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Singapore-based Hoow Foods has unveiled a new plant-based subsidiary called Hegg Foods and a new vegan egg product. Through Hegg, the company aims to provide consumers with sustainable and healthier plant-based food products. And, at the same time, work towards achieving the country’s goal to locally produce 30% of Singapore’s nutritional needs.
Healthier nutritional replacements
Foodtech startup Hoow Foods is founded by four graduates from the National University of Singapore (NUS). The company is focused on creating environmentally friendly and healthy plant-based food products.
It achieves this by using its proprietary Food & Ingredient Artificial Intelligence (AI) platform called RE-GENESYS. The platform uses ingredient informatics that includes information about food ingredients and their physicochemical properties. Using this database, the startup understands how to optimize foods using novel food ingredients as healthier replacements claiming to achieve this at record-breaking speeds.
Hoow Foods has helped Callery’s to develop healthier ice creams and has reformulated frozen desserts to fruit sorbets that have zero added sugar. It’s also behind sugar-free instant hot beverages, and low sugar sauces, creating 20+ prototypes including vegan premixes for baked goods.
In addition, the company’s technology has been instrumental in developing 10 products under homegrown heritage brand Killiney.
AI-powered plant-based egg
In a statement, the chief technology officer of Hoow Foods, Dr Sherman Ho said: “We constantly try to challenge our RE-GENESYS platform to develop novel products, and we have succeeded in creating HEGG in a short span of time. Leveraging RE-GENESYS together with our in-house expertise has imbued HEGG with a simple-to-use and convenient format while possessing expanded versatility in applications.”
Hegg Foods has unveiled its plant-based brand HEGG and a new product under this brand. The healthy plant-based egg has a nutritional profile similar to that of a traditional egg and is blended in a powdered form, making it convenient to use and extending its shelf life. These characteristics also help make the product suitable for scale-up production.
Singaporeans consume more than 5 million eggs daily while we only produce less than 20% of this locally. With our locally-produced egg substitute, we hope to reduce this vulnerability and aim to achieve greater stability in the supply of food as part of this 30-by-30 goal
Ow Yau Png, CEO of Hoow Foods
Plus, the egg is cruelty-free, has a lower carbon footprint, uses fewer land resources than traditional eggs, is free from growth hormones, antibiotics and cholesterol, and is drastically lower in fat compared to its animal-based counterpart.
CEO of Hoow Foods, Ow Yau Png said: “With our novel product, we aim to not only be effective in western-style cuisines such as scrambled eggs and omelettes but to focus and be as applicable to Asian-style cuisines as well. We are sparing no efforts on our R&D endeavours to develop version(s) that could be widely-used in all other cuisines and cooking styles. If done right, it would enable HEGG to be adopted throughout Asia. Our vision would be to make this world a healthy sustainable and more secured place.”
Going forward, Hoow Foods plans to make this brand and its products acceptable across Asia and around the world.
Supporting Singapore’s 30 by 30 goal
Hegg Foods’ mission is to feed the local and regional population by providing sustainable and healthy foods.
Ow Yau Png added: “At Hegg Foods, we have strong ambitions to address our nation’s food security issue. Singaporeans consume more than 5 million eggs daily while we only produce less than 20% of this locally. With our locally-produced egg substitute, we hope to reduce this vulnerability and aim to achieve greater stability in the supply of food as part of this 30-by-30 goal.”
We are convinced by Hegg’s vision to contribute to global food security starting with Singapore by reducing the problems arising from supply chain disruptions with farm grown eggs
John Cheng, director of Innovate 360
The company had secured S$3 million in a pre-Series A round and will look to advance its R&D capabilities and commercialize HEGG by the first half of next year.
One of Hegg Foods’ investors includes Innovate 360, the country’s first food incubator. Director of Innovate 360, John Cheng said: “We are convinced by Hegg’s vision to contribute to global food security starting with Singapore by reducing the problems arising from supply chain disruptions with farm grown eggs. More importantly, Hegg Foods has demonstrated a strong potential for scaled-up commercialization and we are excited to partner with them from the start.”
Furthermore, the company plans to establish a full-scale facility in the country within the next two years and within the next five years, help reduce Singapore’s dependency on egg imports by 20%.
Recently, San Francisco-based food tech Eat Just made headlines by becoming the first company to gain regulatory approval allowing the sale of its cultured chicken in Singapore.
Last year, Singapore awarded nine urban farms nearly S$40 million (US$29.3 million) to help boost local food production and achieve food security by using innovative solutions like AI to grow fresh vegetables and fruits.
Read: Singapore University To Offer Asia Pacific’s First Alt Protein Course
Lead image courtesy of Hoow Foods.
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