Special Startup Series: Lab made seafood on your platter

Pune: The world’s hunger for fish is expected to almost double by 2050 due to growing affluence and populations. With the World Bank estimating that close to 90% of global marine fish stocks are now fully exploited or overfished, over 800 million people are at risk of malnutrition if fish populations continue to decline.

Aware of this situation, Dr Swapnil Kamble and CA Nithin Shetty who met during the Indian Smart Protein Challenge 2021, discovered that despite of their vast differences in technical backgrounds, both shared a common vision towards solving this grave problem. Their interactions resulted in the inception of Pune based startup, KleverMeat in 2021. Since then it has been in the process of redefining the way one visualizes and consumes seafood.

Dr Swapnil Kamble who holds his PhD from National centre for Cell Sciences is well versed with many subjects, with many publications. Well positioned to use his expertise, he aims at developing an appropriate product. CA Nithin Shetty on the other hand has experience of running his own B2B seafood startup and an FMCG company. Working as the CFO for companies in the logistics, healthcare and B2B marketplace, he is the perfect fit to manage the business, supply chain and financial side of the business.

“Seafood is primary choice of our cultivated meat as Nithin had prior experience in seafood business, and seafood is vast sector due to various fishes, prawns and shrimp spread across the world unlike other kinds of meat products,” says Swapnil.

The team aims to get their first PoC ready later next year and make it commercially available by 2024 just in time as the regulatory approval in India is also expected next year.  Currently, the team is in the process of raising their pre seed round to expedite their research towards developing their PoC.

Curious why lab grown seafood?

The world’s demand for seafood is expected to more than double by 2050 and as of today the demand for seafood already outstrips the spotty supply causing prices to spike making it unaffordable to the masses. Thought of seafood alternatives have risen due to the health concerns raised by presence of heavy metals like mercury and other poisonous contaminants in natural waters and uncontrolled farming causing shifts in natural balance, huge gaps in demand-supply through the conventional way of aquaculture or fishing appears redundant to support the growing demand for seafood in the future.

This is where cultivated or lab grown seafood comes into picture. Cultivated meat is real meat grown directly from animal cells. The process of making cultivated meat is similar to brewing beer, but instead of growing yeast or microbes, animal cells are grown. The process starts by taking a small cell sample (like a biopsy) from live animals such as say prawns or shrimp or fish. From there, these cells are put in a clean and controlled environment and are fed with essential nutrients that they need to replicate naturally. In essence, the conditions that naturally exist inside an animal’s body are created. To put it in a simple sentence, it is meat without the perilous slaughter.

Swapnil explains: “We chose cellular medium of developing as opposed to plant based primarily because the taste and texture that the plant-based alternatives provide do not properly mimic the features of natural alternatives in their entirety which cultivated meat owing to the same cellular profile, does.”

Business model

“Our business would be initially focused into exports as the cost of our output initially would be higher and also due to concerns over regulatory approval in India by 2025. Besides, we would be tying up with Indian chefs to integrate our prawns and shrimp into Indian delicacies and target high end restaurants in a B2B setup initially post which we would be targeting the consumers directly,” explains Swapnil.

“90% of the cost constitutes of cell media as it is pretty expensive so that is going to be one of our major focus in terms of cost reduction to bring price parity,” he adds.

Klever Meat is targeting the US$ 6.5 billion dollars shrimp market in India (which is expected to grow to $12.7 billion by 2027) initially then expanding into other members of the crustaceans family and the extended fish fraternity thereby expanding their TAM to $250 billion plus global fishing industry.

“The market segment that we are initially targeting $8 billion prawns & shrimp market in India. We aim to capture at least 1% ($80 million) of the market within 5 years of commercial operations,” says Swapnil.

Among the key challenges faced by the company is the fund requirements as the research is pretty expensive up until it reaches the Proof of Concept stage. Therefore, the company is planning to raise a pre-seed round as well for the same.

There are four major parts required to build a cultivated seafood product such as Cell Lines, Cell Media, Growth Factors, and Scaffolding. We are very close to finalizing our own scaffolds for our products, Prawns & Shrimp. We are also simultaneously developing our own proprietary Cell lines, Growth factors, Cell media & the process of creating the end PoC. We expect to achieve PoC (Proof of Concept) stage in the next 1.5 years.

The primary focus of our R&D activities is to develop the PoC of shrimp & prawns & focus on cost reduction.

Way forward

70 billion land animals, and possibly trillions of marine animals, are killed for human consumption each year. Scientists predict that a single cell could make hundreds of billions of pounds of meat so it can turn out to be an ideal solution to solve the seafood and meat crisis that would affect humans sooner than later.

Lab grown meat isn’t artificial meat like current plant-based and fermentation-based flavored alternatives coming in market but real flesh so that would also satiate the needs of any meat eater. And the negative aspects of consuming meat like high cholesterol and saturated fat content can be controlled by food scientists while the same is being developed in the lab. The meat also addresses the growing threat of antibiotic resistance and presence of unknown growth hormones.

The industry though, is at a nascent stage, so cultivated meat is still a few years away from being commercially available to consumers in grocery stores or restaurants and maybe up to 10 years more for it to replace a substantial portion, or all, of the traditional meat industry. At this time, Singapore is the only country to have provided regulatory approval for cell-based meat for consumer consumption.

“We are bootstrapped up until now. The government has been funding a lot of research projects through BIRAC, BIG and other programmes. We would like the purview of the same to be increased so that startups like ours too can apply.”

“Our vision for the company is to make animal protein consumption affordable, sustainable and more important cruelty free for all,” Swapnil signs off.