Foodtech wunderkind Jolene Lum of Nurasa on long-term food sustainability

With her cropped cut, Jolene Lum oozes cool girl vibes—the kind that befit her rock‐climbing, venture‐building life—so it is somewhat surprising to discover that the 27‐year‐old wunderkind at the centre of Singapore’s foodtech funding scene is a gentle soul, equally prone to wax about magic vegetables as mega valuations.

“Some farmers, whom I call ‘magician farmers’, have dedicated their time to perfecting these crops,” she says. “Ginger flowers that taste like apples; leaves like grape skin; herbs like salami. That reconnected me to the fact that good, nutritious food is supposed to be flavourful, and what we eat these days is a result of the food industry telling us it can replicate flavours.”

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This is all part of a bigger point Lum, who is head of business development at the Temasek‐owned agrifood acceleration platform Nurasa, wants to make about the future of food. In her position as a keyholder to indirect state backing: it is not about emulating the West’s love affair with alternative protein patties, but lifting up local solutions that best fit Asia’s agricultural reliance and faltering supply. “One day, when environmental limits have been hit and it’s difficult for farmers to farm, what do we eat?” Lum asks. “The baseline shouldn’t be providing more nutrition for people who have options, but those who don’t. Because one day, maybe all of us won’t.”

Lum herself once got down and dirty with solutions. Concerns over food shortages during the Covid‐19 pandemic led the former special needs teacher to found agritech start‐up Urban Tiller in 2020, pioneering a new business model that let consumers buy greens from local farms within hours of harvest.

The following year, she sold her share of the firm, which has since evolved into a leaf‐protein extraction company. “I didn’t raise as much funding and sometimes, it wasn’t enough to pay salaries, so I’d teach tuition at the weekends to make it work,” she recalls. “The story has always been that I was put there to feel different levels of responsibility.” Lessons from the months she spent overseeing supply chains, and a bevy of experiences before and after—including running food innovation hackathons and building a portfolio of ventures in mycelium, black soldier flies and insect farms—coalesced into a value philosophy rather different from the mainstream when Temasek came calling.

Like Nurasa, many holders of substantial capital, such as high‐net‐worth individuals, family offices and venture capital funds, are betting on sustainability. But it matters little to them whether solutions ever reach the mass adoption required to make prices competitive, Lum thinks. “They just need to be there when there’s money to be made,” she opines. “I’m not Greta Thunberg, but why are we creating options for people who can afford it? Who’s taking care of the ones who can’t?”