March 23, 2025 • 36 mins
Join Startups Dil Se hosts Riddhi Gore and Anthony Prakash for a fascinating conversation with the team behind Safi - an innovative startup tackling the intersection of climate change and public health.
University of Waterloo graduates Miraal Kabir(CEO), Daria Margarit(COO) & Martin Turuta(CTO) share how their journey began with a UN climate challenge and evolved into a mission to prevent disease outbreaks in East Africa, where drought conditions are forcing a shift to camel milk with higher disease risks.
The founders discuss their clever solution: a smart pasteurization control unit that ensures milk safety without destroying nutrients. They reveal the challenges of introducing new technology in regions where 80-90% of milk flows through informal markets, and how their pilots in Rwanda and Kenya shaped their approach.
You'll hear about the technical innovations behind their device - from automated whisking to
temperature monitoring and data tracking capabilities that provide oversight throughout the supply chain. Plus, discover their expansion plans beyond East Africa to countries like India and Pakistan, and their exploration of applications for different milk types.
This episode offers rare insights into social entrepreneurship, appropriate technology design, and what it takes to make a meaningful impact on global health challenges accelerated by climate change.
Listen now to be inspired by these young innovators and their journey from university case competitions to tackling one of today's most pressing public health issues.
Watch episode at https://startupsdilse.com
University of Waterloo graduates Miraal Kabir(CEO), Daria Margarit(COO) & Martin Turuta(CTO) share how their journey began with a UN climate challenge and evolved into a mission to prevent disease outbreaks in East Africa, where drought conditions are forcing a shift to camel milk with higher disease risks.
The founders discuss their clever solution: a smart pasteurization control unit that ensures milk safety without destroying nutrients. They reveal the challenges of introducing new technology in regions where 80-90% of milk flows through informal markets, and how their pilots in Rwanda and Kenya shaped their approach.
You'll hear about the technical innovations behind their device - from automated whisking to
temperature monitoring and data tracking capabilities that provide oversight throughout the supply chain. Plus, discover their expansion plans beyond East Africa to countries like India and Pakistan, and their exploration of applications for different milk types.
This episode offers rare insights into social entrepreneurship, appropriate technology design, and what it takes to make a meaningful impact on global health challenges accelerated by climate change.
Listen now to be inspired by these young innovators and their journey from university case competitions to tackling one of today's most pressing public health issues.
Watch episode at https://startupsdilse.com
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
This is the startup You'll say podcast.
Speaker 2 (00:03):
Thank you for tuning in.
Speaker 3 (00:04):
You do us a favorite like, subscribe on YouTube LinkedIn,
and be sure to give us your feed down.
Speaker 2 (00:09):
Hope you've enjoyed this episode.
Speaker 3 (00:12):
Welcome everyone to another episode that started Bilsie.
Speaker 4 (00:15):
I'm really gore your co polls and here with Anthony
for Cash and some very amazing guests from saftie.
Speaker 3 (00:22):
We have you all, Martin and Daria today, so welcome
all of you.
Speaker 1 (00:27):
And then let's start with Hello everyone. My name is Marl,
one of the co founders of saffie and the CEO.
Speaker 5 (00:34):
My name is Martin.
Speaker 6 (00:35):
I'm also one of the co founders of soffie and
currently acting.
Speaker 5 (00:38):
As the CTO.
Speaker 7 (00:39):
Hello everyone, my name is Daria and I'm the CEO
of Soffie. I'm also a co founder.
Speaker 3 (00:46):
Impressively, all, let's just start with how did this all
come about? You're also young, so very excited to hear
this urchin story.
Speaker 2 (00:55):
Oh it started a while ago, almost three year.
Speaker 1 (00:58):
Our three year anniversary is coming up, which feels so
crazy to us. But the three of us were in
university we met. We were doing a similar program, so
I was studying computer science and business at the University
of Waterloo and Martin and Daria were studying math and
business and through our program, we were doing a lot
of case competitions.
Speaker 2 (01:16):
You have the HP, Google Ikea.
Speaker 1 (01:17):
They come and they asked you to solve a problem
for them, and as a group we were doing pretty well.
We saw we had good team synergy, we liked kind
of coming up with cool ideas. And during COVID we
came across a more interesting competition that was being hosted
by the un They asked us to find a problem
that was happening in the world because of climate change
and find a solution to it, and so that was
(01:39):
a really interesting prompt. I'll let Martin and Daria talk
more about the problem space that we stumbled upon there.
Speaker 7 (01:44):
Yeah, so COVID really kind of fell upon and almost
it sounds wrong to say, but it fell for us,
at least when it came to creating Sofia, almost at
the right time, because we had a lot of time
at home and we were just trying to keep busy
and the case competition, well, honestly, maybe I think you're
probably the best one to say where the problem came from,
because you're the closest one to it, at least at
(02:04):
the time.
Speaker 1 (02:05):
Sorry, I just feel like I've been speaking too much today, Okay.
Speaker 2 (02:09):
So, yeah, it was.
Speaker 1 (02:10):
We've realized that unsafe milk is spreading because of climate change,
which seems like such a weird relation, but essentially a
lot of dairy farmers they can't really use cows as
their primary cattle anymore. They need to move to camels
because camels survived droughts better and as we know, drugs
are happening more often because of climate change. Unfortunately, camels
(02:30):
just carry more diseases and especially coronaviruses in them inherently.
So we were in the midst of a COVID nineteen pandemic,
and we had heard about MURRS Middle East Respiratory syndrome,
which is a coronavirus ten times earlier than COVID and
spreading through raw milk. Daria mentioned my backstory because I
grew up in Oman in the Middle East, where we
had an outbreak of MRS when I was growing up,
and so to see that a coronavirus like that could
(02:53):
also become a global pandemic from people drinking raw milk
really resonated with us and became a problem we wanted to.
Speaker 5 (02:59):
Solve Yeah, so sorry.
Speaker 6 (03:03):
I think the crux of the problem is figuring out
why there isn't enough controls over the milk that's being
sold within these rural areas, and so really like if
we want to understand how to mitigate the amount of disease,
the number one step is figuring out what is the
tooling that the individual rural farmers need and then how
can we actually track that on an aggregate level. And
(03:24):
so we looked at why they weren't participating in these
like big formal systems because we know that there's like
very very big formal supply chains where a farmer will
give milk to a collector or an aggregator, they'll pasturize
the milk and then sell it to a retailer and
that'll ultimately go to the customer. But in East Africa,
that's only about ten to twenty percent in the market.
The rest of it is like eighty ninety percent. So
(03:44):
why aren't farmers selling to this formal market? And we
kind of got down to the core reason of if
they're just not getting getting enough value, So to them,
it's just so much more affordable and they make so
much more income by just selling direct to the customer
rather than participating in the formal supply chain. But then
the flip side is this creates a bunch of disease
and unshockable leaders of milk that are causing these potential outbreaks.
(04:08):
And kind of the culmination of this is can we
take this formal supply chain, miniaturize it and democratize it
across all of these farmers. And so that's kind of
how we came up with the device, And I'll let
very and you speak to kind of what it actually does.
Speaker 8 (04:25):
Before we go into the device itself for the solution.
I mean, you know, just to expand on the fact
that I mean, you know, you're still in college and
the belief that you guys can actually go after a
problem like this, I think it's even bigger than actually
coming up with a solution, right, because a lot of
founders don't get past that point.
Speaker 1 (04:46):
Right.
Speaker 8 (04:47):
So, given the amazing work you've done, I mean, now
it's all hindsight. What gave you guys the belief Number
one saying, Hey, obviously Mimi's been through it, She's been
close to that problem in her childhood. But for you
guys to come together and say, Okay, this is worth
while pursuing and we can come up with a solution.
At that point, you didn't even know what the solution was, right,
(05:09):
I mean, how did the three of your team up
number one?
Speaker 5 (05:13):
Right?
Speaker 8 (05:14):
I mean, and how did you say, okay, and this
is a path we should take to get to where
you are right now?
Speaker 5 (05:20):
We actually start off at six, and I think.
Speaker 6 (05:22):
We were just the three most delusional ones in the beginning.
But like the first year, we were just kind of
like we had these huge plans, and sometimes we look
back on like where we wanted to be in like
twenty twenty three and twenty twenty four, it's like we
really were delusional, Like we were like, we're going to
have a million devices sold and shipped by like twenty
twenty five. But yeah, like the first year, we were
(05:44):
just kind of spinning in circles. We wanted to make
the change, and we were kind of getting to grips
with how we were going to do that. But at
least for me, the biggest part or step within this
whole flow is actually going down to one and running
a pilot. The device that we had brought was complete
garbage at the time, like it was just three D
(06:05):
printed thrown together with some.
