Cell-based Cuts
During his time in academia, Vinayaka Srinivas began thinking about how he could have a more tangible and direct impact on the world and people’s lives. Given his technical background in stem cell biology, cultivated meat presented itself as an area of perfect opportunity to make this difference. Vin is now the cofounder and CEO of Singapore-based startup Gaia Foods, Southeast Asia’s first cultivated red meat company. In this episode we talk with Vin about why he decided to focus on red meat, as well as the technological approach to creating structured products. We also discuss the team’s experience in setting up their first lab, the importance of a balanced research approach, future steps for the company plus more.
When we think of preferred meat in Asia, we primarily think about seafood. But if you look into the amount of red meat consumed, it turns out Asia is responsible for almost 40% of the global total. Nonetheless, despite its role in the red meat market, it seems that little attention has been paid to the types of cultivated meat alternatives required to help consumers make the shift.
Vin: “Unfortunately most of the companies are focussed on producing the fast food market meat, like minced meat such as burger patties, meat balls and sausages, whereas in Asia, even though there are fast foods, people do consume a lot of structured meats.”
These structured foods can include beef steaks, pork chops, tenderloins, which Vin says are more common on a day to day basis.
Vin: “There’s a huge demand, but hardly any options available.”
That’s where Gaia Foods comes in. The way to create structured meat products? A process of breaking down what constitutes meat, and reassembling that in a controlled environment.
Vin: “If you break down steak, we can see that there are a huge number of muscle cells, there are a lot of fat cells, and something known as connective tissue which holds all of these guys together.”
Vin: “Connective tissue in the body usually creates a … network, which makes sure that all of these things are held together in an intact position, and not in a jello form.”
Vin: “This can be anything from collagen or gelatin or any other biopolymers, which can hold these cells together.”
Vin: “Some companies are trying to use animal-based biopolymers, like collagen and gelatin. We can use that but it defeats the whole purpose of reducing the impact of animals, so if we have any other source of collagen we can think about using that, but what we try to do is to create a platform … to design different [plant] biopolymers based on the local availability and local tastes.”
Vin used the example of pea and soy proteins for the Asian region, as these are tastes that local consumers are familiar with.
But in order to even get these cells together, initially they have to be grown individually in large quantities. This raises questions about the all-too-familiar bottleneck of creating affordable serum-free media, a question which Gaia foods has been actively working on.
Vin: “We have broken down the problem into simpler pieces, and have been able to establish some of the basic ingredients which are needed for the cells to grow without serum.”
This process of breaking things down has seemed to be successful so far, with the company having reduced the cost by 60%. Within our conversation, Vin mentioned that this challenge of lowering the cost isn’t a one-person job and collaboration for bringing different pieces of the puzzle together is important.
Vin: “It’s not like we want to work on everything on our own; it’s simply impossible for us to address all the challenges that are there to bring down the cost of cultured meat. So we actually have collaborations with several companies in the US and in Canada, even in Asia.”
We also chatted about the startup’s experience in finding a lab space during the early days.
Vin: “It’s going to be very expensive for any startup to go on to start establishing their own lab, mainly because too many things have to be considered like regulatory approvals… so initially we partnered with a University … where we rented a very small shared facility on a … rent basis.”
Vin: “We then got the attention of another lab in Singapore, Temasek Life Sciences, and they have been very generous for us to use their lab space completely free, just that we have to keep them informed about what’s happening in the field and interact with them on a regular basis.”
Vin: “Eventually we will establish our own lab, but I think in the initial stages we definitely rely on institutes of higher learning in Singapore.”
However, working with another institution may present loopholes regarding research and development and IP sharing.
Vin: “If you’re not aware of things, usually in Universities they do tend to request for IP sharing or in the future when you develop a new IP it has to be associated with the institute. But right from the beginning we were clear … that we would not be doing any IP sharing and it would just be for space rental.”
Vin and his cofounder even consulted some lawyers to make sure that there would be no long-term ramifications.
We also spoke with Vin about what the startup process has been like, trying to balance the scientific research with other aspects such as raising funds and marketing the startup.
Vin: “We are a very science-driven company, none of our core team has any experience in business or any experience prior to starting our company so it was a challenge. But I think we managed to get some right mentors and partners at the very beginning.
Vin mentioned the Big Idea Ventures’ accelerator program in particular as being a fantastic way to learn most of the things they needed to know in managing the company.
Vin: “They guided us through some of the very basics of business … in a very short time… they also put us in touch with a lot of networks, same as Temasek right now.”
As a result, Vin mentions that he’s spoken to the media on multiple occasions, often trying to give out quite a lot of information compared to others in the space and presenting a holistic picture. This raised an interesting conversation on open sourced vs. proprietary research.
Vin: “What we believe is a balanced approach is required. Open research is absolutely helpful, mainly because companies don’t do a lot of risky or exploratory work, we do things that have a higher chance to get good results. But for us to think radically different from the general tradition, we really need to use a lot of risky and exploratory work.”
Vin: “We also need to keep in mind that at the end of the day we are a private entity, and we are responsible for anything we say and also we have to keep our investors happy, so we need to have some proprietary information.”
Vin: “Almost every company I know, has borrowed the technology from some other place, so I think there should be a balance as to how we approach the research.”
The next steps for the company?
From a research point of view the main focus remains seeing how to bring down the cost of serum-free media, as without achieving decent price parity, Vin says that Gaia Foods can’t think about going forward to pilot scale production.
Vin: “Once we establish a regular run of pilot scale, we’ll send off samples for regulatory approvals and hopefully launch in Singapore fast and then expand to other regions.”
Vin: “Out technology is not designed just for Asian consumers … it can be expanded to any other market where people are consuming meat, and definitely we are looking into the US and Europe as some of our potential markets. Mainly because of sheer size, and general understanding about the technology in the population.”
As more companies enter the space, it’s expected that the education surrounding these technologies will continue to grow. One of the key groups helping to facilitate this are scientists; on this podcast alone we’ve seen a number of examples of individuals from STEM embarking on the path of making a difference through entrepreneurship. We wanted to end the episode with asking Vin if there was any advice he had for people in STEM who are sitting on the fence, or considering joining a startup.
Vin: “We have to encourage scientists to think more broadly because the tradition is if you’re a scientist you should only work on human diseases … what we realised is that there are many different ways we can use our scientific knowledge to help the public and improve our environment.”
Vin: “[Scientists] should definitely talk to companies like us, it may not be as exploratory and risk-taking as the academic setting, but I think scientific knowledge will be absolutely important.”
To learn more you can reach out to Vin or Gaia Foods on LinkedIn, or head to their website here.