All right. Thank you Zel, uh, for this interview. To kick off conversation, can you present yourself, your background and how you got involved with T 57?

Thank you for the time you took, and, uh, very good morning. It's a long story. Okay. I'll try to, make it short as, possible. my name is Abdal Hussein. I'm a founder, chairman, and head of strategy of T 57. T 57 is a first platform, uh, which is a, um, very unique platform where, uh, agriculture trade and food security is addressed. how we get into this was, I'm into social, economic development. Last, uh, more than a decade, I did some of the projects in Saudi Arabia, where with a little bit effort, we were able to achieve more than 50,000 SMEs and jobs globally. After that experience, it motivated us that we can do something good. So we were in this journey, that is a time we met, um, the chairman of, IOFS, Islamic Organization of Food Security. They were going through some kind of challenges. They had hired four consulting firms, consortium of consulting firms, one from Europe, one from, Far East, one from Dubai and some other countries. they were trying to set up funds and those things. They spent two years develop a strategy and present it to their board, and it was rejected. And that is a time the chairman had viewed our, uh, what we were driving that time, social dev, economic development. he says, can you guys help us? our team is based in 30 different countries, different expertise from, from economy experts to, agriculture trade, you name it. Okay. Finance, banking experts. So we, we took it as a challenge. We worked with this organization for around a year and a half. Okay. Now it's much more than that. So when, when we saw the. Uh, challenges. Okay. That organization was more of a knowledge based organization and not a impact based organization. And we are coming from a background of impact, creating jobs, SMEs, and uh, so on. When we looked at, initially when we met them, we read their 10 year strategy. Uh, honestly, I could not understand anything. I went to my colleagues, my friends, I said, can you read it and explain it to me? Because I could not understand, because what I was looking is organization who has a, a mandate for 57 countries should be talking about some impact. There was no impact anywhere. So my colleagues came back to me and said. a knowledge based organization. It's not an impact based organization. So I went back to, the DG director general, uh, lan by and, uh, the chairman of the organization, uh, who's a Qatari national Mass Maori. I said, uh, your excellencies. Can we, uh, rework on the strategy, for your organization? So the DG said, are you joking? You know, we are an international organization to change any strategy. We need to have a resolution passed, okay? In a, we need to bring these countries, okay? In a general assembly, there'll be voting happen. We need to present to them. They have to approve. I says. I don't know what it takes, but this is not where we, we are reaching, it's like a boat. You have holes, you're trying to cover each hole again. You cover one, you will open some something else. You're not addressing anything. See, we did, we worked with them for almost one and a half, two years. It was pro bono. We didn't charge them a dollar because we want to be honest and vocal about it. We, we, we never took money. Okay. Because we want to tell what is the truth. So in that meeting, I challenge both of them that where you are heading is nowhere. You're not reaching anywhere. So chairman said, do one thing. You guys develop a strategy, come back to us. We'll see. So we developed a complete ecosystem, okay? And present, presented to them when they saw the presentation. Okay? The whole ecosystem, they said it's too big. It's beyond our capacity. Then I explained them. If you look closely, these are like a Lego blocks. You do something here, you do something in Pakistan, something in Africa, something in Malaysia. Still, it'll be effective, but you need to do something. It was designed in a way that small efforts from years, small efforts from there. It had a major impact, but it was all impact. How to create jobs, how to eliminate hunger, how to you know, support your SMEs, how to, work on a complete, connected ecosystem globally for food security. So after a few meetings, they agreed, okay, in, uh, September or October of 2023. There was a ninth OIC ministerial conference. We presented the, strategy and, all the countries accepted. And today, they're implementing this in across OIC countries, that strategy. Okay. But when we were. Looking at the strategy and you know, the team was, with us who are there are all very successful individuals from across different, uh, sectors and industries and continents. We said that apart from governments, what can we do ourself, okay. Where we can bring, because what we know is we can really bring a change. Okay. We should work. We can, we cannot give a strategy and, uh, relay that government will do the job, or organizations will do the job. What can we do ourself? So then we deep try to understand those challenges. There were more than a thousand challenges. these, uh, developing countries are facing, okay? One of them, it could be, food wastage around 33% of the food post harvest. it doesn't reach the plate. It's around trillion dollars globally in OIC countries. It's around $350 billion yearly. We try to understand deep what are the problems inside. It was basics, simple challenges Each challenge we'll be discussing, uh, some of them, later on, on the discussion. we wanted to deep down what are the major three problems so that we address ourself. we realized that there are three major problems. One of them is access to market. The second is access to technology. The third is access to finance. Then we said that, how can we address this three with our own capacity? We said that let's build a platform. Okay. That was the name we started with T 57. So that was the birth of T 57 started how we could use, A technology to address these challenges. T 57. we try to address, your access to market so that any buyer sitting from anywhere in the world in a smallest village, could buy from anywhere across the globe, could be from the farmer or manufactured or processed, anything. It's, we are very closely focused on food. We are not looking any other categories because food requires lot of work required because what we understand last three years working in this industry is there is lot of challenges. The challenges are massive. I'll give you some of highlights to understand. See today, okay, the world needs around 8 billion tons of food. We produce 10 billion tons. That's a good news, right, that it's not the challenge that we don't know how to produce. We are producing, but still 733 million people sleep hungry every day. 22 of OIC countries are in acute hunger. If I tell you the OIC numbers, okay. In OIC, okay? we produce, contribution to the global food production. We produce 33% of the global food. The population is only 22%. Still we are excess, right? Still 22 of our, uh, OIC countries are in acute hunger. Imagine it doesn't match up. Okay. The, the numbers doesn't match up. Okay. It's not the problem of we don't know how to, produce. It's not the problem that there is no technology in this industry. It's not the problem of, you know, we don't know how to move the products. it's there, but the challenge is we are in silos. Each industry work independently. They don't communicate. This is one of the oldest industries since the humanity begins food. Okay. But still there are a lot of inefficiencies. So this is what we are trying to address, uh, with T 57.