Speaker 9 (06:09):
I would say, like I would not be proud of
that right now at this point, but like just taking
that leap of faith, believing in ourselves and believing in
kind of not not necessarily part that we had at
the time, but the mission of what we were actually
trying to accomplish, and then going.
Speaker 6 (06:25):
And actually getting good feedback. Like I think that's what
gave me a ton of confidence coming back just.
Speaker 7 (06:30):
To sort of take it a step back from even
going to Africa. I think initially what really pushed us
was the support that we almost got so from the competition.
I guess the key part to that is, yes, we participated,
but we ended up winning out of I think a
thousand teams across the world, which was very I mean,
we all won competitions here and there at case Comps,
but that was really like, Wow, there's a lot of
(06:51):
people from the House of Commons. I think it's called
very high level people that believe in this and well,
not necessarily in us, but that they think this.
Speaker 2 (06:58):
Is a great solution.
Speaker 7 (06:59):
Okay, maybe let's roll with it. And honestly to credit
University of waterloohere it deserves credit there was a lot
of programs and ecosystems that we could reach out to.
For those that are familiar, like concept Velocity, that sort
of took us in listened, we were able to pitch
more and raise more money. So I think there was
a lot of support that even went beyond us that
at least for me, gave me a lot of confidence
(07:21):
because really I knew nothing about Africa about milk and pasteurization,
but just the fact that people believed in us and
in our enthusiasm was absolutely kind of really what set
the foundation that this could be something. Yeah, that was
my bait.
Speaker 2 (07:41):
That was exactly what I was gonna say, So Daria
just said it for me.
Speaker 4 (07:46):
So I do, like, I think there's like a fad
or maybe untobly wrong, but being lack of importance seems
to be a thing.
Speaker 3 (07:53):
So I was like, do you guys even drink milk?
Was that one of the things, like, hey, we're.
Speaker 4 (07:57):
Going to go after a product we consume every day,
so we're going to go fix this, or it was
just like we see a problem that wasn't une topic.
Speaker 7 (08:06):
So you know, we've done a lot of Q and a's,
and a lot nobody has ever asked us that question. Yeah,
I personally at that time I didn't really drink cow's milk,
but funny enough, whenever I would go back home to
Romania or whenever I just wasn't in Canada, I would
drink cow's milk. But for whatever reason, at home and
at university, I was very much off of oat milk
(08:30):
and almond milk, just supplements. For whatever reason, but I
think it was a big problem that felt more compelling
than our usage of milk plenty.
Speaker 2 (08:39):
I actually became lackt as of tolerant like a year after.
Speaker 5 (08:42):
So, I don't know. I love milk. I love the milk.
Speaker 6 (08:50):
Yeah, I guess it's just one of those things you
take for granted though, like the fact that you can
just go to the store and go and purchase it
and you don't have to worry about any safety concerns,
the quality of the mill college nutrients you're getting, like
everything is controlled step by step. When you go to
East Africa and you look at this like market that's
like eighty percent and it's all informal, it's completely different,
(09:10):
and it's like a brand new world that we really
have to learn a lot about.
Speaker 5 (09:16):
Martin.
Speaker 8 (09:16):
Let's double click on East Africa that you said right
like you said, going there was really the spark you
needed and figuring out the problem on the ground, if
you will. So, I mean, you know here you are
three of you or six of you at that point
starting this journey. So what support system did you guys
(09:37):
have to say? Okay, you know we're trying to solve
for this and the competition you win help you get
started with a trip to Africa to talk to the
right people, go connect with all of them. And I
mean and then from there on, I mean, what what
did you narrow down the problem to. I mean, of
course you mentioned pasteurization being one of the primary ways
(09:59):
to get over the but I mean, what sort of
steps do you guys fallow to get to the root
of the problem, if you will, I.
Speaker 7 (10:06):
Guess I could start at the beginning of that and
then I'll let Mimiam Martin dissect the rest of it.
But initially the un competition was really what sparked the idea,
and then we sort of went to the university. We
tried to get more funding and we won a couple
of competitions, but it wasn't monetarily really enough to get
there and we're really propelled. US was an incubator in
Vienna randomly and fundamally enough, and they really their whole
(10:30):
initiative wasn't supporting non African based companies, or I think
I might be wrong. There was some African based ones,
but just in kind of helping them either develop they're
already existing African market or bringing them to the African market.
So we got to pick between Rwanda, Uganda and Ghana,
No Nigeria, Rwanda and Ghana, and we just ended up
(10:51):
being in Rwanda because as it happened, as we happened
to learn their Rwanda's love milk. I mean, they have
milk bars like we have alcohol hall bars. So that
was just with their help that we got there. Financially speaking.
Speaker 8 (11:06):
Okay, so you go there. I mean you mentioned the
eighty twenty ratios and all of that, right, I mean,
so is it because mainly due to cost reasons they
are unable to do the pasteurization or were there are
other factors because of which I mean, you know, the
milk is left and attended or drunk row if you will.
Speaker 6 (11:29):
Probably two number one is caught or not cost, but
the amount of income that they make per leter of milk.
So if you sell to an aggregator collector, like in
the region, they're going to give you less milk than
if you sell directly to the customer. And it's just
a factor of yeah, sorry, LUs money, And it's just
a factor of like how close they are to the
end of the supply chain. So when they sell to
(11:50):
the formal market, they're like the first and the supply chain,
but they're like six steps removed from the final customer,
and so the amount of value that the actual aggregator
can give them is quite versus like if they're selling
direct to the customer, it's it's a lot more and
they have control over their own pricing. Number two is
probably infrastructure. So there's just generally not a big distribution
infrastructure in these areas, Like the roads themselves aren't very
(12:13):
well maintained. There's not a lot of chilling or cooling,
which is a huge, huge factor in pasteurization and dairy processing.
So without that infrastructure, it's hard to like centralize a
rural farmer that's like, let's say thirty kilometers from the
nearest aggregation center. So I think those are probably the
two biggest factors maybe some misplanning on the government's part
(12:37):
in the beginning, where they just kind of mandated the
pasteurization of milk and the sale of pastorization of milk
and didn't put the right controls in place to ensure
that that was going to go through the formal market.
Speaker 7 (12:49):
There's also, I would say a good bit of I
wouldn't say misinformation, but maybe miseducation in terms of the
consumption of raw milk, pasturized milk, and boiled milk. So
traditionally we've come to learn in Rwandan culture, I think
it's the same thing for Kenya, they boil milk three
times over to make sure that it's safe. So they
know that raw milk isn't necessarily safe to drink, but
(13:11):
they resort to boiling traditionally to get the bad bacteria,
the viruses, anything that could be harmful out. But that
actually in terms harms the milk and leads to malnutrition
because you're not only boiling out bacteria, you're boiling out
vitamins and proteins and really all the stuff that makes
milk nutritious. So that's another factor where we do help
(13:33):
and making sure that milk is monitored and it's not
only safe, but it's also nutritious compared to what they
had been using.
Speaker 4 (13:39):
I actually want to hear more about the pilot, right,
because I just going through your side and there's a
fluorap where either one of you is explaining it, and
there's just faces of skeptic people, and the next one
is where they're smiling.
Speaker 3 (13:51):
So I'm assuming going in because traditionally they know how
to have their milk. You know, anable thing. You've been
doing it? Why are you all coming in? How is
that your right? How is that explanation? And kind of
getting through that hurdle?
Speaker 1 (14:04):
So I guess it like just preempted a little bit
with the device we ended up coming up with to
solve this entire problem is a pasteurization control unit. So
it's essentially a device that you put onto your pot
of milk. It measures time and temperature of pasteurization and
essentially tells you when your milk is safe to consume
health wise, and then also when it has still the
right amount of meatskins before you've boiled them off. And
(14:26):
so of course when you go to these new villages,
especially when you're telling them, hey, you've been boiling your
milk for generations, but did you know that kills new chance.
Obviously they're going to look at you kind of offended, skeptical,
who are you to tell me? We're also very young,
Like we're all younger than twenty five, we're all twenty
four years old, and so it's also just like who
are these kids, and like why are they here? And
(14:48):
I think we really tackled that just by being honest, relatable,
bringing personal experiences into the story of Hey, like our family,
like my family is Pakistani, they used to boil their milk.
My mom grew boiling her milk, so she was as
shocked as you might be. Like, we're all learning and
showing like our own research to help back it up. Again,
when you're speaking to them, there's always that little bit
(15:10):
of like confusion. But as soon as you start doing
the demonstration so I guess the pictures.
Speaker 2 (15:14):
He'sa on the website.
Speaker 1 (15:16):
At first, everyone's a little bit skeptical, but as soon
as you start demonstrating the use of the device. We
have test strips, they taste the milk before and after,
that's when they really believe it.
Speaker 2 (15:25):
So it's genuinely like see it to believe it. We learned.
