SMU alumnus Alan Phua and his wife, Verleen Goh, a food scientist, founded deep-tech start-up Alchemy Foodtech six years ago. The firm seeks to solve the age-old conundrum – that healthy food does not taste good, and that tasty food is usually not so good for one's health. Its solution is Alchemy Fibre, a patented plant-based fibre which lowers the glycaemic index and ups the fibre content of food, without altering its taste and texture. Today, the firm counts Heritas Capital, a private healthcare venture fund (VC), and Bit x Bytes, a Shanghai-based VC firm, among its investors.