Snaxchange

Tackling the challenge of reducing food wastage is the aim of founders Sahil Shukla and Marshal Al-Moften. Launched at Imperial in 2018, Snaxchange provides an online platform enabling users to sell food and beverages purchased from superstores and corner shops at a discounted rate, to users willing to buy them at a discounted rate ahead of the ‘best before’ date.

An FTMBA alumnus of 2015, we spoke with founder and owner Sahil Shukla, to better understand this exciting initiative in the fight against food wastage.

Sahil had spent time since completing his studies at Imperial exploring social initiatives and understanding the UK market. He was aware of the huge food wastage problem in the UK, with improper demand forecasts causing 5m tonnes of fresh food to be dumped each year, equating to £5 billion.

Thanks to his own experiences and background, Sahil was aware that in other countries such as India, it is commonplace among well-knit communities to share food with others, and following a conversation at a bar on campus in London, he discussed the notion of exchanging leftover food due to be wasted for money. Following this, he began to explore whether donating food for a good cause was a good enough incentive for the general public, and wondered whether exchanging food would be a viable idea.

Sahil was well placed to begin his research. Using his contacts within the university sector he could begin targeting young academics and students, who are often less good at forecasting food demand when they move to a new town/country, resulting in foods reaching their ‘sell by date’ and being considered to be expired and thus thrown away.

Developing this idea further, Sahil decided to make the initiative appealing to users by enabling sellers to recover some of the expenses on food and beverages as an alternative to dumping food and beverages as waste. Moreover, the buyer will get food and beverages at discounted rates for immediate consumption. All food items and beverages which cannot be sold by the stipulated ‘best before’ date will be passed on to Food Banks of partnering NPOs at no, or minimal costs just before the expiry date for immediate consumption.

This provides a three-tier consumption ecosystem, providing three opportunities for each food item to be consumed: first, by the primary consumer who bought it from the Superstore or the Corner Shop; second, by the Secondary Consumer who bought it from the Primary Consumer via Snaxchange and; third, by the tertiary consumers who would source food from Food Banks of Partnering Charitable Organisations that receive donated food from Primary Consumers.