Speaker 1 (15:28):
Until you're speaking, you have your PowerPoint, your research paper
behind you, everyone's kind of looking at you, like when
can I leave? Yeah, And as you start demonstrating it,
everyone gets really excited, so's us.
Speaker 6 (15:41):
And I think like shouldn't downplay also the impact that
like the community the leaders have there. So the first
thing and not super lucky because we would go to
like an Engio or like a big kind of community
leading group and they would help us and better ourselves
within the community and meet the right people. But yeah,
it would literally be like we're speaking, it's like a
twenty minute presentation. Everybody's like kind of blank faces and
(16:04):
like not really smiling, and then the community leader starts
talking and everyone starts clapping and like looking at us
and smiling. So yeah, I think like that's probably one
of the biggest things is we have like very very
solid connections with the community leaders, and the first thing
to do is explain the product to them, get them
to become the champions of the product, and then it's
very very easy to go to the rest of the
(16:25):
farmers and do these kind of like community group sessions.
Speaker 8 (16:28):
With the device itself. Right, I mean, people talk about
reinventing the wal before you try to come up with something.
I mean, were you worried about the fact that, hey,
we're creating something brand new? Of course it works right
now After the fact, I mean, how much of research
did you do to see if there might be something
(16:48):
that already kind of existed you could have USD components
of that into what you were building out and what
it eventually became. And at what point did you realize,
oh my, I mean something like this doesn't exist. We
have to do it for this price point to work.
And you know, Martin, you were laughing earlier as to
how it was three D printed in the first stages
(17:10):
and whatnot. That's how these things start right to where
it is right now. So again, I mean, you know,
to put it shot in shot, right, I mean, instead
of recreating the whole wheel, if you will, How did
you come to the realization that this actually requires invention
from the ground up to the device and it's in
(17:33):
form and scale that you came up with.
Speaker 7 (17:34):
I mean, thankfully, pasteurization as a word and as a
concept has existed for I think about one hundred years now,
and it's very well researched and very well studied, so
we didn't have to go and reinvent the wheel. We
just sort of had to perfect it for the new landscape.
And pastisers exist and they're huge, and you can even
there's some government fundings that allow certain farmers kiosk like
(17:57):
milk reseller owners to have their own past risers, and
they're gigantic and they're just unused. So through research we
realize that really boils down to the boils down to
the fact that they don't have electrical infrastructure to support
the machines that exist. So we knew we had to
make it off the grid, and you're not really going
to make something off the grid without batteries, solar panels,
(18:21):
and that just by nature meant that it had to
be boiled down again to something smaller. And when you're
looking at the more rural farmers, they don't even reach
the capacities of these large scale, industrial, gigantic milk past risers.
So just the baby steps kind of led to the
three D printed MVP that Martin was talking about.
Speaker 8 (18:44):
Got it, So tell us more about the device itself
right out, I mean, where it started and where it
is right now, or what are the steps the farmers
need to take how long it takes for them to
actually make the milk safe. I mean, just tell us
about the product itself.
Speaker 6 (18:58):
For sure, the product's gone through a bunch of increments,
but fundamentally there's like three components.
Speaker 5 (19:06):
Number one is while the farmer is.
Speaker 6 (19:08):
Heating the milk, we want to make sure that the
milk is in constant movement, otherwise it starts burning at
the bottom, and the heat distribution as a uniform, so
the bottom of the device has a risk that's automated.
Number two is a temperature probe that essentially measures the
temperature of the milk throughout the whole pot, and you
want that temperature to reach seventy two degrees for fifteen seconds.
(19:31):
That's like the gold standard of pasteurization for high temperature,
short time pasturization. So we built that into the device
itself and attracts for that, and then has this like
very very nice UI component on the top that essentially
just shows the farmer like literally with lights when the
pasteurization is complete, whether the device has enough battery, and
(19:51):
so it just kind of takes them through the whole system.
And then the third part to this whole device is
this data tracking component, and so we didn't realize this
early on. It was kind of of like something that
we got to through multiple increments after I think coming
back from our first pilot, some of our partners that
asked us, you know, it's nice that the farmers are pasteurizing,
but if I'm like a big engio or a big
(20:12):
regulator aggregator, I want to know exactly when the farmer pasteurized,
how much they pasteurized, Like I need this data or
else I can't actually validate that the milk is good
quality and that the customers are purchasing good quality. And
so we realize, like we already have kind of the
internal infrastructure necessary to build some type of IoT device.
(20:33):
So we kind of pivoted a little bit and had
some network connectivity that we built into the device that
allows it to be pained pretty much from the cloud anywhere,
and we can extract this data, pull it into like
a central repository where any regulator angio can access it,
and so kind of been doing. So we've created this
very very nice centralized system that first of all, it
gives the tooling to farmers, but also allows governments and
(20:55):
regulators to have full transparency into the dairy supply chain.
Speaker 3 (21:00):
You know, I'm like an just like looking at our childhood.
There would be another man that'll come to the door
and you would just know that, hey, this is a
good one. But I believe this device is what you're
doing like a yelper do right. Hey, this has consistently
performed and it's you know, it's a huge data point
where the local farmers to go from. Okay, and you
(21:23):
said first pilot, was there a second one too?
Speaker 8 (21:26):
Just a couple.
Speaker 1 (21:29):
So we've been to Rwanda and Kenny, I think five
times over the past two years, and so every time
you're like learning more. I think the last time we
went in August and November, and we finally have a
product that we think is final. Now we've incorporated so
much feedback from the farmers and the milk vendors and
the government officials to.
Speaker 2 (21:47):
Come to this final prototype. But we really wanted to
co create the product with.
Speaker 1 (21:51):
The people who are going to end up using it,
and so initially when we went to Rwanda, we took
two options. A solar powered version that didn't pastrize it
like didn't heat them, sorry, one version that uses the
electricity but heated and we.
Speaker 2 (22:03):
Asked them like, which one do you prefer?
Speaker 1 (22:05):
What features do you want? And we knew, always knew
we weren't building for ourselves. We were building for this
very specific demographic. And so all of these different pilots
I think we did four in total, ensured that we
were products exactly.
Speaker 8 (22:19):
So, Mimi, you obviously started this off like a competition
that you wanted to do something fun. I mean it
turned out to be something super worthwhile and saving the
world almost right, So what's the vision for the future
with SAFI? I mean, you know you guys that, I
(22:40):
mean you did mention prototype a few times. Obviously it's
taken a few times to get to where you are,
but I can also imagine that East Africa is just
a sliver of where this problem is, right, So maybe
touch upon what vision you guys have in the future
for SAFI. And I know Martin you mentioned partners a
(23:02):
couple of times. I'm assuming you will need your partner
network to help you get to those different parts of
the world as well. Maybe speak about that as well.
Speaker 1 (23:13):
Absolutely so, we always say East aff because just our
beach Head market, because the market's quite small, it allows
us to really perfect the dairy supply chain and learn
before going into much larger markets. We have our eyes
on India. That's the number one market we want to
go after Rwandan Kenya. You guys just have such a
huge dairy supply chain and a very good supply chain
as well there. Rwandas actually mimic their dairy supply chain
(23:36):
over like they saw what India was doing in trying
to emulate that. And so because we're kind of familiar
with that supply chain right now, we're really excited to
start working.
Speaker 2 (23:45):
In India as well.
Speaker 1 (23:46):
Martin and I were googling like countries who want to
live in Apparently they have a good dairy supply chain.
Speaker 2 (23:51):
In Bali, so we might but no all show society.
Speaker 1 (23:55):
I think Fakistan, India, and Bangladesh those are probably the
countries will be targed next.
Speaker 7 (24:01):
South America is pretty big too in terms of Also,
I forgot the name of it, but it's like I
don't want to say baby milk banks, but it's from
others that can't necessarily they can't produce enough milk or
their milk quality isn't to scale that. There's also a
venture there into going into human milk and I guess
it's worthwhile noting. I don't even know if we said it,
(24:23):
but it's not. We started with camels, we've pivoted to
cows because that's just kind of where the bulk of
the market is. And funny enough, we're going back to
a camel pilot now. But really it works on any
type of milk. We can do goat milk, maybe we
can look into cheese making, just explore different niches within
(24:43):
what we've already been doing as well.
Speaker 3 (24:49):
This is exciting stuff.
Speaker 4 (24:51):
I'm like, I looked at a cuff of milk and
I never had these many questions And I'm glad too
all took a look at because it is.
Speaker 3 (24:59):
It's it's a nutrition source for a lot of areas, right,
So there's no oneerwine in the scale of this.
Speaker 7 (25:06):
Yep.
Speaker 6 (25:07):
Yeah, it's oftentimes like the cheapest and most nutritious product
that children can drink. Like there's a ton of school
feeding programs in rwand then Kenya that we're looking at,
and yeah, it just goes to show, like, you know,
milk is such an important pivotal factor within children a child,
a child's development, and if they can't secure the quality
(25:29):
of that, then like there's a huge gap there. So
absolutely was there was.
