DiMuto was created by fresh produce veterans with decades of experience in the perishables trade. While managing a global food supply chain and conducting international trade deals when running a global fruits and vegetables marketer and distributor, founder Gary Loh experienced many pain points and realized there was a need to change the way global food trade is being done.
With the aim of transforming the way global food trade was conducted and solve the global issue of food resilience and supply chain inefficiencies, DiMuto was thus born.
The Story Behind DiMuto
Below is a letter from our founder, Gary Loh, written during the early days of DiMuto. It shares the journey that led to the creation of our platform—born from firsthand experience in the agri-trade industry, witnessing both success and hardship. This story highlights the critical need for visibility, trust, and technology in global trade, shaping the foundation of what DiMuto stands for today.
“The inspiration for DiMuto is based on my previous experience running my previous company. This is a story about a small fruit store seller, who became one of the largest grower, packer and distributors of Fuji Apples in Asia; only to see its business collapse tragically and how I saved it from the brink of death and turned it into a surviving and operational company again.
It was from this experience that I realized that this story is familiar — businesses rise and businesses fall. Just like many of the great empires in history. What is the biggest pain point of these failures? A common theme centred around the lack of visibility — we cannot manage well what we cannot see. As businesses expand, the organization begins to be compartmentalized; people start working in silos and thinking in silos. Without the ability to appraise situations in a holistic manner, many business leaders and team members are just like “frogs in a well”. It describes a situation or individual who cannot, or refuses to see the big picture because of being sheltered and/or closed-minded. Many a time, it is not because the Business leaders and their team members want that to happen, it’s just that they lack the tools to see the truth from a single source.
DiMuto was started to be that tool, providing the organization the ability to “SEE” their operations right down to the granular detail of the box (goods), payment and receipt flow (money), as well as all the auxiliary service providers who support the organization (services).
While it seems like a lofty goal, and poses a very difficult problem to solve, DiMuto’s approach to “Redefining Global Agritrade” is by breaking down each trade into having the ability to trace and track each and every transaction within the trade. In a transaction, it is always about a buyer and seller, or a provider and a user. Being able to capture, and having visual confirmation of this data, on a single platform or their existing operational platform (ERP) will then help Business Leaders run the organization better — with more efficiency, more sustainability and less waste. When an organization has visibility and transparency, collaborative commerce can then be built based on Trust. These interactions of such organizations will be far more productive in generating and focusing on the good and its impact to the environment and the world.” – Gary Loh, Founder & CEO