Suite42 is a B2B food processing platform providing contract manufacturing solutions for diverse B2B clients across the FMCG, agribusiness, and grocery industries.
Though India is one of the world’s largest producers of agricultural commodities, our food processing industry (FPI) has never realized its full potential. On one hand, demand for branded food products is increasing rapidly, but on the other, most domestic food brands are struggling with manufacturing. The reasons can be traced to India’s 40,000+ food processing units suffering from multiple inefficiencies including low capacity utilization, lack of quality standardization, high wastage, and limited access to working capital financing. Currently, India processes less than 10% of its agricultural output and much of that is primary processing (e.g. rice, sugar, and flour.).
What exactly is Suite42 offering?
Suite42 is working towards putting the Indian food processing industry on the global map. Suite42 provides contract manufacturing solutions for food processing, serving diverse B2B clients across the FMCG, agribusiness, and grocery industries.
More and more retail businesses are launching private labels to cultivate customer loyalty and improve profit margins. To date, the standard practice has been to rely on nearby wholesalers for purchases and pack them manually, a process fraught with challenges. Suite42’s B2B food processing platform is solving chronic issues in the industry, offering end-to-end solutions including identifying trusted manufacturing partners, reducing the cost of food processing, ensuring quality standardization, and optimizing logistics.
For manufacturers, Suite42 is currently building an onboarding framework called ‘Suite42 Standard’ that addresses the issues around lack of standardization in infrastructure, quality, and compliance. Once solved, it will guarantee reliable manufacturing to brands and predictability throughout the process.
How effective is S42’s approach?
Currently, Suite42 is working with over 25 food and FMCG manufacturers across the country. The startup works closely with the manufacturers to understand their operations and identify gaps to improve their quality, safety and environmental standards, ultimately increasing capacity utilization. Suite42 currently caters to modern trade outlets across Bangalore, works with regional & national private labels and has expanded into agri commodity exports and value-added products.
What about Suite42 was compelling for Omnivore?
The Indian food processing industry fosters critical links and synergies between the two pillars of our economy, industry and agriculture. However, while this industry is often called a sunrise sector, its market share in the global arena is still minuscule. The food processing sector as it stands today is highly unorganized and inefficient. Since the major processing hubs are far removed from the farm gate, food is required to travel long distances and at a significant cost to farmers.
The key to local and decentralized food chains is bringing the food production network to regional farm communities. More processing units closer to the farm gates will facilitate a steady flow of quality raw materials and better incomes for the farming community. Suite42 is already onboarding existing processing units and soon the startup will pave the way for new setups closer to the farms, fully equipped to efficiently serve both farmers and retailers. Linking agricultural production to the market by bringing together farmers, processors and retailers would substantially increase farmer incomes, and Suite42’s digital intervention is a stride in that direction.
What’s next for Suite42?
Suite42 plans to use the Seed funding for talent acquisition, developing the “Suite42 Standard” in the food processing ecosystem, launching raw material financing, and piloting exports. In the next 18 months, the startup plans to work with various B2B clients, including e-commerce, D2C, and FMCG brands, as well as over 2000 modern trade outlets across multiple cities.
We are thrilled to welcome Suite42 to the Omnivore portfolio. We look forward to working with the team to revitalize the food processing industry in India.