Speaker 3 (25:34):
There a having the name Saffi come through, Like where
did that come from?
Speaker 2 (25:41):
I'm not sure how. It isn't Hindi, which is where
we're working.
Speaker 1 (25:44):
It means clean or do as well Hindi Arabic also,
so it's just a really good universal word for safe,
pure clean milk.
Speaker 2 (25:53):
Yes, it is.
Speaker 1 (25:54):
It is.
Speaker 8 (25:56):
And I were talking before we started recording and we're like,
that's our best guess, right, So we were right now. Yeah,
So in terms of scale right obviously where you are,
I'm assuming you're sitting in your parents' room or your
the home room and doing three D printing of all
(26:17):
your equipment right now. But I mean in terms of
mass production to your vision of where you need to go,
have you drawn up plans to partner with somebody to
manufacture this at scale? And I mean obviously in a
global market. I mean you can look at so many
different ways to you know, minimize that supply chain and
(26:39):
get it faster to the markets you want.
Speaker 5 (26:41):
I mean what sort of thought process have you put
into that? Yeah, this is definitely top of mine. Now
where we're going.
Speaker 6 (26:48):
From like creating fifty two one hundred devices at a
time to starting to think about like larger one thousand
to ten thousand, and when you get to that type
of skill. We're thinking almost to start creating some partners
and trying, uh, ultimately, we want to do manufacturing locally.
I think that's always been the goal, you know, involve
local labor and be very very close to the communities.
(27:10):
It's it's like a thing where you know, we're going
to simplify logistics, but we also want to have proximity
within these regions and so yeah, it's it's definitely like
a lot of logistical planning. There's some interesting stuff to
be said about like taxation as you bring product in
from China to Kenya versus r wand and so we're
trying to figure out the right mix of all of that.
(27:31):
But yeah, we're we're planning to do a much bigger
production run hopefully this summer, and so definitely top of
mind doing a ton of shopping for manufacturers and just
standardizing everything.
Speaker 8 (27:42):
Yeah, with the current political climate, be careful with tariffs
as well.
Speaker 5 (27:46):
Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 7 (27:50):
Yeah, So.
Speaker 8 (27:54):
I want to pivot to just your journey as co founders, right,
I mean, I'm not of ensure if you guys have
had a chance to see yourself in that light, given
that you have so much to deal with just with
school and you know, jobs and doing this, but as
co founders, right, obviously you're all working together, but I mean,
(28:17):
you know things are not always rosie right. You guys
tend to disagree at times, You guys tend to walk
away from conversations. And how has that journey been just
being you know, three co founders and how do you
make decisions, key decisions amongst yourselves, And just maybe give
us a couple of stories of what you've learned about
(28:40):
yourselves as co founders through this journey. I'm always fascinated
to learn from that.
Speaker 7 (28:44):
I thanks thankfully.
Speaker 2 (28:46):
It's good that there's three.
Speaker 7 (28:48):
Thinking back to six, it would have been a little
bit crazy to make decisions. Making them because there's three,
there's always either two that can agree on one thing,
and then you kind of could accept that you're wrong.
Speaking for experience, and yeah, I think three is a
really good number. I think it would have been very
hard to do it in twos because then you would
(29:08):
just have two very opposing opinions. But something that I
think I've learned from myself and maybe I I guess
I carry another event news. I'm very skeptical. I think
I'm always the first one to say this isn't gonna work, guys,
or I don't I don't think we've properly looked at this,
or I'm always first to say no, no loves.
Speaker 10 (29:28):
To play Devil's advocate. Yeah, yeah, sometimes not very fun
that conversation. Yeah, I mean, yeah, it's littally difficult to.
Speaker 6 (29:39):
Make decisions democratically for sure, But ultimately I think the
quality of our decision making is a lot better that way.
It's like what Daria said, like you have at least
three sources of checks before you go into a certain direction,
and all of us bring, I think, like a very
very unique perspective, and even.
Speaker 5 (29:56):
If it ends up in like a conflict, it's usually
for the best the usual.
Speaker 6 (30:01):
But yeah, like I can't even imagine doing this type
of startup with just like one person, like by yourself.
I think, like the implicit motivation that you get from
the co founders around you is like very very underrated.
Like for me, that's one of the biggest things, just
to kind of keep jugging along, like even when things
aren't necessarily moving fast and you're getting like a ton
of funding and like things are you know, deals are progressing.
(30:22):
I think just having like a really really solid group
of people around you who you are working with.
Speaker 5 (30:27):
Yeah, that's definitely one of the bigger parts for me.
Speaker 2 (30:31):
I think the only much that is that we're all
very like strong opinion of people. Thank you, what we
do a good job is we'll all we bring in.
Speaker 1 (30:37):
Our personal opinions are little, but we always do put
the company first, like what's best for the company. This
might be my personal opinion, but what's actually going to
help us move forward, and we're able to like always,
I think we always kind of align at the end
of the day. I don't think we've ever made a
decision where one person wasn't on board and had to
go with it because I have to go with it.
Speaker 2 (30:55):
We kind of end up making the decisions together and
that's kind of the beauty of it.
Speaker 7 (31:01):
M I think to also shout Philip out our engineer.
I think a lot of Solby has been built so
made me mentioned at the beginning, she's computer science. Me
and Martinara math. Other than a little bit of the
technicality from computer science and maybe the algorithm that goes
into it. For math, there's almost none of that. So
there's been a lot of external people that know milk,
(31:24):
people that know microbiology, people that know science, and obviously
engineers that whenever we're not agreeing, we divert to an expert.
So Philip's been great for that.
Speaker 2 (31:36):
The engineer, very opinionated engineer too.
Speaker 5 (31:40):
Well. Thene of us been challenging with. None of us
have the engineer experience, so he's just a dictator and
we're all just trying to turn the.
Speaker 7 (32:00):
Question.
Speaker 3 (32:00):
I thought, just given the young one here and they
will be coming.
Speaker 5 (32:03):
Up with rock dapers, you're going to start flipping coins
go a lot faster.
Speaker 8 (32:13):
Yeah, I can work at Having worked with Daria, I
can totally get your point that. I mean, Daria can
push back pretty hard, but she does come up with
great ideas, so you have that as well, right, I
mean that's the flip side. So one of the Yeah,
there you go. So one thing I forgot to ask is,
(32:34):
I mean, is there a regulatory approval that you guys
need for all this? But given that you're dealing with
food and I mean I'm not sure about East Africa.
I mean I'm assuming at least where we live in
our parts of the world. I mean you had to
obviously get that. I mean that's something you have to
work through and with all the governments as well.
Speaker 1 (32:54):
Yeah, yeah, absolutely not. You have to approval, which we
initially thought we needed, but apparently it's not a food
product even though it goes into food, so a thousand
learning for us, but just any we need proof that
it does pass dry so any certification. So we've been
working with Intertech to get our global certification for that
and then just local leaves, just the standards boards. Are
(33:15):
you using the right materials? Are they food safe? We
always try to follow North American and Canadian standards because
if we're meeting those standards, were most likely meeting the
once in East Africa as well, but that's something we
have to go.
Speaker 2 (33:29):
Through wherever we go.
Speaker 6 (33:31):
And then in Rwanda you have Rica. I forget the
one in Kenya, but yeah, Rica is like their standards board.
You have to just go and get approval from them,
and usually what they'll do is they'll just follow the
standards that are like European or North American. So yeah,
just been following that was.
Speaker 4 (33:49):
Coming from the competition that you and kind of posted
help with these processes, approvals or it was always like, no,
you can't just work from zero to get these.
Speaker 1 (33:59):
So after that competition, we really didn't hear. To be fair,
it was like ten organizations that were hosting the competition together.
Speaker 2 (34:06):
It wasn't just the UN. We named drop the UN
maybe more than we should.
Speaker 1 (34:11):
So it was a bunch of organizations and we didn't
really get support from the organizations themselves. But recently, I
mean last year we presented at the UN, we won
a competition by the FAO as well, and now we're
partnered with the UN, there, NIDO, the Industrial Development Organization,
and so they're just so connected and so they're helping
us do a pilot in Kenya in the next few
(34:32):
months using their contact connections there. And so I think
although we haven't been able to take advantage of that
just yet, it'll be coming now now that we've proved
ourself more than just an idea.
Speaker 8 (34:46):
Awesome any anything else that we've not asked you you
guys want to share about Sofie.
Speaker 2 (34:55):
Well, if we ever come to India, we'll let you know.
Speaker 5 (34:58):
We'll put these weecond we can help you.
Speaker 8 (35:01):
But both of us are in California, so let us
know if you're if you're in California as well.
