Part A

Garpu Pte Ltd (Garpu) was a start-up founded three years ago by two young undergraduates who turned their passion for sustainable culinary arts into a business. Based in Singapore, Garpu specializes in supplying edible cutleries to local food and beverage outlets with the hope of eliminating single-use plastics and reducing environmental issues associated with single-use plastics shortly.

Garpu produces the cutleries via an exclusive manufacturing arrangement with a supplier in Indonesia, where most of the key ingredients are readily available. In the beginning, the founders faced multitudes of challenges in educating consumers to accept their products. After all, the idea of consuming one’s cutlery is a fairly new and strange concept.

Following a recent documentary featuring Garpu aired on Channel News Asia (CNA) on 10 March 2023, Garpu has been inundated with inquiries for large orders from hotels, airlines, and various other businesses, locally and overseas. The company also caught the attention of a global venture capital fund (VC), which is interested in taking a minority stake in the company.

The founders have approached you to assist and guide them in their discussions and negotiations with the VC. The three of you shared the same curriculum activity while studying in the university, and therefore have known one another since then. Being two batches ahead of the founders, you graduated two years ahead of them.