Wow. Fascinating. And two questions. First one on some of the challenges that you've talked about. having had conversations with a lot of startups and also a lot of established companies. A lot of them mentioned also a lack of infrastructure in some of these countries, to install some of these more precise equipments so that they can track and monitor. my question on that is what do you think of that? Is there any truth to it or is there more of a question of adapting the technology to the market? And my second question is more regarding this food waste aspect, a lot of it is also related to some of the natural, fats about these produce. Some of them just perish very quickly. Uh, so how do you at T 57 handle these products? It's a two question.

the first question was, uh, about, lack of infrastructure, uh, what we believe is, uh, much more than lack of infrastructure is there is a kind of mafia. In between the middlemen who controls it, okay? It's not about the lack of infrastructure today. agriculture is one industry, food is one industry. Even governments invest. There's lot of international organization invest. when you see, globally, it's a $9 trillion, uh, business. Okay? It's a $9 trillion. Uh, if you see, uh, G 20 countries, okay, invest around 7% of the budget. for food security, One of the highest today in last decade, money, which is invest is on food security. Uh, more than infrastructure is the system, which is imagine yourself as a farmer, you produce something. When you produce something, you want to take it to the market, okay? Market is built in a way that any newcomer will not survive. Otherwise that's a reason. If you see most of, uh, major producing countries, let it be in Asia or Africa or any other countries, or even in, um, central Asia, Asian countries. The big players will not have problems. The big, uh, corporates, they know how to, they somewhere control the entire industry. They will not waste it. They will produce it, process it. They, they make their own brands and sell it, but others, the smaller players, when they produce something, when they want to go to the market and sell their product, okay? It's not about the infrastructure, the market. Doesn't accept it. It's, it's, it's a kind of, monopoly. They have, they will not allow any new entry. So that's the reason in many, in our case studies when we went to, many countries try to understand, okay, when, the most farmers today, when they produce something, they're selling the middleman, who comes buy it for very cheap.

Yeah.

