Four Bengaluru students create an app to combat food waste

Four tech-loving teenagers are setting out to solve a major issue facing the food sector. The Food Wastage Index Report 2023 by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) states that 68.7 million tons of food are wasted yearly in India. In terms of household food waste, the nation is ranked second, behind China. According to the research, 35% of the food generated during food production ends up decaying.

These young students at the International Indian Institute of Information Technology, Bengaluru (IIIT-B), where they are studying computer science and electronic communication engineering, came up with a creative way to deal with this waste on a big scale, particularly in large restaurant settings.

Yash Gupta, Siddharth Chauhan, Pranav Bhutada, and Kushal Partani created an IT system with gas sensors for real-time food freshness monitoring. The system uses sophisticated machine learning algorithms to analyze sensor data plots and provide probable spoiling warnings. Their user-friendly, low-cost software, FreshGaurd, uses gas sensor technology to identify contaminants and freshness, helping businesses sell and handle perishable commodities more effectively while guaranteeing that the products are safe, wholesome, and of high quality.

One of the app’s co-developers, Pranav, told The New Indian Express, “The simple explanation is that all food products, be it vegetables, fruits, milk, or other edible items, emit some gases when they start to rot.” These values are captured by these sensors and fed into a machine-learning model. The model must first be trained to determine what values, in light of the products and their parameters, are good and poor. The algorithm picks up on the trend over time and determines the perishable commodities’ health value with accuracy.

The program can project data for hundreds of containers, whether they are in cold storage or not, he said. “The data used here will all be current. Thus far, we have assessed the milk quality using a prototype. The model may be trained by individuals for various products. The gadget is reasonably priced; at the present market pricing, the total cost of all the sensors is only Rs 1,000.

Depending on the needs, the gadget will contain a network of seven to twelve gas sensors that are arranged in a strategic manner to detect gases like carbon monoxide, methane, hydrogen, and volatile organic compounds that may affect an individual’s organs. In order to assist both big and small enterprises, the group intends to charge Rs 2,000 for their solution, which they believe would have a “long-term impact.”