Podcast #18: Gaia Foods CEO Vinayaka Srinivas speaks with Andrew D Ive about founding his cultured meat company in Singapore.
Podcasts
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
meat, cells, animal, people, industry, produce, started, company, foods, understand, cost, cultured meat, technology, food, singapore, products, gaia, money, challenges, create
SPEAKERS
Vin Srinivas, Andrew D Ive
Andrew D Ive
Hi everyone, this is Andrew from the Big Idea podcast with a focus on food. Today we’re going to be talking to Vin. Vin is the founder and CEO of Gaia Foods based in Singapore, spelled GAIA foods. He’s focused on producing cell based meat, in particular pork, and beef. Gaia foods is an incredible company. I really do try to unpack exactly what Gaiai foods are focused on. I’m asking often quite simple questions, because I’m really just trying to get a deep understanding of what it is that they do and it’s quite complicated at times, but I think we get it to the point where pretty much anyone and everyone can understand exactly what they’re doing and how they’re doing it, within reason. So okay, over to Gaia foods, really interesting conversation today. I hope you enjoy it. Please do leave your questions and comments after the podcast. Thanks very much. Okay, hi Vin from Gaia, how are you today?
Vin Srinivas
We are doing good in Singapore and I think I’m okay here.
Andrew D Ive
Fantastic. So welcome to the Big Idea podcast in food. Today I’m really glad to be talking to you. You’re a great company in Singapore focused on cell based meat. So we’ve had a couple of conversations in the cell based meat space, I always assume that anyone listening where this is the first cell based meat company they’ve ever heard from, and therefore they might need a bit of an opening introduction to what exactly that means. So tell me about Gaia and cell based meat. What do you guys do?
Vin Srinivas
Yeah, well, it’s my pleasure. We are mainly focused on producing cultured meat, that is beef, pork and lamb in the future. So what we are doing compared to any other company, is mainly that we are focusing on structured meat, such as steak, or pork belly, or you can even for people who are conaseurs of Asian food, like you, this kind of structure meats are very hard and unique in the sense that you need to have much more deeper understanding about a lot of biology, rather than just growing cells. In the space of cultured meat, almost every one, almost 95% of the companies, are focused on producing minced meat that is like meat for burger patties and deep ball, and things like that, what we are trying to do one step forward, and that’s the unique selling point of us. To do this, we are using a technology called scaffold based technology and this is what will give the textured look of the structured meat that we will be producing.
Andrew D Ive
Okay, so other cell based companies, as you mentioned, sort of creating mincemeat and it’s much more about the cells replicating. In your case, it’s structured meat, much more complex, like a steak, or pork belly, or something along those lines, something that’s like a real slab of meat that’s been cut out and ready to cook and eat correct?
Vin Srinivas
Exactly. I think what people in the minced meat version of it, you don’t really have to do anything special in the sense you grow cells in large quantities, and harvest them and produce whatever meat you want. However, when we are talking about structured meat, the meat we are all used to, is mainly the meaty portion that comes from the muscle tissues in animals and then also some amount of fat and connective tissues. So these muscle tissues are not single cells, they are well established tissues. So in order for us to make structured meat, like steak, we constantly grow the cells, we also have to push them to differentiate and align them in specific order. That’s what makes it unique, and not just mixing cells.
Andrew D Ive
Sounds more complex
Vin Srinivas
It is, that’s why no one is ready to touch this kind of area at this point in time.
Andrew D Ive
Okay, so very few companies out there trying to do this because of its complexity. How are you guys doing on you know, making this happen?
Vin Srinivas
So we are taking a very innovative approach in the sense that we try to understand how these cells behave in their original place. Let’s say if you’re talking about beef, we understand where this is and if we are talking about steak, where the steak comes from, what is surrounding the cells in that micro environment and we decode the ideas about the cells native environment, and we try to bring it out of the system. Then we create material, basically, we decode the material from the animal microenvironment and then we recreate them outside of the body. So, by this, what we are trying to do is give the cells the belief that they are in the animal body in a specific orientation and order. So they go on to produce structures, which they eventually do in animals. So that is like, if you’re talking about tender loins, they are very high meat kind of a thing and cells do go on to become like that, when we give them the tech environment. So the idea behind what we are trying to do is, we are trying to create the extracellular matrix, which are dedicated for the cell types that we are working on. I think that’s what differentiates us from the rest of the bunch.
Andrew D Ive
Got it. So I don’t even know where to go after that. Other cell based companies, or some other cell based companies I’ve spoken to, they, for example, pierce the ear of the pig and take the cells from that little biopsy, and then they recreate those cells and they’re not really, from what I can tell, aware or not aware, but they’re not even that worried one way or the other, about where the cells are coming from, they’re just cells of the pig, and then they can manufacture those in larger and larger quantities and create pork. What I’m hearing from you isn’t, tell me if this is accurate or not, where the cells are coming from on the animal impacts the type of meat you’re ultimately going to get. So if you want to, you know, create a really juicy piece of steak for someone to eat, you need to be aware of where that steak is coming from within the animal and then grow, the cells as if they were still in the animal.
