2024 Speakers

Ivan has been an active venture capital investor for the last 27 years and he is the co-founder of Five Seasons Ventures, the first European venture fund fully focused on consumer Foodtech.

He is passionate about product and technology innovation aimed at solving big challenges in the food industry: from alternative sources of proteins, to functional foods, from new models of food distribution, to the reduction of food waste.  At Five Seasons he invested, among others, in Butternut Box (D2C pet nutrition), YFood Labs (meal replacements) and Just Spices (D2C spices), THIS.co (plant-based meat alternatives), Cortilia (D2C fresh food retailer), La Fourche (D2C organic groceries), Air-Up (reusable water bottle & flavour pods) and KoRo (D2C natural healthy snaking).

His experience includes structuring investments, organizational and strategy development, setting up governance for growth and planning for successful exits.

In his spare time, he enjoys family life, fly fishing, and practicing jiu-jitsu with his son Adam.

Mohammed Gulrez Zariwala is a Professor of Translational Physiology and founder Director of the Centre for Nutraceuticals at the University of Westminster. The Centre is a first-of-its-kind initiative in the area of nutraceuticals, supplements, and functional foods that seeks to act as a global catalyst for improving health and wellbeing guided by research and innovation. His research expertise spans the diverse areas of metabolism, neurodegeneration, and sports nutrition, with a focus on the use of natural bioactives to formulate and validate novel ingredients and supplements products.  He leads a research team that includes over 20 academics and researchers and has published 70+ high impact international research articles, abstracts and book chapters in his field.

Professor Zariwala works with multiple commercial partners worldwide and was involved in the development of the UK’s leading liquid iron supplement (Spatone Apple^®), now marketed in 40+ countries. His most recent outputs include development of a range of high performance wellness and sports supplement products (Unity Ultra U^®) that was launched worldwide in July 2021 in partnership with the international footballers Mathieu Flamini and Mesut Ozil. He has been awarded research and innovation grants from the UK government (Innovate UK), and international awards from prestigious government bodies such as the LPDP (Indonesia) and TETFund (Nigeria).

Professor Zariwala is established as a global thought leader in the field of iron deficiency and supplementation and regularly speaks at world leading events. He has presented his research at prestigious platforms such as the UK Parliament to the Parliamentary and Scientific Committee and keynotes to the Australian College of Midwives. He routinely communicates to the media, and has made appearances on the BBC, BBC radio and various newspapers and publications.

Nard is an experienced innovator, networker, entrepreneur and strategic thought leader in personalised nutrition.

After his study of Human Nutrition at Wageningen University, he worked for the food industry in international positions for more than a decade as a successful liaison between business and science.

He then joined Dutch innovation organisation TNO to lead their Nutrition and Health business line and set up the world’s largest public-private research consortium on personalised nutrition & health, together with Wageningen University and Research. This led him on a path of ‘personalised nutrition’, involving co-founding Happ (a personalised nutrition platform) as their Chief Science Officer, founding NCNC Nutritional Consultancy, many public appearances and working for Foodvalley NL as their Lead Personalised Nutrition.

Raphaëlle is the Founder of inewtrition, a business development platform and specialised consultancy that helps companies explore, connect and innovate in customised nutrition. Inewtrition provides ideation, development, and commercialisation services by combining real option analysis tools and processes via a global network of domain experts.

Raphaëlle has worked in the product development and commercialisation of functional foods, beverages and dietary supplements for over 25 years and leverages her combined expertise in project management, business and research to create a more resilient food system at the intersection of nutrition, food and health.

Urbi is a Research Associate at Lux Research, where she contributes to the Consumer-Packaged Goods team’s coverage of food and nutrition. Her research focuses on emerging technologies in consumer health and wellness, alternative proteins, and sustainability initiatives. Before joining Lux Research, Urbi served as a Food Scientist at Assay Consulting and as a Hygiene Auditor at Equinox Labs in India. She holds an M.Sc. in Food Science from the Institut Supérieur d’Agriculture de Lille, France, and has experience as an Assistant Engineer at Phileo, Lesaffre.