Food Processing is epochs as old as 2,50,000 years, whereas in the era of Upper Palaeolithic or late stone age, homo sapiens began cooking their Food on fire after discovering it. We can smartly say that cooking was the first form of food processing while the fire was the first food processing technology. Cooking or food processing enhances food’s palatability, digestibility, hygiene, and safety.

More lately, as in the ancient and medieval times, other complex forms of food processing – bread baking, cheese producing, vinegar-pickles, or sun-dried foods and vegetables, frying, salting, and smoking of food – emerged.

During the industrial revolution of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, mass-scale food processing began, commencing the advent of canned and pasteurised foods.  The mass scale food processing continues to date, although the food processing technology has undergone drastic changes.

In today’s post-pandemic times, food-related health consciousness is the highest factor considered while developing every new food processing technique and technology.

Realizing this necessity, at Samath Global Food Consultants Pvt Ltd, based in Uppal, Hyderabad, the team of food scientists and engineers – under the keen gaze of their exemplary leaders, Director and Technical Advisor Rudrayya G Math and Sameera Nayani, Director and Projects Manager – are completely focused on advancing India’s food processing technology in the direction of quality, health, hygiene, safety, and sustainability.

R G Math is the pillar of perpetually growing ‘Samath Global Food Consultants’. Retired from his service as a Senior Scientist from CSIR – CFTRI and advising honorary, R G Math is an expert in the design and development of food processing equipment, providing engineering solutions, and designing low cost based novel technologies. He underwent Post Graduate Course in Mechanical Engineering with an excellent academic record.

R G Math also participated in national and international seminars and expos. He organized more than 200 training sessions on manufacturing. He has been employing his innovative designs and ideas for the last three decades to develop the Indian food processing sector.

In an interview with Insights Success for its exclusive edition of ‘The Fastest Growing Food & Beverage Companies’, R G Math spoke about his visions, mission, and plans on how Samath Global is putting Indian food processing technology on the international map.

Sir, give us a brief overview of your professional journey at Samath Global.

Although we started this company in 2020, just before the pandemic, with the vast expertise of our team in food research and industry, we have been offering our services to various food entrepreneurs for seven years. It is not uncommon that we struggle to get the projects initially like any start-up company. We came out of this lag phase with word of mouth and personal relations.  People started coming forward for discussions. We started giving brainstorming sessions for startups—offered contract research services for their ideas. Once we began to our brand website and established the proper networking, we were able to get the leads through our trusted customers, novel food processing solutions developed by our R&D team, google business and other digital marketing strategies.

Currently, we have been dealing with three start-up projects, two industry-sponsored projects, two collaborative projects and five academic projects. We have successfully conducted more than 15 brainstorming sessions and successfully completed six major projects in the past one year. Our customers are based in different parts of Telangana, Maharashtra, Karnataka, Jharkhand, Kerala, Delhi, and the UK.

We work with food startups and established food business entrepreneurs.

Startups include both individuals or incubates. Our team hails higher knowledge in different food sectors such as food engineering, equipment design, fruits and vegetable technology, baking technology, cereal and pulses technology, beverages technology and millets processing technology.

Our services include,

• Research and development (contract research)
• New food product development
• Feasibility studies
• Detailed project reports
• Food testing services
• Shelf life studies of the food products
• Cloud Kitchen/Restaurant Set up
• Recruitment services to food industries.
• Assistance in applying for an FSSAI license.
• Conducting brainstorming sessions for startups
• Technical services like equipment specifications, plant design, and scale-up
• Platform for graduate and postgraduate students to conduct their academic projects.

Tell us more about Samath Global’s vision and key aspects of its stronghold in the food and beverage space.

Our vision is to establish a training centre for food-based startup companies by providing hands-on training on low-cost novel food product development and scale-up. As our name ‘Samath Global’ Indicates, we want to take Indian food processing technology to a global level by offering our services and implementing our novel food processing technologies on an international platform.

We offer Business Solutions for start-ups or small and medium scale food business entrepreneurs.  Unique things which make us better than our competitors include Confidentiality (Intellectual Property Right Protection), Customization with less investments (low project costs) and Mentoring.

From a business leadership perspective, what is your opinion on the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the food and beverage space?

India’s food and beverage industry has mainly transformed due to changing consumer behaviour, technological innovations, and government regulations in the past five years. The impact of COVID -19 created an upsurge in demand for healthy food products. This demand further made professionals or individuals from various backgrounds turn into food entrepreneurs. This created many opportunities for the food consultancy industry to guide them into creating the right product with efficient processing techniques and low investment.

Even the most established food brands are hiring food consultants to formulate and develop new products by leveraging the Consultant’s knowledge and expertise to provide superior and integrated Solutions to their Food Business. The latest trends in the food industry include Ready to Cook, Ready to eat convenience products, dehydrated fruits and vegetables, vegan foods, high protein low sugar snacks and gluten-free products.

What efforts did you take during the pandemic to sustain operations and ensure the safety of your team at the same time?

We are currently hiring freshers only on a contract or project to project basis. This would help them get trained, learn basics and scale-up strategies. With a limited workforce, we asked our team to work online, and we set up a home-scale lab at our locations to complete the research projects on time. Further, based on this experience, they can move on with their career or start their entrepreneurial journey. With a Vision of introducing novel food processing techniques in the food sector on a global level, our mission is to train the next generation to pursue entrepreneurship.

What is your opinion on the necessity for food and beverage companies to align their offerings with technologies like AI and ML?

Technology such as IoT, AI, and Blockchain has helped food processing and manufacturing companies maintain precise data records that result in better supply chain analysis (such as manufacturing practices), tracking ingredients, weight management, temperature monitoring, etc. This would be a significant step towards keeping the food value chain transparent, where consumers are kept informed about the whole process.

As an established industry leader, what would be your advice to the budding entrepreneurs and enthusiasts aspiring to venture into the food and beverage space?

Key challenges faced in the food processing sector are using food processing techniques, lack of focus on quality and safety standards, and not having enough product development and innovation. We guide students and inspire entrepreneurs to bridge this gap between ideas and manufacturing the right product by developing commercially viable new food products if entrepreneurs are already having a product in mind.

Budding food technologies have to explore the current manufacturing and food formulation trends and design novel food processing equipment with low maintenance and high-quality output. The good news is that the opportunities for new food products are endless.

How do you envision further strengthening your company’s stronghold in 2022 and beyond?

Our business model primarily relies on knowledge.  With key activities of design, development, research consultation and networking of experts on various domains in the food sector, we build up long term customer relationships.

Unlike some of our competitors, Samath Global Food Consultants does not make false promises about doubling revenue within a few months or turning things around in weeks. We practice what we preach —through a steady, sustainable growth achieved through hard work, great ideas, and superior execution.

The significant factors to maintaining long-term customer relationships are trust build-up, effective communication, completion of projects within a stipulated period, and innovative solutions on the commercial scale.

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