Speaker 6 (35:05):
I guess the biggest thing is like right now we're
at a pretty critical point though if and by critical point,
I mean like we're moving from like this prototyping testing
to wanting to industrialize and commercialize the device. So if
there's anybody in the network that has any resources or
is interested in the problem space, Yeah, it doesn't.
Speaker 10 (35:28):
Necessarily have to be funding there, that would be nice,
but like any advice or funding.
Speaker 6 (35:35):
Obviously that would be super super helpful. I think like
at this point in time, we need it most.
Speaker 2 (35:40):
So we'd love to chill.
Speaker 8 (35:42):
Yeah, I mean have an open mind and talk to
as many people as possible. I mean that's how you're
gonna make your connections and you know, go conquer the world.
So absolutely yeah, So with that, thanks so much, guys.
I am glad you could come on startups. They'll say,
and share your story on behalf of Rudy and I
which would wish you guys the very best, And we'll
(36:05):
see you. I mean we'll we'll remember. I'll remember you
at least every time I have a glass of milk.
I guess from there on, but all the very best
to you guys.
Speaker 5 (36:17):
Thank you so much, Thank you for the opportunity to
come on. This is a lot of fun.
Speaker 2 (36:21):
Thank you for listening to us.
Speaker 5 (36:23):
Bye.
This is the startup You'll say podcast.
Speaker 2 (00:03):
Thank you for tuning in.
Speaker 3 (00:04):
You do us a favorite like, subscribe on YouTube LinkedIn,
and be sure to give us your feed down.
Speaker 2 (00:09):
Hope you've enjoyed this episode.
Speaker 3 (00:12):
Welcome everyone to another episode that started Bilsie.
Speaker 4 (00:15):
I'm really gore your co polls and here with Anthony
for Cash and some very amazing guests from saftie.
Speaker 3 (00:22):
We have you all, Martin and Daria today, so welcome
all of you.
Speaker 1 (00:27):
And then let's start with Hello everyone. My name is Marl,
one of the co founders of saffie and the CEO.
Speaker 5 (00:34):
My name is Martin.
Speaker 6 (00:35):
I'm also one of the co founders of soffie and
currently acting.
Speaker 5 (00:38):
As the CTO.
Speaker 7 (00:39):
Hello everyone, my name is Daria and I'm the CEO
of Soffie. I'm also a co founder.
Speaker 3 (00:46):
Impressively, all, let's just start with how did this all
come about? You're also young, so very excited to hear
this urchin story.
Speaker 2 (00:55):
Oh it started a while ago, almost three year.
Speaker 1 (00:58):
Our three year anniversary is coming up, which feels so
crazy to us. But the three of us were in
university we met. We were doing a similar program, so
I was studying computer science and business at the University
of Waterloo and Martin and Daria were studying math and
business and through our program, we were doing a lot
of case competitions.
Speaker 2 (01:16):
You have the HP, Google Ikea.
Speaker 1 (01:17):
They come and they asked you to solve a problem
for them, and as a group we were doing pretty well.
We saw we had good team synergy, we liked kind
of coming up with cool ideas. And during COVID we
came across a more interesting competition that was being hosted
by the un They asked us to find a problem
that was happening in the world because of climate change
and find a solution to it, and so that was
(01:39):
a really interesting prompt. I'll let Martin and Daria talk
more about the problem space that we stumbled upon there.
Speaker 7 (01:44):
Yeah, so COVID really kind of fell upon and almost
it sounds wrong to say, but it fell for us,
at least when it came to creating Sofia, almost at
the right time, because we had a lot of time
at home and we were just trying to keep busy
and the case competition, well, honestly, maybe I think you're
probably the best one to say where the problem came from,
because you're the closest one to it, at least at
(02:04):
the time.
Speaker 1 (02:05):
Sorry, I just feel like I've been speaking too much today, Okay.
Speaker 2 (02:09):
So, yeah, it was.
Speaker 1 (02:10):
We've realized that unsafe milk is spreading because of climate change,
which seems like such a weird relation, but essentially a
lot of dairy farmers they can't really use cows as
their primary cattle anymore. They need to move to camels
because camels survived droughts better and as we know, drugs
are happening more often because of climate change. Unfortunately, camels
(02:30):
just carry more diseases and especially coronaviruses in them inherently.
So we were in the midst of a COVID nineteen pandemic,
and we had heard about MURRS Middle East Respiratory syndrome,
which is a coronavirus ten times earlier than COVID and
spreading through raw milk. Daria mentioned my backstory because I
grew up in Oman in the Middle East, where we
had an outbreak of MRS when I was growing up,
and so to see that a coronavirus like that could
(02:53):
also become a global pandemic from people drinking raw milk
really resonated with us and became a problem we wanted to.
Speaker 5 (02:59):
Solve Yeah, so sorry.
Speaker 6 (03:03):
I think the crux of the problem is figuring out
why there isn't enough controls over the milk that's being
sold within these rural areas, and so really like if
we want to understand how to mitigate the amount of disease,
the number one step is figuring out what is the
tooling that the individual rural farmers need and then how
can we actually track that on an aggregate level. And
(03:24):
so we looked at why they weren't participating in these
like big formal systems because we know that there's like
very very big formal supply chains where a farmer will
give milk to a collector or an aggregator, they'll pasturize
the milk and then sell it to a retailer and
that'll ultimately go to the customer. But in East Africa,
that's only about ten to twenty percent in the market.
The rest of it is like eighty ninety percent. So
(03:44):
why aren't farmers selling to this formal market? And we
kind of got down to the core reason of if
they're just not getting getting enough value, So to them,
it's just so much more affordable and they make so
much more income by just selling direct to the customer
rather than participating in the formal supply chain. But then
the flip side is this creates a bunch of disease
and unshockable leaders of milk that are causing these potential outbreaks.
(04:08):
And kind of the culmination of this is can we
take this formal supply chain, miniaturize it and democratize it
across all of these farmers. And so that's kind of
how we came up with the device, And I'll let
very and you speak to kind of what it actually does.
Speaker 8 (04:25):
Before we go into the device itself for the solution.
I mean, you know, just to expand on the fact
that I mean, you know, you're still in college and
the belief that you guys can actually go after a
problem like this, I think it's even bigger than actually
coming up with a solution, right, because a lot of
founders don't get past that point.
Speaker 1 (04:46):
Right.
Speaker 8 (04:47):
So, given the amazing work you've done, I mean, now
it's all hindsight. What gave you guys the belief Number
one saying, Hey, obviously Mimi's been through it, She's been
close to that problem in her childhood. But for you
guys to come together and say, Okay, this is worth
while pursuing and we can come up with a solution.
At that point, you didn't even know what the solution was, right,
(05:09):
I mean, how did the three of your team up
number one?
Speaker 5 (05:13):
Right?
Speaker 8 (05:14):
I mean, and how did you say, okay, and this
is a path we should take to get to where
you are right now?
Speaker 5 (05:20):
We actually start off at six, and I think.
Speaker 6 (05:22):
We were just the three most delusional ones in the beginning.
But like the first year, we were just kind of
like we had these huge plans, and sometimes we look
back on like where we wanted to be in like
twenty twenty three and twenty twenty four, it's like we
really were delusional, Like we were like, we're going to
have a million devices sold and shipped by like twenty
twenty five. But yeah, like the first year, we were
(05:44):
just kind of spinning in circles. We wanted to make
the change, and we were kind of getting to grips
with how we were going to do that. But at
least for me, the biggest part or step within this
whole flow is actually going down to one and running
a pilot. The device that we had brought was complete
garbage at the time, like it was just three D
(06:05):
printed thrown together with some.
Speaker 9 (06:09):
I would say, like I would not be proud of
that right now at this point, but like just taking
that leap of faith, believing in ourselves and believing in
kind of not not necessarily part that we had at
the time, but the mission of what we were actually
trying to accomplish, and then going.
Speaker 6 (06:25):
And actually getting good feedback. Like I think that's what
gave me a ton of confidence coming back just.
Speaker 7 (06:30):
To sort of take it a step back from even
going to Africa. I think initially what really pushed us
was the support that we almost got so from the competition.
I guess the key part to that is, yes, we participated,
but we ended up winning out of I think a
thousand teams across the world, which was very I mean,
we all won competitions here and there at case Comps,
but that was really like, Wow, there's a lot of
(06:51):
people from the House of Commons. I think it's called
very high level people that believe in this and well,
not necessarily in us, but that they think this.
Speaker 2 (06:58):
Is a great solution.
Speaker 7 (06:59):
Okay, maybe let's roll with it. And honestly to credit
University of waterloohere it deserves credit there was a lot
of programs and ecosystems that we could reach out to.
For those that are familiar, like concept Velocity, that sort
of took us in listened, we were able to pitch
more and raise more money. So I think there was
a lot of support that even went beyond us that
at least for me, gave me a lot of confidence
(07:21):
because really I knew nothing about Africa about milk and pasteurization,
but just the fact that people believed in us and
in our enthusiasm was absolutely kind of really what set
the foundation that this could be something. Yeah, that was
my bait.
