Nosh (app)
nosh is a food management mobile app for reminding the expiry or best before date of food products, aiming to reduce food waste in the household. It aims to reduce food waste in the household by noting the bought food items and their respective expiry dates, and then creating an alert system to notify the user before the food products expire. As part of the initiatives taken on the International Day of Awareness of Food Loss and Waste to reduce food loss and waste, the app is suggested alongside Too Good To Go and OLIO among many others . History. Somdip Dey, a computer scientists from the University of Essex, collaborated with Suman Saha, a computer scientist from the University of Engineering & Management (UEM), Kolkata, to develop the nosh app during the COVID-19 pandemic and went live in April 2020 for both iOS and Android. Later, the project team founded a technology startup, which is a spinout of the University of Essex - named "Nosh Technologies", based on the same mobile application. Dey assumed the role of CEO of Nosh Technologies and Saha assumed the role of CTO. In September 2021, Nosh Technologies attended the TechCrunch Disrupt, where they announced  the launch of a new feature called "nosh shop", which enables the user to buy food that might go bad soon at a discounted price. The company also announced another feature called "nosh daily", which is a companion blog related to food. Dey also pitched the nosh app at the Disrupt main stage during the "Disrupt Desk: Impact" session. TechCrunch also reported that Nosh Technologies has 9 employees in 2021. Founder. Somdip Dey is the co-creator of the nosh app and is also the co-founder and CEO of Nosh Technologies. Dey is an Indian born scientist, entrepreneur and  educator. In 2013, Dey studied computer science masters at the University of Manchester and during that time his parents got in a terrible car accident. To help his parents in India with their medical bills he sent all of his money while not being able to feed himself. He survived a week by salvaging edibles from dumpsters, which are thrown away by others. After completing his master's degree, Dey moved to pursue PhD at the University of Essex in 2018 and started to work on technologies such as Artificial Intelligence to help reduce food waste. During his time at  the University of Essex, he co-founded Nosh Technologies with Suman Saha. Format and features. nosh is available in both iOS and Android platforms. Users can add the food products manually or by scanning the barcode of the products or by scanning shopping receipts within the app. Other features of the mobile application include recipe suggestion based on the bought food products, and also shows a graph of the user's food buying and food wasting habits such that the user can make an informed decision on what food products to buy the next time. The app uses Artificial Intelligence  to show the user's food buying and wasting trends as graphs in-app. nosh has a companion blog called "nosh daily", which publishes articles on food and beverage related topics. Somdip Dey is the Editor-in-Chief of nosh daily. TechCrunch also reported that nosh will have a new feature called "nosh shop", which will allow the user to buy food that might go bad soon at a discounted price. Innovation. nosh features an artificial intelligence based weekly analytics that learns about the user's food buying and wasting habits such that the user can make an informed decision  on what food to buy next to reduce food waste and save money. In 2021, Dey and scientists from Nosh Technologies and the University of Essex developed an intellectual property named "FoodSQRBlock" using blockchain, QR code and cloud computing to digitize food supply chain data to improve traceability of food by the farmers and consumers. "FoodSQRBlock" also aims to improve food safety. Entrepreneur magazine reported that Nosh Technologies has developed a blockchain based multi-layered framework named "SmartNoshWaste" using reinforcement learning based machine learning to reduce waste in the food supply chain. SmartNoshWaste was published in MDPI Smart Cities journal  and as of March 2022, it is one of the most viewed article of the journal. Criticism. At TechCrunch Disrupt 2021, during Dey's pitch on the nosh app, Shelly Hod Moyal, CEO of iAngels, criticized the app as a "nice to have" app rather than something that makes a difference in food waste. Moyal said at TechCrunch Disrupt: