FACE TO FACE with JUDY CHEONG
Curious about cultures, human behaviours and how it all unlocks for brands, Judy has more than a decade of experience in advertising agencies and start-ups spanning APAC and Global roles. She led strategy and business development in an award-winning team at Ogilvy and created multi-market social campaigns with 100M+ global reach at Uber. With a strong focus on data and executional excellence, she is highly motivated to bring core functional teams together in collaboration to achieve big impactful ideas. She is the Head of Brand for Sustenir now, one of Asia ’s premier high-nutrition, indoor vertical farming leaders focusing on growing 100% clean superfoods to improve consumer health in super cities. At Sustenir, that means embodying the brand’s mission to improve health spans and #LiveLarger in life by eating a bag of Sustenir greens every day and get a million people in South-East Asia to do the same.
Here is an excerpt of the interview.
Sustenir recently celebrated its 10 year anniversary in February. Does it still see itself as a start up?
Consumers are at the heart of everything we do here at Sustenir. Therefore, innovation never rests. We may be a matured start up at 10 years of age, but we still work with the urgency of a brand-new start-up.
Sustenir’s roots began with vertical farming and reinventing the food value chain. And through the pandemic, we saw how we were no longer just a farm supporting food resilience, but an ecosystem player providing positive impact to various communities.
We focused on creating job opportunities in this new agri-tech industry; strengthened consumer health through fresh nutrition; and worked closely with customers in retail to bring wider awareness to eating better quality, pesticide-free leafy greens. Our long-term vision is to improve consumer health spans, empowering people in cities to add life to their years, not years to their lives, so there is a lot more for us to do.
There are lots of debate on the energy usage and sustainability of CEA, how is Sustenir addressing these two issues?
Sustenir is certified B Corp which means we look at both the human and environmental cost of doing business. We measure sustainability holistically across five pillars: Governance, Workers, Community, Environment, Customers. We engage with various stakeholders such as schools, customers, and government agencies to ensure that we have a positive ecosystem impact be it job creation, educational programs, or consumer insights.
Our indoor vertical farms grow more with less resources such as using 95% less water, without environmental pollutants and without pesticides. There is an upside to growing our food supply without taking more land, without polluting water sources with toxic runoff, and without contributing further to food loss in the imported food value chain. Implementing energy-efficient technologies and practices maximise our resource usage whilst minimising environmental impact. Agri-tech is a blooming industry and as technology progresses, improvements will follow.
What are the challenges you face in your day-to-day operations?
It may not be obvious but in my role, I work cross-functionally with operations, sales, R&D, finance and HR in the development of our brand. A constant challenge in the organisation is resource management in the face of external pressures.
When lockdown occurred, we were cut off from raw materials in the middle of building, our third and largest farm in Singapore. We bootstrapped solutions and managed to complete construction works in 100 days. Our operations ramped up during COVID and we had to secure talent quickly to support increasing orders. We have big challenges like making sure we are scaling the business effectively and smaller ones like over- communicating between departments. Sustenir’s tight-knit teams and unwavering commitment to progress, not perfection, keeps us going.
Can you elaborate a bit more on what you meant by next generation Superfood and how they are different from the normal Kale or lettuce available in supermarkets? How do these superfoods enhance the “food-mood” connection and are key to building long-term health spans of the population?
In the early days of the pandemic someone reminded me of a well-known saying: “eat your food as medicine otherwise you will eat medicines as food”. It’s an old saying but the decades of food innovations have yielded more convenience than nutrition. Necessity being the mother of invention, as the world emerged from the pandemic with newfound priorities on health there is an opportunity to relook at what we eat and how we grow it.
A 2019 study by health service company Cigna found that 92 per cent of working Singaporean adults experienced stress. Other than a better workplace environment, we think that our diet could help alleviate this. GABA is naturally found in many food types including kale and is known to work like the body’s traffic light system to reduce anxiety and stress.
The Health Promotion Board recommends two servings (or 200g) of vegetables daily. This is slightly more than 1 entire bag of Sustenir Kinky Kale or 2 bags of Mighty Mix daily! We know most people would fall somewhat short of eating this equivalent every day.
Sustenir looks at value-adding through higher nutrition such as our GABA enriched Toscano Kale, which as a superfood ‘pound for pound’ is more nutrient dense in comparison to other vegetables such as iceberg lettuce. We believe less is more and having what consumers eat count – by growing more nutrient dense versus larger quantities consumed.
A view of how the greens are grown in Sustenir
How do you address the affordability of these superfoods?
We tailor our products based on the needs of consumers in different supermarket chains. You would be able to find our range of superfoods at upmarket retailers such as Little Farms and Cold Storage, specialist stores such as Don Don Donki, all the way to mass supermarkets like FairPrice and Sheng Siong. Our variety of products are curated to fit different needs and preferences across a range of affordability so everyone can enjoy a boost of health in their daily meals.
What is your message to new Agripreuners who wants to venture into Controlled Environment Agriculture?
The agri-tech industry is vibrant and rapidly growing, combining cutting-edge technology with agriculture to solve some of the world’s most pressing problems. It’s a chance to be part of a transformative movement that changes the way we produce, distribute, and consume food whilst protecting the environment and creating economic opportunities. It is a positive impact on people and planet. Always think long term. In the hustle of the start-up, it’s easy to only prioritise the short term and forget the bigger picture.
