LOOPM ALTERNATIVES: ADDING A NEW AND LASTING DIMENSION TO PRESERVING FOOD

LoopFresh, an Indian innovation promises to transform the way perishables are stored on our supermarket shelves to retain their freshness.

It is said that innovative ideas come in a flash. It was a casual visit to a supermarket during the pandemic that opened the eyes of Sunitha Varadan to the colossal problem of food spoilage. If this was the waste in one store, what about all the retail outlets across the country? It set her mind thinking about what could be done to address the problem. The answer, she realised, lay in finding an eco-friendly bio-solution or barrier coating that could be applied to packaging material to enhance shelf life of packaged food products. The longer products stayed fresh and unspoilt, the less the wastage.

Sunitha founder-director of LoopM Alternatives, a Bengaluru-based company launched in 2020, Varadan got down to the task. She and her tightly knit team worked on an eco-friendly solution and the first product, LoopFresh, is set to hit the Indian market in the last quarter of 2024. It will later be launched in UAE, Malaysia, Singapore, and Australia. The Asia Pacific region is expected to be the largest market for smart packaging by 2030, with a market size of $18.5 billion.