Speaker 2 (07:41):
That was exactly what I was gonna say, So Daria
just said it for me.
Speaker 4 (07:46):
So I do, like, I think there's like a fad
or maybe untobly wrong, but being lack of importance seems
to be a thing.
Speaker 3 (07:53):
So I was like, do you guys even drink milk?
Was that one of the things, like, hey, we're.
Speaker 4 (07:57):
Going to go after a product we consume every day,
so we're going to go fix this, or it was
just like we see a problem that wasn't une topic.
Speaker 7 (08:06):
So you know, we've done a lot of Q and a's,
and a lot nobody has ever asked us that question. Yeah,
I personally at that time I didn't really drink cow's milk,
but funny enough, whenever I would go back home to
Romania or whenever I just wasn't in Canada, I would
drink cow's milk. But for whatever reason, at home and
at university, I was very much off of oat milk
(08:30):
and almond milk, just supplements. For whatever reason, but I
think it was a big problem that felt more compelling
than our usage of milk plenty.
Speaker 2 (08:39):
I actually became lackt as of tolerant like a year after.
Speaker 5 (08:42):
So, I don't know. I love milk. I love the milk.
Speaker 6 (08:50):
Yeah, I guess it's just one of those things you
take for granted though, like the fact that you can
just go to the store and go and purchase it
and you don't have to worry about any safety concerns,
the quality of the mill college nutrients you're getting, like
everything is controlled step by step. When you go to
East Africa and you look at this like market that's
like eighty percent and it's all informal, it's completely different,
(09:10):
and it's like a brand new world that we really
have to learn a lot about.
Speaker 5 (09:16):
Martin.
Speaker 8 (09:16):
Let's double click on East Africa that you said right
like you said, going there was really the spark you
needed and figuring out the problem on the ground, if
you will. So, I mean, you know here you are
three of you or six of you at that point
starting this journey. So what support system did you guys
(09:37):
have to say? Okay, you know we're trying to solve
for this and the competition you win help you get
started with a trip to Africa to talk to the
right people, go connect with all of them. And I
mean and then from there on, I mean, what what
did you narrow down the problem to. I mean, of
course you mentioned pasteurization being one of the primary ways
(09:59):
to get over the but I mean, what sort of
steps do you guys fallow to get to the root
of the problem, if you will, I.
Speaker 7 (10:06):
Guess I could start at the beginning of that and
then I'll let Mimiam Martin dissect the rest of it.
But initially the un competition was really what sparked the idea,
and then we sort of went to the university. We
tried to get more funding and we won a couple
of competitions, but it wasn't monetarily really enough to get
there and we're really propelled. US was an incubator in
Vienna randomly and fundamally enough, and they really their whole
(10:30):
initiative wasn't supporting non African based companies, or I think
I might be wrong. There was some African based ones,
but just in kind of helping them either develop they're
already existing African market or bringing them to the African market.
So we got to pick between Rwanda, Uganda and Ghana,
No Nigeria, Rwanda and Ghana, and we just ended up
(10:51):
being in Rwanda because as it happened, as we happened
to learn their Rwanda's love milk. I mean, they have
milk bars like we have alcohol hall bars. So that
was just with their help that we got there. Financially speaking.
Speaker 8 (11:06):
Okay, so you go there. I mean you mentioned the
eighty twenty ratios and all of that, right, I mean,
so is it because mainly due to cost reasons they
are unable to do the pasteurization or were there are
other factors because of which I mean, you know, the
milk is left and attended or drunk row if you will.
Speaker 6 (11:29):
Probably two number one is caught or not cost, but
the amount of income that they make per leter of milk.
So if you sell to an aggregator collector, like in
the region, they're going to give you less milk than
if you sell directly to the customer. And it's just
a factor of yeah, sorry, LUs money, And it's just
a factor of like how close they are to the
end of the supply chain. So when they sell to
(11:50):
the formal market, they're like the first and the supply chain,
but they're like six steps removed from the final customer,
and so the amount of value that the actual aggregator
can give them is quite versus like if they're selling
direct to the customer, it's it's a lot more and
they have control over their own pricing. Number two is
probably infrastructure. So there's just generally not a big distribution
infrastructure in these areas, Like the roads themselves aren't very
(12:13):
well maintained. There's not a lot of chilling or cooling,
which is a huge, huge factor in pasteurization and dairy processing.
So without that infrastructure, it's hard to like centralize a
rural farmer that's like, let's say thirty kilometers from the
nearest aggregation center. So I think those are probably the
two biggest factors maybe some misplanning on the government's part
(12:37):
in the beginning, where they just kind of mandated the
pasteurization of milk and the sale of pastorization of milk
and didn't put the right controls in place to ensure
that that was going to go through the formal market.
Speaker 7 (12:49):
There's also, I would say a good bit of I
wouldn't say misinformation, but maybe miseducation in terms of the
consumption of raw milk, pasturized milk, and boiled milk. So
traditionally we've come to learn in Rwandan culture, I think
it's the same thing for Kenya, they boil milk three
times over to make sure that it's safe. So they
know that raw milk isn't necessarily safe to drink, but
(13:11):
they resort to boiling traditionally to get the bad bacteria,
the viruses, anything that could be harmful out. But that
actually in terms harms the milk and leads to malnutrition
because you're not only boiling out bacteria, you're boiling out
vitamins and proteins and really all the stuff that makes
milk nutritious. So that's another factor where we do help
(13:33):
and making sure that milk is monitored and it's not
only safe, but it's also nutritious compared to what they
had been using.
Speaker 4 (13:39):
I actually want to hear more about the pilot, right,
because I just going through your side and there's a
fluorap where either one of you is explaining it, and
there's just faces of skeptic people, and the next one
is where they're smiling.
Speaker 3 (13:51):
So I'm assuming going in because traditionally they know how
to have their milk. You know, anable thing. You've been
doing it? Why are you all coming in? How is
that your right? How is that explanation? And kind of
getting through that hurdle?
Speaker 1 (14:04):
So I guess it like just preempted a little bit
with the device we ended up coming up with to
solve this entire problem is a pasteurization control unit. So
it's essentially a device that you put onto your pot
of milk. It measures time and temperature of pasteurization and
essentially tells you when your milk is safe to consume
health wise, and then also when it has still the
right amount of meatskins before you've boiled them off. And
(14:26):
so of course when you go to these new villages,
especially when you're telling them, hey, you've been boiling your
milk for generations, but did you know that kills new chance.
Obviously they're going to look at you kind of offended, skeptical,
who are you to tell me? We're also very young,
Like we're all younger than twenty five, we're all twenty
four years old, and so it's also just like who
are these kids, and like why are they here? And
(14:48):
I think we really tackled that just by being honest, relatable,
bringing personal experiences into the story of Hey, like our family,
like my family is Pakistani, they used to boil their milk.
My mom grew boiling her milk, so she was as
shocked as you might be. Like, we're all learning and
showing like our own research to help back it up. Again,
when you're speaking to them, there's always that little bit
(15:10):
of like confusion. But as soon as you start doing
the demonstration so I guess the pictures.
Speaker 2 (15:14):
He'sa on the website.
Speaker 1 (15:16):
At first, everyone's a little bit skeptical, but as soon
as you start demonstrating the use of the device. We
have test strips, they taste the milk before and after,
that's when they really believe it.
Speaker 2 (15:25):
So it's genuinely like see it to believe it. We learned.
Speaker 1 (15:28):
Until you're speaking, you have your PowerPoint, your research paper
behind you, everyone's kind of looking at you, like when
can I leave? Yeah, And as you start demonstrating it,
everyone gets really excited, so's us.
Speaker 6 (15:41):
And I think like shouldn't downplay also the impact that
like the community the leaders have there. So the first
thing and not super lucky because we would go to
like an Engio or like a big kind of community
leading group and they would help us and better ourselves
within the community and meet the right people. But yeah,
it would literally be like we're speaking, it's like a
twenty minute presentation. Everybody's like kind of blank faces and
(16:04):
like not really smiling, and then the community leader starts
talking and everyone starts clapping and like looking at us
and smiling. So yeah, I think like that's probably one
of the biggest things is we have like very very
solid connections with the community leaders, and the first thing
to do is explain the product to them, get them
to become the champions of the product, and then it's
very very easy to go to the rest of the
(16:25):
farmers and do these kind of like community group sessions.
Speaker 8 (16:28):
With the device itself. Right, I mean, people talk about
reinventing the wal before you try to come up with something.
I mean, were you worried about the fact that, hey,
we're creating something brand new? Of course it works right
now After the fact, I mean, how much of research
did you do to see if there might be something
(16:48):
that already kind of existed you could have USD components
of that into what you were building out and what
it eventually became. And at what point did you realize,
oh my, I mean something like this doesn't exist. We
have to do it for this price point to work.
