Food Supply Chains Are Toast – Meet Burnt

The food supply chain is one of the most critical yet overlooked parts of our economy. Every order, from farm to factory to restaurant or shelf, depends on distributors buried in voicemails, emails, and spreadsheets. The systems they rely on, built decades ago, are rigid tools for storing data, not for adapting to the complexity of today’s industry. The result? Endless repetitive work, slower food movement, and even thinner margins in an already fragile system.

Burnt is building the AI-native operating system to change this. Starting with an agent that automates order intake, Burnt captures unstructured requests from any channel and inputs them into a distributor’s ERP in seconds—returning a full day’s worth of productivity to teams that have long been stuck in manual workflows. At its first customer, Burnt automated 96% of incoming orders, unlocking savings more than 12x greater than the cost of the platform. That kind of efficiency gain provides the breathing room distributors need in an industry where every basis point matters.

The team behind Burnt has lived this world from every angle, bringing together a rare mix of industry credibility and technical depth. CEO and co-founder Joseph Jacob (JJ) is a fourth-generation food supply chain operator who started on the shrimp factory floor and went on to manage hundreds of millions in global procurement. His lived experience gives him a unique ability to understand customer pain and earn the trust of an industry that has long been overlooked by modern software. Alongside him, co-founder and CPO Rhea Karimpanal brings a product lens shaped by her own third-generation roots in India’s spice trade and a career building intuitive solutions for legacy industries, such as hospitality and travel. Completing the trio is CTO Chandru Shanmugasundaram, who first built an ERP for his family’s printing business and later held senior engineering roles at India’s top unicorns, scaling complex systems that power millions of transactions. Together, JJ, Rhea, and Chandru combine deep insider knowledge with technical expertise to reimagine how the food supply chain runs.

At Penny Jar, we seek founders who not only identify inefficiencies that others overlook but also possess the credibility and determination to address them directly. Burnt is taking on one of the largest under-digitized sectors of the global economy, starting with a wedge that delivers immediate, measurable ROI and expanding into a platform that can serve procurement, logistics, finance, and beyond. JJ, Rhea, and Chandru bring the rare combination of insider experience and technical ability needed to pull this off.

We’re proud to lead Burnt’s seed round, with investments from Formation VC and Scribble Ventures, as they build superintelligence for the food supply chain. Learn more at getburnt.ai.