And he takes to the market and he, he is already making two, 300% there and selling it to them in the market. That is how the system works if you are part of the system. It works beautifully. Okay. This is one when, if you see, if you go back around 30 years ago or 20 years ago, B2C was the same challenges. Okay. online, uh, when, uh, Amazon came in, enter in many different markets. Okay. I even remember, uh, when Amazon entered the market in India. There, there was a big, protest against it. They said, they will take our jobs, they will do this, this, this. But today the same old, mom and pop stores are benefiting from, uh, the quick commerce and retail. They're, they're profits have maybe tripled it, okay. Earlier because of the infrastructure. But when you talk about in food B2B, there's no strong platform who focuses on the food. Okay? Even there are. Hundreds of platforms. We did deep down studied 150 different platforms. Let it be Amazon business, Alibaba Trade Key, India Mar Top five and 150. The challenge is everyone is doing everything. There is no focus, very focus on food to improviser in food. The access to the market is one of the major challenge. We could address this. It's not the infrastructure. It's like, I always give this example, it's like, you have a large piece of land. You have five children grown up and there is a, a river flowing next to your home and you have a seed. You know how to grow, but still you're hungry. This is the state in most of the countries we are in, we know how to grow. Okay, we have done this from generations, but still we are hungry. So this could be addressed through, that's the reason when T 57 was launched. How can we address these kind of challenges using technology? And another major challenge is the use of uh, right data. Okay? Today, most of the people who are in the food industry, majority of them are less educated. This is one of the challenge, whatever. today the research happening, advanced research happening in many universities, research centers, it is not going to the end user. Okay? They are not acute or they don't have tools that they could use. This, the data coming from satellite for weathers are used by large corpor. The smaller ones cannot do this. The ai, also are implemented in the large corporations. This is where you need a platform where they can use it. A farmer, imagine, okay, I'll give you another example. Imagine a farmer producing something. Let it be strawberries or tomatoes or something. Okay? In his farm there is some insect came or something came. Where does he has to go to get an expert advice? Do you think if he goes to his, uh, minister of Agriculture or any government bodies, they will help him. They'll welcome him with a open arm, or there is anywhere there are experts and he can afford to bring them to, uh, address those simple issues, basic issues. You'll be surprised that, there's no answers. So where does he end up? He go to a store who's selling pesticides. And do you think agronomist sitting there or a scientist sitting there to advise you or an expert sitting there to say that this disease, this insect, this problem you need to address with this? There is a salesman sitting there imagine, for a one hectare, um, um. Uh, land. You need to use five liters of, uh, you need to dilute with, uh, in the water and spread it. That guy will sell you 500 liters because he's a salesman. He wants to make more profit. That's the reason. One of the countries we were, we did this experiment. We took samples, 60 different samples from that country, send it to four different countries to understand, uh, what is happening with, uh, pesticides.

Yeah.

Okay. One of the reason why we did study was in that city, it was the highest number of CA cancer patients in in the country itself. When we took the agriculture sample, sent it to four different countries, okay? Surprisingly result came was high pesticide residues in basic commodities. It's not that farmers wants to kill the humans, it's about the knowledge gap. Yeah, they don't know how to address this. I'll give you one of the examples. In one of the projects I was working on, we had an expert for, medicine aromatic plants, uh, from Egypt. this expert, when he came, he met the farmers and he was telling that, okay, if you have this problem, take a. Uh, leaves. Crush it in the water, throw it and your insects will go. The, the, the farmers were saying, these trees we have from decades, we don't know how to use it. So basic information, how we can give it to those farmers, okay. It start from the farm, okay? In our platform, we try to address from the farm to the folk, everything which comes there. Let it be logistics, let it be farming, let it be finance, Including finance is one of the major challenges today. When you talk about agri banks are scared to fund you, that's a reason you need a platform. Somewhere they could even do a, crop collateral, uh, financing. Okay. There is no platform today wants to do this. That's a reason. This was a gap. We came into it

very interesting and yeah, I actually agree. And yesterday in our panel you also cited that example that was quite starking about that. Conversation you had in South Africa with Yeah. Researchers and only 1% or less than 1% of farmers in Cape Town read their research. yeah, and it's something that we're seeing across the board. And that's also something that's quite interesting is we see the same challenges everywhere in the world, not just in Africa or Asia, but in Europe it's the same. And North America it's the same. and so. My next question is in terms of your presence right now and the types of projects that you are doing right now. So where are the markets where you're most active, uh, at the moment, and what type of crops are they doing? What are some of the trends that you're seeing in this, in, uh, in this area?

