“I basically ate fish with and without our coatings every day for a year to make sure we weren’t negatively impacting taste or texture,” observes Dr. Sheetal Sinha, cofounder at Singapore based startup BioDefense. But sick as she may have been of fish, it was worth it, she says.
What followed wasn’t exactly a Eureka moment, notes Sheetal, who cofounded BioDefense with Dr. Amit Kumar in 2021, but a slow, systematic process of proving that the firm’s odorless, colorless, and tasteless edible coatings could extend the shelf life of whole fish, a potential gamechanger in the seafood industry.
The next challenge was to prove they didn’t just work on one kind of fish, or just on whole fish (BioDefense has since developed effective coatings for fish fillets, meat & poultry, and fresh produce), and to do it on a shoestring budget, adds Kumar.
To deliver a meaningful ROI for customers, he says, “We also had to get from an initial 1.6x to 1.7x shelf life extension to the 2-3x that we’re seeing now.”
Like most startups, he adds, “We have good days on a consistent basis and bad days even more frequently. And all the time you’re struggling to keep the lights on. But what’s exciting is that this is a huge market and while there are a few companies making edible coatings for fresh produce, we believe we’ll be the first to launch edible coatings that increase the shelf-life of highly perishable food commodities such as meat, fish and seafood.” [Editor’s note: Mori, a Boston-based firm using silk proteins to coat perishables including meat, poultry and seafood, has not yet launched any products]
To find out more, AgFunderNews (AFN) caught up with Kumar (AK) and Sinha (SS) to learn more about the origins story and what’s next for the company, which is part of the fifth cohort of the AgFunder GROW Impact Accelerator [Disclosure: AgFunder is AgFunderNews’ parent company].
AFN: How did you meet?
AK: We’re both scientists who did our PhDs here in Singapore [Kumar focused on bacterial biofilm formation while Sinha looked at antimicrobial peptides], and for me, there came a point when I realized that academic life was a bit slow and I started actively looking for a way to get into the startup ecosystem. Sheetal was pretty much of the same mindset when we met at a program where they were encouraging scientists to become entrepreneurs, so that’s where the journey started.
AFN: Why focus on meat and seafood?
AK: There are quite a few startups looking at [edible coatings for] fruits and vegetables [for shelf-life extension], but we came to realize that the opportunity is much bigger when it comes to meat, fish and seafood for the simple reason that these are high value products, and so when you waste them, you waste a lot of money. And at the same time, the greenhouse gas emissions arising from wasting meat are much higher.
When we first started pitching to the customers, we were focusing on everything, fruits, vegetables, fish, seafood and meat, because we have a coating variant for all these products. But we got the biggest response from seafood companies because fish spoils so fast and so much is wasted. That kind of urgency is not there in fruits and vegetables.
AFN: What is the coating made from and how will it be labeled and regulated?
AK: All of the ingredients are already in the food system and consumed on a daily basis somewhere in the world. Labeling is still to be determined. On the regulatory front, we’re almost towards the end of getting the approval in Singapore, and we are also targeting India and Thailand, then looking to apply soon in Vietnam and Indonesia. Southeast Asia is our main focus right now but ultimately we want to apply for regulatory approvals in Europe and the United States.
AFN: Can you tell that products have been coated?
SS: The coating is odorless, colorless, tasteless, and invisible to the eye, but it does provide a slight sheen to the products, which makes them look more appealing and brighter.
AFN: How are your coatings extending shelf-life?
SS: We want to keep the water loss at the minimum, because in the fish supply chain, it’s mostly cold chain, so the fish is on ice, or it’s frozen, and when it comes out, there’s a lot of water loss. And along with that, a lot of flavor compounds and nutrients are also lost. When we apply our protective layer, it keeps the fish fresher but also as tasty as freshly harvested fish.
The second thing is that our coatings also keep spoilage bacteria in check, both by physically keeping them out but also there is some kind of anti-microbial effect going on there.
AK: We’re not adding [known] antimicrobials, but some components in our formulation act synergistically in such a manner to create a significant anti-microbial effect, which is really, really important, because otherwise you don’t have a product. And because we’re keeping the oxygen out, we’re also preventing oxidation.
AFN: Is there a standard formulation, or a customized formulation for every product… and can you patent it?
AK: We have a few variants. What works for a whole fish is a bit different from what works on a fillet vs what works on shrimp and so on, but these are slight variations, not things that change the mechanism of how the coating works.
The composition itself is patentable, and we have filed a provisional patent. Some of the pre-processing that we do to make the coating is unique, but that is something we want to keep as a trade secret.
AFN: How is the coating applied?
AK: It’s a liquid, so you can dip or spray coat products. For fish in baskets [which contain holes], you can dip the whole basket of fish in [the coating] whereas in processing plants you might use a spray system.
The liquid coating can be kept at room temperature for several weeks and much longer if refrigerated, but our plan is to provide tablets so that people can make the coating themselves on site by adding water, as this will reduce logistics costs, as 90% of what we are shipping now is water.
AFN: How easy is it to produce and scale up production of your coatings?
AK: We don’t need proprietary equipment, but there is certainly a proprietary process as we have to pre-process some of the ingredients for making the final coating. It’s not the case that we’re just getting the ingredients and mixing them together.
AFN: When did you first realize you were really onto something?
SS: I basically ate fish with and without our coatings every day for a year to make sure we weren’t negatively impacting taste or texture. About 18 months back we got to the point where we realized that wow, it works on whole fish!
AK: But at the same time, it was extending shelf-life about 1.6x, 1.7x, which isn’t enough, so we had to keep improving.
SS: We also had to make sure that it worked on all types of fish, so sea fish, river fish, fish with scales, fish without scales. So after getting that first data, it took us another five months to prove that, you know, it works on every fish.
AFN: What kind of shelf-life extensions are you achieving now?
SS: It depends on the type of fish that you’re coating. For example, sea water is more resistant to spoilage because it has a lot of salt. So with our coatings we can go from two days to seven days and for fresh water fish we’re extending shelf life 2x to 2.5x so we can go from two days to four days or five days.
AFN: What’s the ROI for customers?
AK: The business case stacks up as soon as you achieve 2x extension. And fortunately, we were able to get it up to 3x. It’s about reducing waste, opening up new markets [because the geographical market you can reach is larger], and having food that is fresher and tastier.
AFN: What progress have you made so far and how have you funded the business?
AK: We’re working with more than a dozen customers and we’ve already started generating revenue from paid projects and from an adjacent application of a variant of our product. We raised some money, initially, from family, friends and some angels. Then AgFunder came in with some funding through the GROW Impact Accelerator. We also raised some small funding through ADV, the Asian Development Bank.
AFN: Can you share some of the highs and lows of your startup journey?
SS: I think the high point for me was when we got our tech working on whole fish at a customer site; the customer was interested and he came back to us, and that’s when you know you have a potential business.
AK: So that clearly was a high point, although that followed with like, okay, it’s 1.7x shelf-life, we’ve got to get to 2-3x!
Like any startup, we have good days on a consistent basis and bad days even more frequently! And all the time you’re struggling to keep the lights on. The VC ecosystem is very enamored by what they call frontier technology, but it borders on science fiction and the bulk of the funding, for some reason, goes there, which makes it challenging for products like ours.
SS: We’re scientists and we understand what will work and what is science fiction, but we see some of these hyperbolic companies getting money, and we are like, how did they get any money? So that can be frustrating!
