and large corporations are beginning to enter the fray meaningfully. It’s very gratifying to see this all come together, but we think a number of open questions still remain on how to build, position, launch, and scale a plant-based meat company. At GFI India and at the Smart Protein Summit 2021, we are all about celebrating how far we have come and thinking about what comes next and to urge continued, bold, visionary action towards a more secure, sustainable, and just food system.”

Varun further added, “We have always viewed our work at GFI India as an opportunity to demonstrate a model for the establishment of smart protein in the developing world. We have a huge promise to drive the space forward and in turn benefit from it globally – and that’s a great thing, because we cannot continue with business as usual. Scarcity and strife in so many forms are an imminent and already present threat – whether it’s malnutrition, food insecurity, climate change, economic fragility, and of course, public health issues like pandemics. Emerging markets like India are home to some of the largest groups of vulnerable populations on the planet. Ushering in an affordable, sustainable supply for delicious, nutritious protein foods is critical to reversing that tragedy. This is a particularly opportune time to talk about these issues – we just had the first UN Food Systems Summit in September and last week we had the global Conference of Parties (COP26), the world’s largest climate conference. Especially as we build back from the pandemic, there’s a huge focus on making sure that developing world voices and communities are included in the food system’s vision for the future. If smart protein and especially smart protein in emerging markets – in India – do not have a seat at the table, it’s not going to be enough. The good news is that so many are working tirelessly and this is our moment to accelerate that momentum.”

Genelia Deshmukh, Founder Imagine Meats, said, “The pandemic was a big reason to not be able to be all over – we would have been at a lot of places doing a lot of live events – we couldn’t get plant-based foods to everyone’s plate. But it’s been so encouraging to see the plant-based industry grow and it’s continuing to grow. The target is to hit all the QSRs. Once people taste it, they understand it. But till then there will always be a little reservation. The pandemic also brought in awareness around animal meat and the plant-based industry got a lot of eyeballs – so that helped. People thought we need to get more conscious and look at the planet we’ve ruined and acknowledge it. We’re coming closer to what we want to see on everyone’s plate. We want to see it helping the environment, helping animal cruelty. We hope there are lots of companies that come out there and support the industry like us! Innovation is key. At our end, we’re looking at iterations all the time. From version 1 to version 2. We launched with 9 products and are looking at 4 more. Products that consumers are used to. We want people to have something for breakfast, lunch, dinner and snacks! Taste is also key and we need to get flavors spot on. Being India and being culturally so rich and into spices that helps us dish out a lot of plant-based products. We came out with our brand not being green and redundant. Plant-based meat needs to be the coolest food’.

Day 1 of The Smart Protein Summit 2021 had various interesting sessions which included the Innovators Showcase, a platform for aspirational entrepreneurs to showcase and pitch their innovative ideas to a panel of investors, followed by Industry forum roundtables and panel discussions on: Serving up the Future: Cooking, conversation, and consumer insights, A Springboard for Innovation: Smart protein for every plate, and Financing the Transformation: Investors across the smart protein landscape. Day 1 concluded with a session on Blazing a Trail: Plant-based start-ups at the frontier of innovation.

Panelists included: Rajesh Prasad (Amazon India), Dheeraj Talreja (AAK), Kees Kruythoff (Chairman & CEO, LiveKindly Collective), Gaurav Sharma (Greenest Foods), Sohil Wazir (Blue Tribe Foods), Mihir Joshi (IFF), Harshil Karia (Schbang), Genelia Deshmukh (Imagine Meats), Nidhi Mathur (Axilor Ventures), Anubha Goyal (DSG Consumer Partners), Michal Klar (Better Bite Ventures), Samir Shah (Peak Ventures), Priya Shah (Theia Ventures), Gauri Devidayal (Food Matters, The Table, Magazine Street Kitchen, Mag Street Cafe), Abhishek Sinha (Good Dot), Akanksha Ghai (BVeg Foods), Priyanka Srinivasan, Abhay Rangan (Goodmylk), Rohan Mirchandani (Epigamia), Shardul Dabir, Mark Kahn (Omnivore), Ritu Verma (Ankur Capital), Starlene Sharma (Green Artha), Rajeev Chitrabhanu (Magnetic), and Vipul Patel (CIIE.Co).

For further information on the Summit visit www.smartproteinsummit.com and for GFI India, visit www.gfi.org.in