Biotech Startup Loopworm Raises Funding To Build Sustainable Insect-Based Protein

Biotech startup Loopworm has raised $3.4 Mn in its seed round co-led by Omnivore and WaterBridge Ventures. 

Titan Capital and angel investors including Nadir Godrej from Godrej Agrovet, Sanjiv Rangrass from ITC, and Akshay Singhal from Log9 Materials also participated in the round. 

Loopworm plans to use the funds for talent acquisition, building research and development capabilities and launching its first factory for scaling up production. 

“Omnivore is delighted to back Loopworm under our OmniX Bio initiative.  Loopworm sees massive potential in transforming cultivated insects into value-added nutrients and ingredients, and Omnivore believes the company will quickly become a leading biotech startup,” Mark Kahn, the managing partner of Omnivore, said. 

Founded in 2019 by IIT Roorkee graduates–Ankit Alok Bagaria and Abhi Gawri, the Bengaluru-based startup recycles food waste into protein-based food ingredients. To enable this, it builds decentralised insect rearing facilities along with smallholder farmers. 

“We are thrilled to have Omnivore, Waterbridge, Titan Capital, and several experienced angels, including Nadir Godrej, as investors in Loopworm. We plan to use the new funding to set up our first Loop Factory in North Bangalore, hire talent, and accelerate R&D,” Bagaria and Gawri said.

In the next five years, Loopworm aims to produce 300,000 MT of sustainable insect-based protein annually, according to the startup. 

India’s biotechnology sector, which was pegged at $63 Bn in 2019, is likely to become a $150 Bn market by 2025 at a CAGR of 16.4%. In the sector, Loopworm competes against other biotech startups such as String and Eyestem. 

Recently, the Centre launched 75 grants to shore up the country’s biotech startups, academia and allied research bodies. 

Minister of State (MoS) for Science and Technology, Jitendra Singh had said, “75 inter-disciplinary, multi-institutional grants would be supported for high-risk, ambitious research ideas, milestones-driven collaborative research in all domain specific areas of the biotech sector.” 

Talking specifically about the biotech startups, Singh informed that biotech startups along with other shareholders would be permitted to form a team in a public-private partnership (PPP) mode and also avail grants up to INR 10-15 Cr for a span of two to three years. 

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