MicroLife

Microbes are amazing and they’re over a trillion microbes in the world and each contribute to our lives. We find them in various sectors including probiotics for general health and wellness, microbes for therapeutics, skincare, bioremediation and agriculture to boost output. However, to date we have the challenge of harnessing the power microbes. How do we effectively deploy them? How do we 1. Manufacture 2. Store 3. Administer them?  The key challenge is in building delivery technologies for microbes. We have two classes of microbe strains, Vegetative and Spore-forming microbes. Unlike spore-forming microbes, vegetative microbes which constitute the majority of microbes are fragile, susceptible to most harsh manufacturing processes, have a poor shelf-life and require refrigeration. We have built a microbe delivery technology and engineered the seed microenvironment to improve plant health and growth in marginal lands. Potentially we could make 50% of the world's soils more productive.

Microbe delivery is a challenge as microbes are delicate to manufacture, store and administer. To ensure you can harness the full power of microbes we need to deliver them effectively. Microbes are used in general health and wellness, therapeutics, bioremediation and agriculture. Initially, our initial market opportunity is to standardize the process of microbe delivery in plants and then other sectors. Around 30% of our soils (50% by 2050) are saline and yields are reduced by 50-80% by these deleterious effects. With climate change these effects will be exacerbated and food production limited as our population increases by an extra 30% by 2050. Our, technology will deliver a seed coating that helps alleviate soil salinity and deliver microbe based solutions effectively.

We are building a platform technology to deliver microbes. Our goal is to democratize access to microbes. With regards to our first market in agriculture, we engineer the seed microenvironment by providing a multifunctional seed coating to ensure better germination and growth in saline soils and water stressed regions by delivering nutrients that alleviate plant stressors and plant microbes that reduce the need for synthetic fertilizers which have several effects including: high carbon footprint, contributing to degraded soils and saline soils. Our technology is unique because we have discovered how to better stabilize and deliver beneficial microbes to plants reducing the need for fertilizer in stressed soils. Our findings have been patented. We want to make agriculture more sustainable and productive in marginal soils (saline soils 30% of world soils). The world can cut back on 3% of world carbon emissions, while also increasing productivity in saline and degraded soils. We are engaging microbe companies to understand their pain points and end users of products on how best we can retrofit existing technologies to best serve them. Our target are saline locations in the world such as USA (California), India and China.

Soil salinity reduces food production by 50-80%. We are targeting regions with high value crops that are affected easily by soil salinity. We are beginning with high value crops as this ensures profitability of our business as the company scales. The best way for our company to roll out such a product is through partnerships with seed companies that already have existing relationships with farmers. We will learn and understand the pain points their farmers face and ensure their seeds perform better than they currently do. We will improve farmers lives by making process of fertilizing the soils less labor intensive as fertilizers will be on the seed and also improve their incomes therefore lives.

Our core technology is on taking out the need for cold storage for microbes and effective performance. Microbes are energy efficient, self replicating and green solutions that are being deployed to build resilience in our world's processes and tackle climate change effects. Our initial use case is based on building resilience in agriculture at the global scale. Communities will sustainably protect, manage and alleviate soil salinity and water stress in their soils for better crop production and higher incomes.

Our solution has gone from the lab to greenhouse and now field studies to show efficacy of our tool. The prototype works and the next thing for us is running pilot studies with organizations in the region we will enter first. This will enable us to understand the problems of scaling and ultimately help us serve out market better.

We use a materials based approach that amplifies microbe performance. Most delivery technologies are decades old thus an improvement in the space would be very impactful. Field studies have clearly shown the power that delivery technologies possess. We have focused on soil salinity which is a problem faced by numerous farmers but not much has been done to deal with it. Our approach is also very scalable and easily adoptable as we are not engineering plant traits thus no issues with farmers, we enhance current seed productivity.

Our solution is currently serving a university in Morocco and at MIT. In two years we hope to have hundreds of farmers on board and in five years millions of acres of land under production with our technology. 

Our impact will be measured by the number of acres of crop our technology will be used on. From that number we can estimate the carbon reduction that would have come from our technology. Further, the extra income from improved crop productivity in saline and water stress regions will add to world hunger and is a metric we will be counting. Further, the amount of land we will make productive again and the reduction in soil degradation and salinity through sustainable farming will be a metric we measure. Finally, the cost savings from taking out the need for cold storage in microbe use. 

Full time- 3

Part time - 2

We believe our team has the capabilities required to bring our product to market. Expertise with this particular technology as Augustine developed it during his PhD. In addition, Augustine has industry expertise in Agriculture to be specific working with green bean and farmers dealing with salinity challenge. In addition, Chelsea has expertise in material science working with collaborators and bringing products to market and raising funds to carry out the technological pushes. We are planning to develop a B2B company thus the company relationships we will nurture will be key in success for our venture. Therefore, we are spending time connecting and planning to role out products with them. We are also participating in numerous start up bootcamps and accelerators to build the network and skillset for running the start up and raising institutional funds in the future. The time we have known each other and having been trained at MIT is one key differentiator we have. Further, our experience, knowledge and passion for Food and Agriculture is very unique as Augustine has a PhD in the space and Chelsea a PhD in material science. 

We are very intentional in the hires we make. To ensure we are able to connect with the diverse world we live in our goal is to have diversity permeate through our organization from the very beginning. The problem is a global problem thus we need to represent the world will be building solutions for. Our current team has an almost 50% gender balance and we have some racial diversity. 

We are motivated to develop and bring to market innovative technologies that impact water, energy and food security to solve one of the major global challenges we will face. Innovations in agriculture have historically focused on increasing crop yield and resilience while paying little attention to the harmful effects of these solutions.  Synthetic fertilizers produce ~3% of global carbon emissions and intensive agricultural practices have left a third of our soils degraded, while 95% of our food comes from top soil. In order to increase agricultural productivity responsibly we need to find new and better ways of farming to feed our growing population while lowering the environmental impact we have on the world.

We need partners in developing a feasible business plan and building connections with companies in the seed technology and microbe based fertilizer space. This is the next step for our venture thus the most pressing. We will spend several months developing product market fit through customer interviews and running pilot studies.

Members with experience in product development, agriculture and microbes.

Our solution is providing microbe laden seeds that improve germination and growth in marginal lands, therefore increasing productivity in degraded soils and lowering synthetic fertilizer impact. Our aim is to target large scale and commercial farming and eventually expand to the 2 billion subsistence farmers globally. Many women and girls are involved in subsistence farming globally and if you can increase their crop yields and lower the work required to produce the food you will improve their lives. Improving crop yields leads to more money in the household thus better accessibility to nutrition, healthcare and education. If we can provide a coated seed with all or some of the nutrients and fertilizer a plant requires we can make agriculture “greener”, more productive and more sustainable.