And you know, Martin, you were laughing earlier as to
how it was three D printed in the first stages
(17:10):
and whatnot. That's how these things start right to where
it is right now. So again, I mean, you know,
to put it shot in shot, right, I mean, instead
of recreating the whole wheel, if you will, How did
you come to the realization that this actually requires invention
from the ground up to the device and it's in
(17:33):
form and scale that you came up with.
Speaker 7 (17:34):
I mean, thankfully, pasteurization as a word and as a
concept has existed for I think about one hundred years now,
and it's very well researched and very well studied, so
we didn't have to go and reinvent the wheel. We
just sort of had to perfect it for the new landscape.
And pastisers exist and they're huge, and you can even
there's some government fundings that allow certain farmers kiosk like
(17:57):
milk reseller owners to have their own past risers, and
they're gigantic and they're just unused. So through research we
realize that really boils down to the boils down to
the fact that they don't have electrical infrastructure to support
the machines that exist. So we knew we had to
make it off the grid, and you're not really going
to make something off the grid without batteries, solar panels,
(18:21):
and that just by nature meant that it had to
be boiled down again to something smaller. And when you're
looking at the more rural farmers, they don't even reach
the capacities of these large scale, industrial, gigantic milk past risers.
So just the baby steps kind of led to the
three D printed MVP that Martin was talking about.
Speaker 8 (18:44):
Got it, So tell us more about the device itself
right out, I mean, where it started and where it
is right now, or what are the steps the farmers
need to take how long it takes for them to
actually make the milk safe. I mean, just tell us
about the product itself.
Speaker 6 (18:58):
For sure, the product's gone through a bunch of increments,
but fundamentally there's like three components.
Speaker 5 (19:06):
Number one is while the farmer is.
Speaker 6 (19:08):
Heating the milk, we want to make sure that the
milk is in constant movement, otherwise it starts burning at
the bottom, and the heat distribution as a uniform, so
the bottom of the device has a risk that's automated.
Number two is a temperature probe that essentially measures the
temperature of the milk throughout the whole pot, and you
want that temperature to reach seventy two degrees for fifteen seconds.
(19:31):
That's like the gold standard of pasteurization for high temperature,
short time pasturization. So we built that into the device
itself and attracts for that, and then has this like
very very nice UI component on the top that essentially
just shows the farmer like literally with lights when the
pasteurization is complete, whether the device has enough battery, and
(19:51):
so it just kind of takes them through the whole system.
And then the third part to this whole device is
this data tracking component, and so we didn't realize this
early on. It was kind of of like something that
we got to through multiple increments after I think coming
back from our first pilot, some of our partners that
asked us, you know, it's nice that the farmers are pasteurizing,
but if I'm like a big engio or a big
(20:12):
regulator aggregator, I want to know exactly when the farmer pasteurized,
how much they pasteurized, Like I need this data or
else I can't actually validate that the milk is good
quality and that the customers are purchasing good quality. And
so we realize, like we already have kind of the
internal infrastructure necessary to build some type of IoT device.
(20:33):
So we kind of pivoted a little bit and had
some network connectivity that we built into the device that
allows it to be pained pretty much from the cloud anywhere,
and we can extract this data, pull it into like
a central repository where any regulator angio can access it,
and so kind of been doing. So we've created this
very very nice centralized system that first of all, it
gives the tooling to farmers, but also allows governments and
(20:55):
regulators to have full transparency into the dairy supply chain.
Speaker 3 (21:00):
You know, I'm like an just like looking at our childhood.
There would be another man that'll come to the door
and you would just know that, hey, this is a
good one. But I believe this device is what you're
doing like a yelper do right. Hey, this has consistently
performed and it's you know, it's a huge data point
where the local farmers to go from. Okay, and you
(21:23):
said first pilot, was there a second one too?
Speaker 8 (21:26):
Just a couple.
Speaker 1 (21:29):
So we've been to Rwanda and Kenny, I think five
times over the past two years, and so every time
you're like learning more. I think the last time we
went in August and November, and we finally have a
product that we think is final. Now we've incorporated so
much feedback from the farmers and the milk vendors and
the government officials to.
Speaker 2 (21:47):
Come to this final prototype. But we really wanted to
co create the product with.
Speaker 1 (21:51):
The people who are going to end up using it,
and so initially when we went to Rwanda, we took
two options. A solar powered version that didn't pastrize it
like didn't heat them, sorry, one version that uses the
electricity but heated and we.
Speaker 2 (22:03):
Asked them like, which one do you prefer?
Speaker 1 (22:05):
What features do you want? And we knew, always knew
we weren't building for ourselves. We were building for this
very specific demographic. And so all of these different pilots
I think we did four in total, ensured that we
were products exactly.
Speaker 8 (22:19):
So, Mimi, you obviously started this off like a competition
that you wanted to do something fun. I mean it
turned out to be something super worthwhile and saving the
world almost right, So what's the vision for the future
with SAFI? I mean, you know you guys that, I
(22:40):
mean you did mention prototype a few times. Obviously it's
taken a few times to get to where you are,
but I can also imagine that East Africa is just
a sliver of where this problem is, right, So maybe
touch upon what vision you guys have in the future
for SAFI. And I know Martin you mentioned partners a
(23:02):
couple of times. I'm assuming you will need your partner
network to help you get to those different parts of
the world as well. Maybe speak about that as well.
Speaker 1 (23:13):
Absolutely so, we always say East aff because just our
beach Head market, because the market's quite small, it allows
us to really perfect the dairy supply chain and learn
before going into much larger markets. We have our eyes
on India. That's the number one market we want to
go after Rwandan Kenya. You guys just have such a
huge dairy supply chain and a very good supply chain
as well there. Rwandas actually mimic their dairy supply chain
(23:36):
over like they saw what India was doing in trying
to emulate that. And so because we're kind of familiar
with that supply chain right now, we're really excited to
start working.
Speaker 2 (23:45):
In India as well.
Speaker 1 (23:46):
Martin and I were googling like countries who want to
live in Apparently they have a good dairy supply chain.
Speaker 2 (23:51):
In Bali, so we might but no all show society.
Speaker 1 (23:55):
I think Fakistan, India, and Bangladesh those are probably the
countries will be targed next.
Speaker 7 (24:01):
South America is pretty big too in terms of Also,
I forgot the name of it, but it's like I
don't want to say baby milk banks, but it's from
others that can't necessarily they can't produce enough milk or
their milk quality isn't to scale that. There's also a
venture there into going into human milk and I guess
it's worthwhile noting. I don't even know if we said it,
(24:23):
but it's not. We started with camels, we've pivoted to
cows because that's just kind of where the bulk of
the market is. And funny enough, we're going back to
a camel pilot now. But really it works on any
type of milk. We can do goat milk, maybe we
can look into cheese making, just explore different niches within
(24:43):
what we've already been doing as well.
Speaker 3 (24:49):
This is exciting stuff.
Speaker 4 (24:51):
I'm like, I looked at a cuff of milk and
I never had these many questions And I'm glad too
all took a look at because it is.
Speaker 3 (24:59):
It's it's a nutrition source for a lot of areas, right,
So there's no oneerwine in the scale of this.
Speaker 7 (25:06):
Yep.
Speaker 6 (25:07):
Yeah, it's oftentimes like the cheapest and most nutritious product
that children can drink. Like there's a ton of school
feeding programs in rwand then Kenya that we're looking at,
and yeah, it just goes to show, like, you know,
milk is such an important pivotal factor within children a child,
a child's development, and if they can't secure the quality
(25:29):
of that, then like there's a huge gap there. So
absolutely was there was.
Speaker 3 (25:34):
There a having the name Saffi come through, Like where
did that come from?
Speaker 2 (25:41):
I'm not sure how. It isn't Hindi, which is where
we're working.
Speaker 1 (25:44):
It means clean or do as well Hindi Arabic also,
so it's just a really good universal word for safe,
pure clean milk.
Speaker 2 (25:53):
Yes, it is.
Speaker 1 (25:54):
It is.
Speaker 8 (25:56):
And I were talking before we started recording and we're like,
that's our best guess, right, So we were right now. Yeah,
So in terms of scale right obviously where you are,
I'm assuming you're sitting in your parents' room or your
the home room and doing three D printing of all
(26:17):
your equipment right now. But I mean in terms of
mass production to your vision of where you need to go,
have you drawn up plans to partner with somebody to
manufacture this at scale? And I mean obviously in a
global market. I mean you can look at so many
different ways to you know, minimize that supply chain and
(26:39):
get it faster to the markets you want.
Speaker 5 (26:41):
I mean what sort of thought process have you put
into that? Yeah, this is definitely top of mine. Now
where we're going.