See, today we are focusing, Uh, it says, uh, global SaaS model. Anybody could join our platform from across the world. Okay. There's no restriction, but initial focus, uh, where we have our teams, uh, for onboarding and supporting is five countries, which is UA is our headquarters. Then we have Saudi Arabia, we have Malaysia, we have Turkey, and we have India. One of the reason we choose these five countries is we wanted to test in a very different geographies. Okay. With different challenges and see how the people will adopt. What are the challenges? Because, uh, when we talk about food, okay. Even on a AI level, okay, uh, we cannot have a large, models. Okay. Every region has its own challenges. Every, as I mentioned in my talk yesterday also, that uh, weather conditions are different. Soils are different, foods are different. consumer behaviors are completely different. Food tastes are different. Okay? Problems are different. Okay? How do we address it? That's the reason we wanted to understand. We took different regions. To understand their challenges and try to address those challenges. At the moment, we're not focusing specific crops. Okay. But if, imagine if we are focusing in Malaysia, okay? There are certain, like for example, oil is, palm oil and those things is one and. fruits are fruits. Those are there in militia when we talk about India, our different commodities altogether. Okay. Saudi Arabia, uh, is into dates. Okay. And UA is more processed, packed, food there. when we talk about Turkey, it's uh, it's a hub for Central Asia wheat and other products. And we are not only focusing on crops, it's a platform where it's a, uh, entire food is there. F process packed. Okay. Brands, um, all of them, we cover it. So across, regions have different, we are focusing on different, commodities. we partnered with, in some countries, even agri universities in research centers also to, Use their data and, uh, we partnered them that how we could help from their research and make it minimize it so that the end user could use. I remember in one of my, keynote, uh, in Saudi Arabia for, uh, 14th, trade finance, summit. I got a very interesting question. the audience, they asked me that, you mentioned that how today you, uh, as I mentioned today, uh, that, very less, uh, educated people are handling food. They asked me, how did, how do you address this in T 57? My answer was very simple. I. simple is straight financing. If you today, ask any layman what is straight financing, can he address? They said, no, it's quite complicated. Finance and trade finance. I said, do one thing. Open your charge, GPT or any LLM ask this question that, okay, I'm a six years old or a 10-year-old. Explain me what is state finance will charge GPT able to answer. They said yes. I said we are doing the same thing. We take the data from research centers, agri universities with the governments, with large organizations, and we buy the data and we train our L lms. We have our own, LLM. where. Our subscribers could access to that focus on only food. And when we talk about food, it'll start from the farm. A farmer can take a picture of his crop and post it, and he might get an answer to it, that there is a challenge. At the same time, he can even get an expert. could be sitting from other part of, in his own town or other part of the world, they can come into a, a video call and say that it's a simple thing. Why don't you start out with this chemical? This is, how you can have alternative. Don't use pesticide. Use this plant, a leave to be crushed in the water, as I mentioned, name or something. It'll be addressed through simple issues. Okay, so we use data, we train it. Once a farmer imagine comes in, in our platform we have rigorous KYB and KYC On onboarding, I say it's like a club membership. It's not a platform that anybody could, subscribe. There is a proper KYB when a farmer comes. Okay. When he enter that, uh, he is, um, he's agronomist, he's a scientist. The kind of language the, uh, AI will speak to him is a different than a guy who has not even, passed his fifth grade. Okay. It'll be, completely tailored to them how their, their understanding, so, the AI will interact with them on their capacity.

Very interesting. Now, coming back on trade financing, a topic that we've covered a lot, especially in America and Europe, and I'm curious to hear your opinion on that, is the lack of diversity in financing products available both for companies and farmers? Usually it's always either VCs, private equity banks, whereas on other markets. You have more crowdfunding, you have more derivative derivative products, you have more collateral financing, and these things are available. Do you think that that's also something that's needed?

It is. See, um, when we did, uh, deep understanding about trade, finance and food, okay, it's, uh, quite challenging. Okay. trade financing requires a complete reform. And, uh, especially, um, global south. Okay. The challenges start with, the banks not having clear, data understanding. and, uh, it's a complete document heavy, okay? Some of our research open eyes, like in many cases, and most of the cases, food reaches before the documents. Okay. Document is so heavy in this world where, blockchain and AI is advancing. Still. Our banks are working into heavy documentation. one of the challenge we understand was in when, uh, blockchain started in 2020, every bank invested billions of dollars by 2023, most of the banks even right off their, investments on blockchain and, uh, technologies, because it was not helping them. When we understand what are the challenges were, uh, earlier they were having, Physical silos. What they had created was, was digital silos. Okay. They were, there was no platform that they could understand and interact to each other in the industry. They were, they were talking to themselves. That's the reason blockchain filled in the bank. when we sit with the bank. Okay, today there are, uh, tens of global banks are partnered with T 57. What we are offering to banks today is imagine there is a trade financing opportunity, that there is a, x guy, once $10 million, okay? The Bank King process today takes weeks or months to get it approved. Imagine if this is a complete blockchain and bank has a clear visibility from where he's buying. To whom he's selling. What is a margin? Okay? What are the risks? And, imagine a platform could address those kind of risk. Imagine, they doesn't need to give entire their amount. Okay? One shot, they could release one amount as per a smart contract. They could see that. Now we need to release. 20%. Okay. As an advance, they could give and the bank can see the clear clarity that what is happening in the complete transaction, if there is anybody did anything wrong, okay? That, insurance company could go, penalize the party who, who, who defaults it. In today's, uh, food industry, there's no clarity. that's the reason why food is wasted. It's not only because of infrastructure, because, there is no platform, which gives you a clarity from, starting point till the end point.

Yeah. Interesting. And I agree. I mean, some of the conversations I had as well with banks is that more than the clarity is that today the market is so volatile. Both in terms of commodity pricing and also the fact that historically, especially, I don't know if it's the case in Africa or in Asia, the markets that you cover, but in America and Europe, historically it has always been the banks had guarantees on the land. But today the problem is that there's not enough people buying the lands because no one wants to be a farmer anymore. And so then they're left with land, which is cool, which was historically seen as a safeguard for everything real estate, but now no one's buying it. Uh, so is this something that you see as well happening in Africa or in Asia, in the markets that you cover?

