Muslim consumers get quick access to Halal-certified products

Homegrown startup, Halbase, offers an application that provides real-time feedback indicator of chances of the product obtaining halal certification.

Just as with the general consumers, more Muslim consumers have become aware of food labels and food ingredients which they consume. Similarly, businesses understand that there is a great demand for halal certified products.

Although that there are thousands of ingredients out there, only a handful of ingredients’ halal statuses are known. Halbase is an automated web application that facilitates halal councils, manufacturers, food consultants etc in verifying products and services.

Pain: To obtain halal certification, companies have to correspond with the councils which give out certificates. These councils will verify the application documents manually before conducting onsite verification. Theses councils are under understaffed and do not have the capability to develop an automated system to verify the documents submitted. Similarly food consultants face challenges as there is no known central database where all the ingredients are collated and their halal status verified.

Solution: Halbase application caters to the various needs of the stake-holders in the halal industry. The Halbase application provides real-time feedback to indicate the chances of the product obtaining halal certification. Any new discovery of the ingredients can be quickly updated in the database which can be utilized by users globally.

Innovation:

The Halbase application is unique as it automates & speeds up the halal verification process instead of its current manual approach. Any new ingredient that is deemed not halal or dangerous can be updated via Halbase application and thus acts a bridge between the R&D community and the halal authorities.

With the Halbase application other food standards consultants such as from HACCP, GMP, ISO can also extend their services into Halal. Given that the name of ingredients' supplier has to be provided for verification, the Halbase application will have a database of halal food/ingredients suppliers. This database can be a point of sales from business point of view. The data can also help in market studies in the Muslim consumer markets.

Competition:

Halbase web service could be perceived as a threat by certain Halal Councils as their main revenue stream is through Halal Certification. As such it is important to reiterate to the various stake holders in the Halal industry that Halbase is in the business of Halal Verification and not Halal Certification. Halbase might also face opposition from Halal consultants as they might want to have greater control of their clients. Again, it is important to educate these consultants that they stand to obtain more profits with greater productivity and transparency.

Defensibility:

There have been numerous talks about the need to develop an integrated system that can manage and verify halal products and services. However, it seems that the public sectors both home and abroad lack the inertia to develop this product. Instead its left to the private sectors to develop it.

To merge the knowledge of halal and web development is a challenge. It seems to put off some software giants such as Microsoft Malaysia. Halbase has already embarked on its patent application in April 2011.

HALBASE PTE LTD

Nanyang Technological University, Innovation Centre, Address: 16 Nanyang Drive,
Block 1 #01-109, Singapore 637722, Email: contact@halbase.com

Business Model:

There is a subscription fee for the various stake-holders. It is generally about 5-10% of the charges that Halal councils and consultants charge the end users which are typically the manufacturers. Similarly food testing companies as well as Custom Checkpoint Authorities of certain Muslim countries could benefit using Halbase. The database derived could be commercialized to business intelligence companies to understand Muslim consumers better.

Potential:

Halbase will be information rich with details on ingredients, products, food manufacturers, halal
councils, food consultants, food testing labs etc. Apart from food, Halal is applicable to cosmetics and to pharmaceutical just as well. The information generated could be used for analytics and targeted marketing campaigns using Google’s services. Halal products and ingredients could be scientifically linked to Pubmed abstracts/articles from US Medical library whereas mobile apps could be created to link products to recipes. The possibilities are enormous.

Team:

Ariffin Kawaja/CEO: B. Comp NUS. Entrepreneur since 2004, founded Retriva and raised $1.8m for various projects.

Taufik Salleh/CTO: B. Sci. NUS. Systems Architect formerly with Earth9-Microsoft, Lycos Asia and Retriva.

Riaz/Creative Director: B.Comp Uni of Madras, India. Did his Masters Research in NUS on 3D.

Wan Johari /Advisor: MSc Food Science from U. of Reading, UK.. 35 years experience in food consulting and held various statutory positions in Malaysia related to food advisory.

Company Profile

Name of the company: Halbase Pte Ltd
Founder/Founders: Ariffin Kawaja
Website: www.halbase.com
Major Investors: None
Total funding at hand: None
Target fund: $650,000
Source of funding: NTU Ventures, iJAM, NRF and angel investor
Start of operation: 29th Dec 2010
What makes the startup promising: Halbase facilitates the various stakeholders in the F&B industry by providing a web application to verify halal.