Don't Waste: How to save food and help people
The rubric Startup Story, which is popular among our subscribers, continues to introduce successful projects that participated in several startup programs. Today's guests of IT Park are the members of the startup Don’t Waste, which participated on behalf of Uzbekistan in the Best Global M-Gov Award competition organized by the UAE government within the framework of the World Government Summit and received an award in the amount of 500,000 UAE dirhams (136,000 US dollars).
The Best Global M-Gov Award is a global competition for the development of the best mobile applications for government services among the graduates and students of Million Coders, organized by the UAE government.
The mission statement of a startup
Don’t Waste is a project aimed at organizing efficient use of food and consumer products without wasting them.
The working process of the project is organized in the following two directions.
The first direction is to increase the share of everyday foods in restaurants and catering outlets. The project creates an opportunity to resell or donate this edible food. In the created mobile application, companies connected to the system appear within the specified address and act as a navigator for people in need to find them.
The second direction provides for selling expired products for livestock and poultry or non-profit purposes.
The direction the are planning to launch in the future is cooperation with soil fertilizer companies by mixing biochemical additives with products that have become unfit for consumption.
"We are currently studying the market of Uzbekistan. We need an excellent marketing plan and promotion to make this project a success. If we can convince customers and restaurant owners of the benefits of the project, then we will have the opportunity to enter the Central Asian and world markets.
As we think, before entering the world market, it is necessary to live in that country for a certain period and to comprehensively analyze its specific aspects, the market economy, and conditions. The success of the startup project is closely related to the economic development of the country but also the values, as well as the solvency of the population of this country".
How did the idea for the startup come about?
The reasons that motivated to create the idea are happening in the international arena. According to the Food Waste Index Report, about 1.5 trillion tons of food and consumer products are wasted around the world every year. Their material value is about 1 trillion dollars. In addition, harmful gases released from wasted products have a negative impact on the environment. "Therefore, we decided to create a practical project in order to find a solution to the problems.
We did not face any difficulties in the conceptual development and technical aspects of the project. However, it was quite hard to bring it to a practical finished project".
How was participation in the Best Global M-Gov Award competition?
The team has not participated in accelerators before. They got info about the Best Global M-Gov Award competition on the Telegram channel of INHA University and submitted an application.
"Our project also entered the top 7 in the 2nd wave of the mGovAward competition. This situation motivated us to work harder on ourselves. We further enriched the project and sent it to participate on the international stage. 1027 startup projects from more than 60 countries of the world participated in the competition. The Don’t Waste project was considered worthy of the 2nd place among them and was directed to the financing".
All of them are third-stage students of INHA University in Tashkent as follows:
- Javokhir Shomuratov – FullStack Developer, Team Leader
- Azizullo Temirov – Product and Project Manager
- Valisher Alisher – UI/UX Designer
- Khusan Rashidov – Backend Developer
- Mehrol Bazarov – Data Analyst
"Since we only attended the award ceremony with our team, we didn’t have enough time to explore the startup ecosystem in Dubai in detail. But what we do know is that Dubai is a great place to launch, fund, and operate startups. A lot of work is being done to support startups in Uzbekistan. As a result, we and similar teams are winning international competitions".
Plans
The team is currently working on the implementation of the project.
"We are trying to be as efficient as possible with the right allocation of available resources. Organizations that initially did not show interest in our project are now contacting us many times, asking us to tell them about its working system and its features.
We don't have enough experience yet to give advice. But if they ask us what was our success factor, we would say not to back down even after failure".
2023-02-20