See one of the major challenges, okay. Today, it's a very important question. Very interesting question. today, because of the way food is moved today, okay? Food's being, capitalized, okay? farmers are not making money. That's the reason. If you see in India, there are 12,000 farmers of suicide living last year, for example. Okay? This is happening across, imagine a farmer in a country who has a land, And he sell his lands and go work as a labor in a, in a, a metropolitan city. It's a disaster. Okay? Why he does this? Because there is, they, they, they're not able to sell their product. If they sell their product, they're not getting the right price. So this is happening, this is not, uh, in Asia or Africa. It's a global phenomenon. only who are benefiting is the large corporations. are happy. They know how to control, they know how to, market themself. Okay. But smaller, farmers has these challenges. Not only farmers, even smaller manufacturers, smaller brands who are coming in the products. They have amazing product, right pricing, right quality, right price, uh, taste, but still, they're not able to access this. This is the middleman. This is where T 57 comes in and give the direct access to the buyers. The seller, there's no middleman, In this case, what happens? They'll, they'll, they get today, whatever, they're making money, okay? They can multiply, few x. Because the direct they're selling to let it be to a supermarkets or to the restaurants or anybody else directly, they're buying from that. They don't need a middlemen. See, today there is no, challenge with, logistic companies. For example, every country, most of the countries have amazing logistic system inside the country itself. If I give you an example, like a, a country like Saudi Arabia. Okay. Saudi Arabia is a large country. when we see, the brands who manufacture let it be dates, brands, or something, they have a good product. As I said, their price, their packaging, their, the quality, their taste, everything is nice. But still, when they try to enter the market, those few people who control. It's not that easy to enter the market. But if you see, in other case, there are platforms like in India called oan. they call commerce. Okay. In first year, they had around 11 million subscribers. Okay. That imagine, uh, a farmer could sell directly to retailer. Uh, maybe a manufacturer could sell Okay. Directly to retailer. You don't need a middleman today. There are logistic companies, even there are financing companies in this region. I'm sure you are aware about Tamara. Well, we could work with them to give B2B finances similar to this. Okay. That if their banking rating is good, these retailers, they could get an, a quick loan or in, in some of the banks, we are working, we, we are even discussing about pre-approved loan because we are, we are working on, that's a reason we do, Rigorous KYB where banks are involved with us to do that. know your bank, know your business and know your customer. Who is the, founder or partners? We do their KYC also, once it is done so there is pro approved loans to given to them, even up to their, it depends on their, historical finances. So this could be addressed. In a smarter way. That's the reason platform like T 57 was critical, important, okay. One is on a global level trade between the countries, even in your own country. Okay? When, imagine when a retailer or any B2B businesses wants to buy something that can guide buy from the factory directly. Okay. There's no middlemen.

Yeah.

Okay. using Right, logistics, payment systems, or even credit system, it'll solve the problem. A retailer is happy because he's buying cheaper. Okay? Manufacturer is happy because he's getting higher margin. He doesn't need to give 10 people distribution. There is a people middleman in into it. farmer is happy because he can sell directly to those retailers, and people are looking for good quality food. It's not that, there's no demand. There's a high demand population is uh, rising. Okay. As I mentioned in my talk yesterday. By 2050, the population is expected to grow by 10 billion people. The food increase required is around, 60 to 70% from what we are producing today with current infrastructure, it'll be a disaster. So we need to think smart. We need lot of platforms like T 57 to come in to address these issues so that we work smartly. To to solve each problem using, ai, blockchain and advance, uh, machine learning, uh, technologies.

Yeah, I agree. And now moving on to the AI part, I mean, a topic that we've covered extensively in our panel yesterday. as a news publisher, I can guarantee you two thirds of the articles I publish has an AI component to it. even when we cover some of the financial statements published by larger companies like the John Deeres and Syngentas, 99% of it has an ai. Okay. They mentioned ai. it has become a lot of a buzzword, uh, with a lot of companies just releasing a modified chat, GPT at best. How do you communicate that value and how do you think, and how do you at T 57 implement these ai? I mean, we know that you covered, like, for instance, customizing to the farmer's needs, and really have a dedicated AI to particular farmer, which is why you have that KYB. But what other things you do at T 57 that guarantees that the AI brings a lot of value to the farmers? I've had conversations with farmers telling me like, yeah, it doesn't bring me anything. Ai, it's just a fancy thing. And that's it at best. so how do you do that?