Speaker 6 (26:48):
From like creating fifty two one hundred devices at a
time to starting to think about like larger one thousand
to ten thousand, and when you get to that type
of skill. We're thinking almost to start creating some partners
and trying, uh, ultimately, we want to do manufacturing locally.
I think that's always been the goal, you know, involve
local labor and be very very close to the communities.
(27:10):
It's it's like a thing where you know, we're going
to simplify logistics, but we also want to have proximity
within these regions and so yeah, it's it's definitely like
a lot of logistical planning. There's some interesting stuff to
be said about like taxation as you bring product in
from China to Kenya versus r wand and so we're
trying to figure out the right mix of all of that.
(27:31):
But yeah, we're we're planning to do a much bigger
production run hopefully this summer, and so definitely top of
mind doing a ton of shopping for manufacturers and just
standardizing everything.
Speaker 8 (27:42):
Yeah, with the current political climate, be careful with tariffs
as well.
Speaker 5 (27:46):
Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 7 (27:50):
Yeah, So.
Speaker 8 (27:54):
I want to pivot to just your journey as co founders, right,
I mean, I'm not of ensure if you guys have
had a chance to see yourself in that light, given
that you have so much to deal with just with
school and you know, jobs and doing this, but as
co founders, right, obviously you're all working together, but I mean,
(28:17):
you know things are not always rosie right. You guys
tend to disagree at times, You guys tend to walk
away from conversations. And how has that journey been just
being you know, three co founders and how do you
make decisions, key decisions amongst yourselves, And just maybe give
us a couple of stories of what you've learned about
(28:40):
yourselves as co founders through this journey. I'm always fascinated
to learn from that.
Speaker 7 (28:44):
I thanks thankfully.
Speaker 2 (28:46):
It's good that there's three.
Speaker 7 (28:48):
Thinking back to six, it would have been a little
bit crazy to make decisions. Making them because there's three,
there's always either two that can agree on one thing,
and then you kind of could accept that you're wrong.
Speaking for experience, and yeah, I think three is a
really good number. I think it would have been very
hard to do it in twos because then you would
(29:08):
just have two very opposing opinions. But something that I
think I've learned from myself and maybe I I guess
I carry another event news. I'm very skeptical. I think
I'm always the first one to say this isn't gonna work, guys,
or I don't I don't think we've properly looked at this,
or I'm always first to say no, no loves.
Speaker 10 (29:28):
To play Devil's advocate. Yeah, yeah, sometimes not very fun
that conversation. Yeah, I mean, yeah, it's littally difficult to.
Speaker 6 (29:39):
Make decisions democratically for sure, But ultimately I think the
quality of our decision making is a lot better that way.
It's like what Daria said, like you have at least
three sources of checks before you go into a certain direction,
and all of us bring, I think, like a very
very unique perspective, and even.
Speaker 5 (29:56):
If it ends up in like a conflict, it's usually
for the best the usual.
Speaker 6 (30:01):
But yeah, like I can't even imagine doing this type
of startup with just like one person, like by yourself.
I think, like the implicit motivation that you get from
the co founders around you is like very very underrated.
Like for me, that's one of the biggest things, just
to kind of keep jugging along, like even when things
aren't necessarily moving fast and you're getting like a ton
of funding and like things are you know, deals are progressing.
(30:22):
I think just having like a really really solid group
of people around you who you are working with.
Speaker 5 (30:27):
Yeah, that's definitely one of the bigger parts for me.
Speaker 2 (30:31):
I think the only much that is that we're all
very like strong opinion of people. Thank you, what we
do a good job is we'll all we bring in.
Speaker 1 (30:37):
Our personal opinions are little, but we always do put
the company first, like what's best for the company. This
might be my personal opinion, but what's actually going to
help us move forward, and we're able to like always,
I think we always kind of align at the end
of the day. I don't think we've ever made a
decision where one person wasn't on board and had to
go with it because I have to go with it.
Speaker 2 (30:55):
We kind of end up making the decisions together and
that's kind of the beauty of it.
Speaker 7 (31:01):
M I think to also shout Philip out our engineer.
I think a lot of Solby has been built so
made me mentioned at the beginning, she's computer science. Me
and Martinara math. Other than a little bit of the
technicality from computer science and maybe the algorithm that goes
into it. For math, there's almost none of that. So
there's been a lot of external people that know milk,
(31:24):
people that know microbiology, people that know science, and obviously
engineers that whenever we're not agreeing, we divert to an expert.
So Philip's been great for that.
Speaker 2 (31:36):
The engineer, very opinionated engineer too.
Speaker 5 (31:40):
Well. Thene of us been challenging with. None of us
have the engineer experience, so he's just a dictator and
we're all just trying to turn the.
Speaker 7 (32:00):
Question.
Speaker 3 (32:00):
I thought, just given the young one here and they
will be coming.
Speaker 5 (32:03):
Up with rock dapers, you're going to start flipping coins
go a lot faster.
Speaker 8 (32:13):
Yeah, I can work at Having worked with Daria, I
can totally get your point that. I mean, Daria can
push back pretty hard, but she does come up with
great ideas, so you have that as well, right, I
mean that's the flip side. So one of the Yeah,
there you go. So one thing I forgot to ask is,
(32:34):
I mean, is there a regulatory approval that you guys
need for all this? But given that you're dealing with
food and I mean I'm not sure about East Africa.
I mean I'm assuming at least where we live in
our parts of the world. I mean you had to
obviously get that. I mean that's something you have to
work through and with all the governments as well.
Speaker 1 (32:54):
Yeah, yeah, absolutely not. You have to approval, which we
initially thought we needed, but apparently it's not a food
product even though it goes into food, so a thousand
learning for us, but just any we need proof that
it does pass dry so any certification. So we've been
working with Intertech to get our global certification for that
and then just local leaves, just the standards boards. Are
(33:15):
you using the right materials? Are they food safe? We
always try to follow North American and Canadian standards because
if we're meeting those standards, were most likely meeting the
once in East Africa as well, but that's something we
have to go.
Speaker 2 (33:29):
Through wherever we go.
Speaker 6 (33:31):
And then in Rwanda you have Rica. I forget the
one in Kenya, but yeah, Rica is like their standards board.
You have to just go and get approval from them,
and usually what they'll do is they'll just follow the
standards that are like European or North American. So yeah,
just been following that was.
Speaker 4 (33:49):
Coming from the competition that you and kind of posted
help with these processes, approvals or it was always like, no,
you can't just work from zero to get these.
Speaker 1 (33:59):
So after that competition, we really didn't hear. To be fair,
it was like ten organizations that were hosting the competition together.
Speaker 2 (34:06):
It wasn't just the UN. We named drop the UN
maybe more than we should.
Speaker 1 (34:11):
So it was a bunch of organizations and we didn't
really get support from the organizations themselves. But recently, I
mean last year we presented at the UN, we won
a competition by the FAO as well, and now we're
partnered with the UN, there, NIDO, the Industrial Development Organization,
and so they're just so connected and so they're helping
us do a pilot in Kenya in the next few
(34:32):
months using their contact connections there. And so I think
although we haven't been able to take advantage of that
just yet, it'll be coming now now that we've proved
ourself more than just an idea.
Speaker 8 (34:46):
Awesome any anything else that we've not asked you you
guys want to share about Sofie.
Speaker 2 (34:55):
Well, if we ever come to India, we'll let you know.
Speaker 5 (34:58):
We'll put these weecond we can help you.
Speaker 8 (35:01):
But both of us are in California, so let us
know if you're if you're in California as well.
Speaker 6 (35:05):
I guess the biggest thing is like right now we're
at a pretty critical point though if and by critical point,
I mean like we're moving from like this prototyping testing
to wanting to industrialize and commercialize the device. So if
there's anybody in the network that has any resources or
is interested in the problem space, Yeah, it doesn't.
Speaker 10 (35:28):
Necessarily have to be funding there, that would be nice,
but like any advice or funding.
Speaker 6 (35:35):
Obviously that would be super super helpful. I think like
at this point in time, we need it most.
Speaker 2 (35:40):
So we'd love to chill.
Speaker 8 (35:42):
Yeah, I mean have an open mind and talk to
as many people as possible. I mean that's how you're
gonna make your connections and you know, go conquer the world.
So absolutely yeah, So with that, thanks so much, guys.
I am glad you could come on startups. They'll say,
and share your story on behalf of Rudy and I
which would wish you guys the very best, And we'll
(36:05):
see you. I mean we'll we'll remember. I'll remember you
at least every time I have a glass of milk.
I guess from there on, but all the very best
to you guys.
Speaker 5 (36:17):
Thank you so much, Thank you for the opportunity to
come on. This is a lot of fun.
Speaker 2 (36:21):
Thank you for listening to us.
Speaker 5 (36:23):
Bye.
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