Interview with Ryan Lefers, Co-Founder of Red Sea Farms

Red Sea Farms, one of the four winners of the inaugural FoodTech Challenge, designs and develops technologies to help feed the world sustainably. They grow produce in water-scarce places, reducing carbon and water footprint in the food sector.

To learn more, we interviewed Ryan Lefers, CEO and Co-Founder of Red Sea Farms.

Ryan Lefers, CEO and Co-Founder of Red Sea Farms

How did the FoodTech Challenge contribute to the growth and development of your company?

The FoodTech Challenge was huge for us in terms of building our company profile in the UAE, increasing external exposure overall, and developing a pipeline for business development.

Are you planning to expand your current product offering to more markets or work on producing new innovative technologies?

Our technologies will be used internationally in harsh environments. Saudi Arabia has been the perfect place for initial deployment, not only due to the appetite for innovation but also for testing our technology in a water scarce, harsh desert climate. The plan was always to take the technology to other water-scarce areas of the world with similar growing challenges. Now in addition to our expansion across Saudi Arabia we have active and pending sites in the UAE with Silal, the USA with the University of Arizona, and Egypt.

How was your experience participating in the FoodTech Challenge?

It was overall well-organized, and the process had more depth than other competitions that we have participated in previously.

How did the competition help your expansion efforts?

Going through the process of the competition helped us further refine our key message and offering for the UAE market.

What is your advice for new applicants to the latest edition of the competition? 

Carve out time to wholeheartedly invest in the process of the FoodTech Challenge because ultimately, it is an investment in your business. It is worth it to create a thoughtful application and to engage fully in all of the mentor sessions.