See this topic? I can speak for next two hours. Okay. Uh, it's a, it's a, it's a very important topic. Okay. See, AI It can solve lot of, uh, the challenges we mentioned today. Okay. Uh, let it be starting from the farming. imagine today we are working from last year's data, not tomorrow's production. Okay. Ai, what it could do, minimum changes, okay? Is tomorrow's prediction. See today, the data which we have. we can use that data and predict something for tomorrow. Imagine a farmer wants to produce something. let's start from the farm, then we'll go till finance. Uh. A farmer if they want to produce, does they know what will be the demand after four months? When the four months, six months, when the crop coming out, what will be their price when the four, after four, six months, the crop will come out? Will they get a fair price to them? Okay. What will be their ROI as a farmer? Okay. Do you think any platform today or any AI today, or any governments today, or any bodies addressing this. No, this is where T 57 is beginning. is developing our modules to address these kind of challenges. And when we talk about farmers, uh, you are right when pharma says we are not getting any benefited. One of the reason is because AI is expensive. what I just said, to develop this, you need maybe 200 to $500,000 of investment, which farmer will not able to do it, or he doesn't have a set knowledge to do these kind of, he has access to these data when T 57 coming in. Okay. We want to bring that data, as I mentioned from research centers, let it be from the governments, let it be from, many different, aspects. When we develop these data and give access to these farmers in their own language, okay, it's, they, they don't need to learn English to speak to the platform. They they could use their voice in any language they want. The platform will translate and they will answer to them. It could be as simple from a WhatsApp. They could answer it, link to the platform, they could get an answer to them. We want to make it. Easier. we are not saying that we need to train the entire food industry, uh, how to use ai. No AI should, we need to use as an enabler, uh, and become easier so that each, actor in the industry, uh. should understand and use AI to help them. So we could address this from, predictive analysis for tomorrow. It could be, uh, a government normally change policies like after imagine an winter, uh, because of shortages of, uh, certain, uh, commodities, they will open their, Imports from, uh, other countries, it might bring products cheaper and you know, they might not get the price. Okay, it might be rain. today we have access to even satellites of data, which could be very useful to the farmer, which farmer cannot access it. We could access to that data and give the access to the farmer so that he could understand that why he's growing certain things and how many people in his. Town, his city, his country growing certain things. Imagine we have 10,000 farmers. Everyone is growing tomatoes. What happens end of the day? That's the reason we see sometime. Tomato is half a dollar. Sometime it's $10. Okay. So there is no demand supply. There is no tool that a farmer or anybody can go and access to it and say that what is the demand? Where is the gap? Where should I work? How we can become a bit smarter? To ensure that we have a decent ROI. So this is one from a very small module I'm talking about. I'll give you another example. Ai, how it could reform. we acquired one of the companies, uh, trading companies to understand, when we were doing T 57, we wanted to understand, we acquired few con companies. One of them is a company based out of India. They're doing trade between, uh, different continents. one of the transaction I want to mention and to give you, put a light to it. What are the challenges? We imported six containers of Apple from South Africa to India. We use one of the prominent, global platform B2B platform Okay. To do transaction through them. Okay. The company who supplied Apple is one of the well-known companies who supplied the Apple. When it reached the, uh, the consignment to India. 30% of the apples were open. When we asked basic questions, what went wrong? Nobody had an answer. We had some vague answer saying that this year, temperature due to global warming, raised 2%. Maybe that is a reason. Okay. Nobody knows where is the challenges. See food is very critical. When we handle food, there is a science to it. If I give you another example from Banana, for example, from from Philippines, it, it shipped out of Philippines. Imagine it comes to Europe or us to, GCC or India or. Okay. There is a proper science. It has to certain ripe condition. They have to harvest it. It'll take two weeks, one week, three weeks, okay? When it reach the market, then supermarket still, it is in a green form. When it reach the shelf, it's already become yellowish. When it reach your home, it is ripe. So it, there is lot of science behind it today. People do it with their experiences today, AI could. In the case of Apple, when we lost this 30%, we developed a module, okay. Today in South Africa, we could go use your smartphone or AI enabled cameras. Uh, it could be, professional camera or even your smartphone, take a picture. AI will analyze and tell you that it is too, right? Okay. It'll not be reaching, India if needs two weeks of, transport time, you better ship it to other country, okay. the trade, or let it be farmer or middle, the, logistic companies. Nobody's working with a bad intention. They want to serve. Okay. Even farmer, he doesn't want to lose his customer. Right? He wants him to come back. Their intentions are nice, but there is no tools in their hand that they could, solve their challenges today. We could address this in ai, take a simple picture and say that this is true, right? Okay. Or imagine there is something happened in, Philippines, there was a excessive rain. The truck could not reach. Last two, it was delayed for two days, they could not load. Okay. The AI will say that it's difficult to reach. It'll be all right. Better you ship it somewhere else.

