The Singapore foodtech founder making rice, iced lemon tea, and ice cream less guilty

Before launching Alchemy Foodtech, Verleen Goh saw the power of good technology in its most disarming form: white rice that still tasted like white rice. The proof came through the aunt of her co-founder, Alan.

She had been managing diabetes through rigorous blood sugar monitoring, and after integrating Alchemy Fibre into her daily meals, she began seeing lower glucose spikes meaningfully. Crucially, the rice still tasted the same. The difference sat beneath the surface, quietly recalibrating what the everyday could do for her.

That belief finds an unexpected kinship with BMW’s own language of progress, particularly in its new era of intelligent mobility. At its most persuasive, technology should not ask people to reorganise their lives around it.

It should make the familiar smarter, cleaner, more responsive, and more future-ready — while preserving the emotional ease that made people choose it in the first place.

For Goh, that philosophy begins with food. “Our goal is to help people eat healthier without compromising on taste,” she says. “By leveraging science to address obesity and diabetes, we specialise in reducing sugar, carbohydrates, and glycemic index (GI) levels.”

Alchemy’s early foundations were built around staples — rice, bread, and noodles — enriched with more fibre and protein. Its Alchemy Fibre For Rice now powers retail packs and major restaurant partners, including Boon Tong Kee and Dian Xiao Er, offering rice with 10 times more fibre and a lower GI than white rice. In response to market demand, the company has also expanded into sugar reduction with Alchemy SweetFibre, now its fastest-growing category.

“Our SweetFibre enables partners like Guzman y Gomez to pivot its Iced Lemon Tea from Grade D to B, slashing sugar from 19 per cent to two per cent, and supports Swensen’s ZERO no-sugar-added ice cream range.”

“In reality, foodtech is a niche field that can be difficult for the public to grasp, making consumer education both challenging and costly,” Goh says. “It has been a significant learning curve for us to pivot from being purely tech-focused to product-focused, ensuring we deliver tangible, easy-to-use products rather than abstract technology.”

As CTO, Goh’s work extends far beyond the technical roadmap. She oversees product development, operations, production, and marketing, while remaining closely involved in sales. The title may suggest a narrow technical remit, but her actual role demands a much broader view of how every part of the business connects.

“Being an entrepreneur means wearing multiple hats by necessity, taking ownership of every detail — big and small — to ensure all the moving pieces of the business connect into a cohesive whole,” she says. Goh’s own leadership has matured in that direction.

“In the beginning, it was definitely a lot of doing and building the system,” she says. “But now, I focus on finding quality employees and partners to work with, and enable them to do the work instead.”

If Alchemy’s early years were about proving the technology, its current chapter is about engineering a company that can scale without losing its purpose. Goh is clear-eyed about what matters now.

“At the start of our journey, we chased more vanity things like competition and award wins as it helped with boosting our company profile and fundraising,” she says. “But as we grow, these things matter much less to us, and instead we focus on sales and the impact of our business on people.”

It is a pragmatic answer, but also a revealing one. For all the romance often attached to innovation, Goh seems less interested in being seen as innovative than in building something that works. The metric has changed from recognition to reliability, from profile to performance, from possibility to proof.

And perhaps that is the most convincing connection between Alchemy and BMW’s new era of progress. Both understand that intelligence means little if it cannot be felt in use. A healthier bowl of rice still has to taste like rice.

A smarter vehicle still has to feel like something people want to drive. The future only becomes persuasive when it enters ordinary life without asking ordinary people to give up too much of what they love.

Photography: Lawrence Teo
Art direction: Ashruddin Sani
Stylist: Dolphin Yeo
Hair & makeup: Grego Oh, using Charlotte Tilbury and Revlon Professional Singapore