Shifting the Landscape of Food Insecurity

What if the solution to food insecurity is technology? In today’s conversation, host Ari Kaplan sits down with Mick Ebeling, Founder /CEO of Not Impossible Labs and Bento and Sanjay Srivastava, Chief Digital Officer of Genpact, to discuss how technological innovation is helping solve food insecurity amongst at-risk populations.

Not Impossible Labs is a global innovation lab that has spent the last decade tackling issues they call “absurdities” and building solutions aptly named “technology for the sake of humanity.”  They have done this for a myriad of absurdities, from creating low cost ways for a parlayzed to draw again using only his eyes, to launching the world’s first 3D printed prosthetic lab in a war torn refugee camp in Sudan.

For years Mick and the Not Impossible Labs team were obsessed with the absurdity around Food Insecurity in the United States.  So he and the Not Impossible team built Bento, software that is improving health one text message at a time. Bento’s unique approach is to connect historically marginalized and under-resourced people with nutritious, stigma-free meals from nearby restaurants and grocery stores. In the short time Bento has been deployed, it has already garnered such accolades as being named as a Fast Company World Changing Idea, and Fortune Impact 20 company, and being named as a TIME Best Invention of 2021.

AI has the potential to supercharge Bento’s ability to create impact at scale. Generally, when people think of artificial intelligence they think of self-driving cars or large data processing algorithms however, it does not always have to operate on such a large scale. Bento is carefully architecting the foundation of its data to more efficiently identify and connect participants’ needs to available resources that drive valuable health outcomes. The takeaway message from this invigorating conversation is the power of combining data, technology, and people to innovate and solve big problems in society. It is the belief of both guests that being able to orchestrate people, processes, data, and technology in a synchronized fashion is what drives real change in our societies. Tune in to learn more about the superpower of people and technology with true innovators that are making real change.

Key Points From This Episode:

• The definition of food insecurity and how it manifests in society.
• Reasons for our guests getting involved with solving food insecurity.
• What the differences are between invention and innovation.
• The impact that Bento has and the potential it has to grow in the future.
• Technology and data challenges that they have or may need to overcome.
• Outcomes that they have achieved and hope to achieve in the future.

Tweetables:

“The underlying idea here isn’t just to feed people, but to use data, technology and analytics to drive better health outcomes in the communities that Bento is present in.” — Sanjay Srivastava

“The goal of the company, the reason Bento exists, is to create a healthier community, is to address the health concerns of this at risk community, and to drive outcomes that actually help people live more healthy, vibrant, longer lives.” — Mick Ebeling