Yeah.

Okay. You have the demand in your local market or regional market. You do other harvest and too, rather than you get into lawsuits today. What happening is, most of the cases are once it reach the destination. This trying to address what is a problem not before starter. So if we only address this, maybe five to 10% of the food loss we could address through this particular AI itself. Okay. The models there at the same time, even buyers. Imagine when they're buying it. Okay? I want to import oranges from Turkey. Okay. A buyer, can he use productive analysis, deep understanding of the markets to see where the market is going Next, two weeks, will the price stay the same price or it'll crash, or, my market is going up, I should, when should I buy after two weeks or today? Okay, so these kind of lot of, with the data, it'll be trained for sure. Today it'll not be ready a hundred percent, but it'll get trained step by step. But this will help everyone in the, uh, food chain. See, lot of times what happens, importer invested money. Okay. Sometime millions of dollars, they import the product. It takes two weeks to reach their one set reach. Mar market collapse, they lost 30%, 20%, and sometimes they will not even sell the product. So these kind of, how can we train our modules, To address these kind of challenges. And another challenge is. There are a lot of beautiful, studies, lot of agriculture, universities. One in in India care lab. Okay. We were working with, very closely with one of the universities and there are some cooperatives. We are working from different countries. They have developed amazing, food processing unit. It could be even in 200 square meters. You can set up foot processing unit when you know that there is. This product will not reach, you could process it and you could, store it. It could be deep, frozen, dry, or it could be different ways to, preserve your food. I'll give you one of the examples is I was discussing with one of the cooperatives s during COVID, okay. They were producing bananas. Uh, suddenly COVID came. They were not able to sell bananas. That cooperative was quite smart. So they, they invested and bought some, deep, freezing. Uh, they take the hu humidity out of, uh, the fruit they gave to, uh, many different villages. They keep gave this machine, they said you cut the banana and start putting in this machine so it'll deep freeze it. Take the moisture and you can store it. For many days earlier, the price they were selling, imagine it was a. 20 cent, per kilo. Yeah. Okay. They started selling after drying $2. Okay. So that today it become a new industry that they don't want to sell raw banana. They're, freezing it and they're selling. So the lot could, we have lot of data across, we could analyze and bring the solutions, to preserve the food.

Yeah, absolutely. And that is also something that we see across our data is that there's more and more farmers that are actually offering these deri derived products, such as like a tomato farmer would also offer the tomato paste and so on to recycle that food waste. So it's absolutely something that we're seeing. but my question is, so we focus a lot on food waste at a farm level, but there's also food waste at the people's level. Like, I can guarantee you that example of the banana now that comes to my, uh, to my fridge in a week's time, it's probably black and, uh, probably gonna go to, to the other trash. So is there a part of education that also needs to be given to people in general and like how to, Adapt your consumer behavior and not buying too much or knowing how to store these products. So is there maybe an AI that you guys are working on to, uh, teach people how to do that?

It's a good question. Interesting question. Okay. See, when we talk about B2C. Okay. There's a lot of ai, there are a lot of retailers, amazing companies. Amazing work is happening. And even, when you talk about Amazon or others, Even AI are already there, okay. They could even help you to understand, okay, how much you should buy, what is missing in your fridge? Okay. There is lot of modules already developed and it's coming to the market slowly. At the moment, we are not focusing B2C. Mm-hmm. Because B2C, there are a lot of players. Okay. They're doing amazing job. Okay. They're doing lot of efforts happening there. The challenge we are addressing for the 33% of the food, which is wasted before coming to the plate, after coming to the plate, or the post harvest. lot of B2C brands are working on it for sure. Education is required. today, AI could help there. AI modules could help you buying also that you are buying too much or you are buying less. What is missing there? that is required, but we are not focusing at the moment because for us, we need to address, uh. On other side of, uh, larger challenges. how to protect what is being wasted because, if we only, as I mentioned, we were working with thousands of problems.

Yeah.

