Buenos Aires, November 13th. More than a thousand people were present at BioArgentina 2019, a forum organized by the Argentine Biotechnology Chamber, to present the incredible world of the biotech startups in the country. With the introducing of Matias Peire, leader of the accelerator Grid Expontential, the more remarkable startups did its public presentation.
One of them was Granja Celular Argentina, a local startup in the race to develop cultured meat. “The first cultured burger was released in 2013, but it is expected that in five years the price of a cultured burger will be the same that the burger from a cow”, the CEO and founder, Sofia Gianpaoli told to the audience. “We believe that cellular farming is an excellent way to bring people around the world not only animal protein like meat, eggs and milk, but also vegetal protein”, Gianpaoli said, adding that they are creating a bank of mother cells for this farm.
Another startup presented at the forum was presented by Marina Caballero and it linked to “precision biofertilization”. The idea is the developing of specific microorganism for different crops and different environments. “Until now, the same bacteria was used for all the crops and all the environments; we are looking for different bacterias for a specific crop in a specific environment”, Caballero said. She added that biological inputs are a growing market around US$1,100 million on a global basis and US$70 million in the domestic market.
One more startup presented at BioArgentina 2019 was linked to the development of oral vaccines for aquaculture, more specifically for the tilapia production. Its name is Blue Acqua and the opportunity is to supply a health solution for the microbial resistance to antibiotics. The scientists in charge of Blue Acqua have developed a biological antigen that added to the feed and that protects the fish like an antibiotic against Streptococcus. It estimates that the potential market rounds US$ 130 million, in the context of an aquaculture health market (global) of US$2,900 million.
Finally, PhD. Pedro Negri presented Beeflow, a company to provide pollination services to farmers. “We saw that agronomists were focused on breeding, crop protection, plant nutrition, but not in a key issue as the pollination is. We thought that we were able to enhance yields via the bees”, Negri explained.
The coordination of this Startup Stadium was in charge of Matias Peire, co-founder and CEO of Grid Exponential (first company builder of science-based startups) together with 2 great businessmen: Miguel Galuccio (ex CEO of YPF, key-player in oil and gas world industry) and Eric Thomas (Corporate Lawyer with entrepreneurial experience).
Mr. Peire said that Grid Exponential is launching a US$10 million seed capital to fund 25 startups in the next ten years.
