Green Goddess

Live Green Co. Founder Priyanka Srinivas shares her plant-based wisdom

by Pratika Yashaswi

Sustainable living is in Priyanka Srinivas’s blood. Born and raised in Hyderabad, India, she grew up watching her mother reuse utensils and plastic bags and sanitize old clothes to use as cleaning rags.

As an adult, Srinivas worked with food retailers, where she learned a sobering lesson. Many market-dominating products, which claim to be “green” and “healthy,” are actually green-washed. “I felt like I was being cheated,” she says. “Like many people, I wished the industry would provide thoughtful solutions instead of expecting consumers to take responsibility for their choices.”

When she asked herself how she could improve the food industry, she found her answers in ancestral wisdom and technology. She united and created the Live Green Co., which offers plant-based alternatives to meats, eggs, and milk, as well as replacements for additives and ultra-processed ingredients, using an AI-driven platform that generates innovative solutions. This helps to create clean, functional, sustainable plant-only foods, pharmaceuticals, and supplements.

Here is Srinivas’s insight into the future of plant-based food technology.

Why did you choose to work in food technology?

The food industry (particularly animalbased food production) is one of the biggest emitters of carbon dioxide, contributing to climate change. And with the increasing urban population, food insecurity is on the rise as well. To overcome both these crises, we need large-scale solutions. We need to make better, healthier food that we love with minimal resources.

And this is where technology comes into play. There’s currently no better tool than technology, particularly artificial intelligence, to enable disruptive change. So building a food tech start-up that is focused on scalable, healthy nutrition was a natural next step for me.

Can you offer some advice for people who are looking to make more environmentally friendly choices in their kitchens?

Small steps can lead to significant changes— and there is no such thing as too little or too late. From reusing plastic cutlery to making a change in your diet, like reducing animal-based foods, every small step can lead to a more sustainable future.

I encourage people to read food labels when grocery shopping. Look for products that contain whole foods like fruits, legumes, and grains. The plant-based and especially plant-only products I can recommend will have labels like “zero cholesterol,” “additive-free,” or “cleanlabel,” which makes it much easier. This is where we as consumers have the most power. Most brands push the responsibility onto the consumer. So let’s show them that we demand healthier products with our purchasing power!