Chitra is the founder of ComplyAsia, a regulatory compliance consultancy focused on helping food companies meet regulatory requirements of countries in Asia when exporting their products. This includes ingredients and label reviews, claims and product registrations. Chitra has worked in the food industry for over 30 years, starting work as a regulator, then moving onto airline catering and various roles in FMCG and finally in retail. These roles are primarily in Food Safety, Quality and Regulatory affairs. Chitra has worked in Singapore, Australia and Malaysia, and has had extensive regional and global experience in these fields.
Chitra has helped a company develop a collagen based supplement, another client focused on sustainable seafood brought into Singapore and shipped out across Asia, and others exporting energy drinks to Asia from Europe. She is also helping another client bring their instant coffee from China to Thailand – working through product registrations, label reviews etc.
Chitra has worked with a global sustainable seafood company, headquartered in Europe but with an Asian presence, based in Singapore. As a regulatory consultant, her role was to evaluate the entry requirements of their sustainable seafood into Asia. The modus operandi was to consolidate their sustainable seafood from multiple sources, like Maldives, different parts of Asia and also South America into Singapore. The products were then shipped out to different countries from Singapore. She carried out a project to help them import arapaima processed fish from Brazil into Singapore, Hong Kong and Philippines. She compiled the Philippines import requirements, outlining the product registration requirements, CITES certificates, phytosanitary certificates and labelling requirements and customs requirements as well for actual imports, and the import requirements for Hong Kong and Singapore. This was communicated to the client and to their shipping agents. This required communication with their Brazilian exporters to ensure that there was a cost effective way that met regulatory requirements for both Singapore and Hong Kong. For Singapore, she also worked with the regulators at SFA, NParks and Customs on behalf of the client to get their shipment into Singapore and transshipment to Hong Kong approved, as their logistics partners had made some errors in their permit declarations. This required her to leverage her contacts at a senior level within the relevant governmental organisations to ensure the shipments were cleared.
A Singapore-based startup designed a collagen-based health supplement and Chitra supported them at the product development stage to ensure the product could be classified as a health supplement. This involved working with HSA and reviewing HSA's requirements, shown below:
For the actual shipments, she worked with Singapore Customs to determine the correct HS code for this product. This was communicated to their logistics agent to ensure smooth clearance of the shipments.
Foods
Manufacturing
Foods
Foods
Chemicals
Materials
Foods
Foods
Personal Care
Chemicals
Materials
Foods
Manufacturing
Personal Care
Foods
Personal Care