Big Idea Venture’s portfolio company De Novo Dairy was featured in this Labiotech.eu article as one of the top 5 “hottest private biotechs in South Africa”.
Biotechnology companies are sprouting in South Africa’s maturing life sciences industry. We’ve listed five private biotech companies that have turned heads in the last few years.
De Novo Dairy
Founded: 2021
Headquarters: Cape Town
De Novo Dairy aims to produce proteins for the nutrition industry, with a focus on infant nutritional products, a sector largely based on cow’s milk.
Rather than sourcing its protein ingredients from animals, De Novo Dairy is developing a method to mass produce identical proteins using a technique known as precision fermentation. This involves brewing the proteins using engineered strains of yeast.
By using precision fermentation, the company aims to increase the supply of vital proteins that are currently harvested at great cost from cow’s milk. It could also provide a more sustainable alternative to animal farming, which requires big greenhouse gas emissions and land use.
To fund the development of its technology, De Novo Dairy raised a pre-seed round in February 2022, with a further investment from UM6P Ventures in September 2022.
De Novo Dairy plans to partner with big food brands to slot its precision fermentation proteins into their products, and expects to be ready for commercial launch in 2024.
Read about the other 4 companies HERE