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High hopes for food waste: Didi Gan, CEO of N&E Innovations

By Alvin Wong 2 January, 2025

Didi Gan, CEO of biosciences start-up N&E Innovations on staying the course and making a real impact in the sustainability industry

Didi Gan’s ambitions are huge and seem daunting. As CEO of N&E Innovations, a biosciences company specialising in producing antimicrobial products derived from food waste, she aims to valorise up to 10,000 tonnes of food waste by 2030. Additionally, she is also looking to exponentially scale her business with more than 20 pilot projects in the pipeline—all while setting an example for women in the biotech industry, as well as for her three children at home. Yet, Gan is up for the challenge and relishing it all.

“I’ve learnt that I am a good multitasker and, like my mother, have a very resilient personality. It doesn’t matter what challenges I face. Having been on this entrepreneurship journey, I now know that I can always overcome them, and do so with a smile,” she says.

Didi Gan, CEO of N&E Innovations, aims to valorise up to 10,000 tonnes of food waste by 2030. Photo by N&E Innovations

Gan’s disarmingly affable presence belies her steely character. Leaving her full-time job to start N&E Innovations in 2020 with Dr. Jaslyn Lee, Gan’s biomedical science university classmate, the two women underwent a baptism of fire with their start-up. From building a business during the height of the global pandemic, to embarking on “never-ending knocking” on corporations’ doors—first to introduce, and then to convince them—of their sustainable antimicrobial technology, Gan and Lee’s experience has been nothing short of challenging and inspiring.

The idea to get into business together was sparked rather innocuously, when both women were snacking on nuts at a Chinese New Year gathering. Looking at the discarded shells on the table, both women wondered if this food waste could be put to better use. The answer was an obvious ‘yes’, and the inspiration was to transform them into chemical-free antimicrobial products.

C2+ products are all-surface all-natural disinfectants composed of organic chemical compounds scientifically derived from food waste. Photo by N&E Innovations

“I am allergic to certain chemicals. Jaslyn, as well as my daughter, Emma, have eczema. That gave us the thought to create natural sanitising products that we would be able to use ourselves,” says Gan.

The V factor

Having committed to the idea, they worked around the clock on a formulation in Gan’s spare room. They eventually hit pay dirt with a patented innovation, which they call ViKang, a food-safe and non-toxic, powder-like formulation that is foundational to the company’s expanding range of natural antimicrobial products.

“We were over the moon when we achieved the result. ViKang has 99.9 per cent efficacy—the same medical-grade effect as a chemical- or silver-based antimicrobial product,” says Gan.

Gan started N&E Innovations with co-founder Dr. Jaslyn Lee in in 2020 (left). Photo by N&E Innovations

Having poured all their funds into R&D, Gan and Lee wasted no time in rolling out their range of products. N&E Innovations quickly developed a two-pronged strategy: one based on consumer business with its C2+ range of natural all-purpose disinfectant sprays, hand sanitisers and hand soaps, and another that focuses on business clients.

“We had to make sure that the product was marketable. Only with that, can we showcase the technology and get funding,” explains Gan. “Because the business was fully self-funded at the start, we had a very short window to hit target timelines for the formulation and launches for the different product lines.” Today, N&E Innovations counts over 500,000 consumer products sold, and over 30 B2B clients that span the hospitality, aviation and medical industries.

Didi Gan won the 2024 Cartier Young Leader Award along with Suraj Nandakumar, co-founder and CEO of Recity Network. Photo by N&E Innovations

“We are not just a company that focuses on sanitising products. We are a biotech company and ours is a sector-diverse innovation. ViKang is versatile in that it can be embedded, blended, transformed into solid and liquid forms, depending on usage,” she adds. According to Gan, ViKang could be embedded in cosmetics or even used in wastewater treatments. The company is currently expanding into making plastic wraps that are non-toxic and sustainable.

N&E Innovations have achieved some measure of success after just four years. The company was among the winners of OCBC Banks’s 2023 Emerging Enterprise Sustainability Awards, and a beneficiary of the DBS Foundation Grant that helps it scale up on production. Gan herself was named a winner of the Red Club x Cartier Young Leader Award (YLA) 2024—the first Singaporean to garner the accolade. But she is under no illusion that the journey has only just begun.

ViKang, a food-safe and non-toxic, powder-like formulation is foundational to the company’s expanding range of natural antimicrobial products. Photo by N&E Innovations

“This is an amazing technology and a great opportunity for us to change the world using food waste, and to do it on a global scale,” she says. “It is also an opportunity for us to show that women, especially women in biotech, are creative, resilient and able to translate our ideas into something important and impactful.”

N&E Innovations