If we address one problem, In Shaah, nobody will sleep Hungary. There are other 999 problems we are addressing even them. mention another problem. What we are, addressing is, in OIC countries, you'll be surprised to know that 75% of the farmers are using hand tools in their agriculture. When the world moved to ai, when the world moved to drones, when the world using, satellite to understand, and blockchain on the food. 75% of the farmers are using hand tools They don't have a tractor. Maybe it was invented a 100 150 years ago. and still we are producing 33%. Imagine if we address this problem, okay? How much of impact we can bring. So what we did was in our platform is we introduce, uh, Uber kind of model where. The people who has 25%, who has those drones, who has those harvesters, who has those machines, could rent their, tools in our platform with the smaller fees so that. We can solve these challenges and even we invite, SMEs and investors, okay. Our startups to come in this industry, invest on drone company and you could rent out and make money out of it. Okay? we are discussing with lot of agri universities where, when, um. Our, uh, highly educated, children coming out of it. We want them to have startups. We guide them where to invest, how to invest, where is the market, how much you could make money out of so that we encourage people to come invest in these industries and create a model where this could be shared. And solve the actual problem and platforms gives this access that they could share their technology tools. How did we understand this was, you know, while developing T 57? Or I could say, well building a strategy for, uh, IOFS. We studied 350 different case studies globally across the continent. One thing we understood is. two case studies were very important. One of is Brazil, second is Netherland. Both of them are few decades ago, dependent on food import. Today they're feeding the world. You know, what is the reason? Technology. Technology, technology, right? Investment, techno technology. Not only government is investing on technology. Private sector is investing on technology. Netherland or. So today they're, they're supplying Brazil supplies everything to the world today. So if we go that direction, we can solve lot of challenges. See, it's about, again, the challenges we have, it cannot be addressed by one industry. It could not be addressed only by agriculture. It has to be addressed by agriculture, logistic, trade finance, governments. So it's a integration problem. Not one industry challenge. So the challenge, this is what T 57 is addressing, is to bring all these stakeholders on one table and trying to find the solution.

And so now to wrap up this conversation, I have one last question, and it's a question I ask everyone my interview. It's a crystal ball question, but the year is 2035. Where is T 57 at? And where is the industry at?

Uh, lovely question. Okay. by 2035, what we envision is, okay, at least from the food waste from 33%, okay. We want to reduce 50% of the food waste, and we ensure nobody sleeps hungry. Okay. We, this is our intention, okay. With all good faith, okay. And all bringing all the, uh, platforms. And by year 2035, it'll be a global platform across, Okay. It'll be, uh, used by across, food ecosystem where we'll have governments involved in it. Okay. Different ministries involved in it, let it be trade agriculture. Okay. SME development authorities or industry development industry, ministries part of it. We develop a model where. We have a data from the government, from the universities, the retailers, from the manufacturers, build localize, AI models And solve most of the challenges in food. I know it's very big promise. Okay? Very challenging. But that is what, Give us motivation to wake up next day to do something. So it is doable today using uh, right tools, right modules, and even if you see the way AI is being. training itself improvising the AI for itself, 2035 is quite some time. Okay. Uh, AI will be, quite advanced and especially our focus is on food where we can take the AI so that a farmer could easily before in by 2035, before putting his seeds. Okay. He can have it. A complete dashboard in his simple phone. Who, who could see if I do this, if I put a seed of tomato, what should be my ROI? And who is my customer? Okay. We can even have a platform where before he put a seed, he will have buyer ready to commit. Something. Okay. And finance should not be a challenge. Okay? Banks, will be ready to finance the crop. Banks will mitigate those risk, it'll be, uh, let it be trade financing. it'll be much easier. Yeah. At the same time, we want to work with governments how to do, pre-approved, on the ports when the product arrive, customs and those things, how we could do pre clearance. Okay. Digital clear clearance today already 10, 11 countries, including Abu Dhabi, and many other countries are working on e clearance. Okay. So this has to be a norm globally that. It has to be, uh, pre-clearance documents. Should be, imagine a farmer could upload his document and Port could see that in a platform. We integrate those government platforms so that it should not become a paper, should not become a problem. Okay. They should approve it before the product comes in. For sure. There'll be physical, clearance required, but it has to be not weeks, not months. It has to be, few hours that it comes, even the, technology will improvise. Okay. When the product comes, they can scan it through better scanners and, uh, doesn't require to take days to, uh, get it out of the port. has to be simple. So today B2B trade is, if not months, it's weeks of process to do close one transaction. What T 57 is envisioning is few clicks survey. Wow. This is what we see by 2035 completely to make, uh, like today how B2C we are in a meeting. Imagine if I need to order any food or any perfume or any fashion from end consumer during I'm talking to you. I can go select location it delivers to you. There is no how. We have learned this in B2C. We want to change this into B2B. This is our vision 40 57.

Fascinating. And for folks that want to find more information about your company or get in contact with your team, how can they do that?

T 50 seven.ai, shortest domain, across the platforms. Let it be LinkedIn, TikTok, Instagram, including Telegram, WhatsApp, anywhere. Just remember T five seven do AI as simple as it is and you could even fi find my number Founder's mobile number on the website. You could reach me directly.

Perfect. Well, thank you very much Al for your time. It was a pleasure talking to you.

Thank you. It, uh, it's a really good, uh, to talk to you.

Thank you.