Technology investors are trying to take advantage of the triple threats of malnutrition, resource shortages and pollution from food globalization and industrialization, investing billions of dollars in startups and seeking alternative sources of food.

According to CB Insights, a US market research firm, venture capitalists and companies have invested more than $9.5 billion in global investment over the past five years, reaching 2,100 deals. The purpose of their investment is to replace or complement the traditional methods of global food cultivation, production, processing and distribution.

The Not Company (hereafter referred to as NotCo) is headquartered in the southeast corner of San Diego, 22 minutes from downtown San Diego. In this multi-billion dollar food replacement business, NotCo seems unlikely to emerge as an embarrassing competitor.

But from there, NotCo's CEO Matias Muchnick and his two co-founders are plotting to spread the food revolution to Latin America, and the world, to all People enjoy the potential benefits.

For the continuous entrepreneurship of Muchinik, NotCo represents his second attempt at the food industry. The CEO had previously founded Eggless, a company that specializes in the sale of botanical seasonings and plant mayonnaise.

In the first attempt of the food industry, Muchinik discovered something, such as the research and development process in the food industry is not only in the basic aspects, but also very inefficient.

This is also the question Muznik hopes to solve when he first went to the University of California at Berkeley to study the industry.

“I went to Berkeley and decided to go to the Department of Biochemistry, hoping to really understand the data and science,” Muchinik said. In these respects, the pharmaceutical industry is doing better than the food industry. So I decided to get knowledge from the pharmaceutical industry, understand what they are doing, and explore in the food industry. ”

After graduating from Berkeley, Muchinik went to Harvard, where he successfully invited Karim Pichara. Pichalla was an astrophysicist who was using data science and machine learning to explore the inner activities of stars.

In addition to a data scientist, he also found Pablo Zamora as another co-founder. Zamora has been working on plant genomics at the University of California, Davis.

Therefore, the dream team of NotCo was established.

At the heart of NotCo's work is a machine learning technology. This is the same as its well-funded but troubled American rival Just (formerly known as Hampton Creek). This machine learning technique maps the similarities between the genetic characteristics of plants and their inferences on animals.

Muchinik said: "If we can map the genome of lentils or other beans, you can easily understand and predict whether this bean can mimic animal protein."

Although the three co-founders came together in the United States, they decided to return to their home country - Chile to start a business. For Muchinik, the company's cost in the city of San Diego is lower, and the researchers' talent pool is equally strong. Moreover, their company's distance from Silicon Valley is moderate, and it also attracts some newcomers.

"But we still belong to the outside population," he said.

Although they decided to return to Chile to continue their business, the San Diego base also reflects NotCo's primary strategic goal of leading the Latin American market and bringing healthier food to consumers who are in desperate need of these foods.

Malnutrition

Part of the reason Moznik wants to return to his native Chile is to curb the spread of high-calorie, low-cost foods in Latin America and to change the definition of malnutrition in countries around the world.

To understand the impact of malnutrition on emerging markets, look at Nestle, General Mills, Pepsico, and McDonalds and Yum Brands – the parent company of the KFC brand. The development of fast food restaurants has changed.

Large multinational food companies are almost ubiquitous in the US and Europe, and now they are turning their attention to emerging markets for growth and launching products and business models designed to appeal to low-income consumers.

The prices of these products are very low, but their nutritional value is almost hollowed out. Therefore, although people will not go hungry after eating, they will have other health problems.

"The popular saying is that this is the best thing in all possible worlds - cheap food, and it can be seen everywhere. If you don't delve into the meaning of this sentence, you will think it makes sense." Ontario Anthony Winson, a professor of food economics at Wolf University, told The New York Times. Winson also said that the reality is quite different from the above statement. "To put it bluntly, this kind of food is putting us to death."

Research data proves this. According to a 2017 study by the New England Journal of Medicine, about 10% of the world's population is now obese, including about 604 million adults and 108 million children, and these obesity rates are the fastest growing in emerging markets. .

People's malnutrition is just one of the side effects of industrial food companies infiltrating into different regions. As the Times pointed out, these companies also encourage their suppliers to industrialize. Although industrialization has created momentum for large-scale farming, it has destroyed forest land.

These problems are not limited to snack makers such as Nestlé or General Mills. The demand for meat in the fast food industry in these countries has led to factory farming, which is a huge factor in global warming.

Companies like Notco, founded by Muchinik, are trying to solve these problems. They use a low-cost alternative and claim that the impact of this solution on the environment is much smaller.

NotCo products

Since its inception in 2015, Muchinik and his team have been developing a range of products. Initially, the company intends to become the research and development and licensing department of the food company, providing a healthy alternative to the food company's current products.

In an interview with Reuters in 2016, Muchinik said: "We are a technology company, not a food company. We hope to make the most of our role by developing products for other companies."

It was then that our company began to experiment wildly about different foods, Muchinik said.

He commented on the early stage of the company's frenetic experiment: "We made mayonnaise, chocolate, milk, and meat substitutes. We also produce sausages, burgers, and Brazilian barbecues (a roast beef) But the taste is not so good.) Finally, following the footsteps of Hampton Creek, NotCo decided to start with mayonnaise.

Muchinik said that Chile actually represents the world's third largest market for mayonnaise, so it is feasible for the company to start producing mayonnaise in Chile. The company's future roadmap is to produce some products that can dominate the market. Mayonnaise is also easier to manufacture than these ambitious products, so they decided to start with mayonnaise.

Muchinik said that within eight months, he has successfully occupied a 10% share of the Chilean mayonnaise market. The company's next product is a milk substitute that will be launched in September. NotYogurt and Not Ice Cream will be launched in 2019.

He said that by 2020, NotCo will introduce sausage and meat substitutes.

The development of all these products is inseparable from the support of the software Giuseppe. Giuseppe is a machine learning software developed by Pichara and Zamora to discover the connections between different animal and plant proteins.

"We have drawn 7,000 plants, which is enough for us to use." Muchinik said, "We have mapped the structure of their glycine, which looks like animal protein."

In fact, Giuseppe works on seven different databases in seven different ways. Muchinik explained. There are molecular data describing foods and ingredients, spectral images of foods and ingredients, and a range of data collected by in-house taste testers such as taste, texture, aftertaste, spicy and acidity. "We have a lot of parameters," Muchinik said.

Today, with the development of the product roadmap, the company has raised more funds and hopes to promote the products throughout the market, not only in Chile, but also across Latin America.

Kaszek Ventures and SOS Ventures recently raised $3 million for the company to expand its production capacity.

Financing is a fulcrum to enter the market directly, and the company explicitly refused to accept financing two years ago. Muchinik said: "We want to be a brand company, and NotCo now has social money."

To do this, you need to develop your company's supply chain. The company is now able to produce 64 tons of mayonnaise per month, but because it also wants to produce milk, yogurt, ice cream and meat substitutes, it needs to continue to expand its production facilities.

“We decided to set up a processing plant in the local area,” Muchinik said. “We will start selling our products in Brazil and Argentina through exports. Once we have a market share of 5% or 8%, we will establish a processing plant locally.”