Vin Srinivas
Yeah, one thing you mentioned is characters. We are trying to create the micro environment so if we use a steak, it comes from a leg portion and we create and give the condition for the cells of that leg portion. We are not going to take the cells from there, but we are going to give the cells a condition and sense in general. They are able to adapt to different environments. So once we give them the conditions, they go on to become specific type of meat. Like if we give very strong working leg muscles conditions, they become very strong meat like that. So I think that’s the basic idea.
Andrew D Ive
So when you say making a cell with certain conditions, you basically fool that cell into believing that it’s a leg muscle or part of a leg muscle, or part of a breast you know, whatever part of animal you’re taking it from, is that is that right?
Vin Srinivas
That’s exactly right, we can recreate any type of meat that we’re used to. If you’re talking about breast, chicken breast or any other animal breast meat, which is much softer compared to the leg like tissues. So that’s what we’re trying to recreate outside of the animal.
Andrew D Ive
I know I should be asking how one makes a cell believe it’s a certain part of the animal. But I’m sure that’s very complicated and will take us another three or four hours worth of conversation. Is there a simple way of explaining how you make a cell believe it’s a certain part of the body?
Vin Srinivas
We can simplify? It’s not simple, but we can simplify the answer in the sense that if we give a cell some markers, let our body like whichever part of the body the muscle cells are drawing the East some markers are signal molecules for the cells. So based on this signal cells change and behave differently. So what we are trying to do is we are trying to exploit this signal molecules and then do the South that kind of signals depending on what kind of meat we want to produce, I think in a very simplistic manner that’s the technology.
Andrew D Ive
Awesome, I think that that that sort of does explain it in a in a way even someone like me can understand. Okay, so Gaia foods, how long have you guys been in operation and who started the company?
Vin Srinivas
We are a Singapore based company and we started the company with two founders. One is myself and my co founder is Hung Nguyen. We both are scientists by training and we were wondering how we could use our technical expertise to make some tangible changes in our environment. That’s when we thought of food as one of the major avenues which is ripe for disruption and then when we went around to understand what kind of problems were supposed to create an assault, that’s when we realized if we go to any wet market, which is very hard to find, if you go to any vet market, you’ll see that when animals are killed, almost 50% of the animals are thrown away, like skin, bones, blood are all thrown away, which actually at the end of the day, is almost 50% of the animal mass. So on top of that, when we take 50% of the meat for consumption, eventually we end up wasting 30%, because that’s a trend of general food waste that occurs. We are consuming only around 40% of the total animal, which we put so much energy into growing. So that’s a very broken cycle that cannot go on also, because of all of the environment factors. So that’s when we started our company in December 2019 with a lab in Singapore, which is supported by Singapore governments central funding agency. We got started with the lab, because we needed a specialized setting, we couldn’t simply start in our home, our garage, so we have to go for many established condition settings. We started in December 2019 and we showcased our products in 2020, where we showed a strip of beef tissue, and we also had some people testing and tasting this material and they gave really nice feedback on this and basically, if we remove all the COVID restricted lab closures, we have just under one year of lab company.
Andrew D Ive
Got you. Because of COVID you guys got to pause the clock just here and there. Right.
Vin Srinivas
I think that’s the time when we really started to understand the business side of things. And that’s when BIV was really really generous for us to get into to understand that we are business school primary school students. So it was really helpful in that regard.
Andrew D Ive
Got it. So in terms of why you got started, you’ve mentioned the wet markets where you know, 80 to 90% of the animal is thrown away after they’ve cut off the thing that they want to sell and consume. Is that why you guys started? Because you saw the inefficiency of it? Or were there other drivers that you could explain to me if you don’t mind? What made you say, Okay, this is why I want to spend the next 10 years of my life doing this?
Vin Srinivas
I think one part of the reason for us startig was what we talked about earlier, the wet market. And also, from a scientific point of view, we strongly believe that this technology is going to be very transferable, transformative, there are some celebs going to shake up food supply chain to the maximum effect in the coming future. So that’s known and we are strong believers in that idea. However, when we started looking deeper into the cultured meat space, we were surprised that there is still a lot of fine tuning needed. I find there is more discovery that has to be done, and also more scientific data that has to be generated and when we saw that there was still not enough data, we really felt that we could solve some of the toughest challenges in the cultured meat space. That’s one of the major drivers for us, and we can do this with our technical expertise. So that’s where we strongly felt that we can solve some of the toughest challenges, which not only us, all of the industry is facing and that’s why we took on the challenge and started our own company.
Andrew D Ive
And how’s it going? Have you solved those challenges? Are you well on your way?
Vin Srinivas
We are very well on our way. We started asking some of the basic questions like can we get the cells to grow just from the animals without even doing any god? The standard practice in the industry is you do some but you use some viruses and all to transform the cells to grow for a long period of time. It’s not a bad thing, but it It requires extreme planning and regulatory approval, because it’s very hard for you to go to the market. So one of the tricks here is can we grow the cells without any genetic modification? In that regard, we have been very successful because we isolated ourselves once, when we started our company and that’s the last time we did cell isolation. We didn’t go back to animals to get us out and the animals that we got from that are still happy and still living. That’s one of the challenges. Another technical question we asked was, how do we think about making structured meat? Do we limit ourselves to mincemeat? Or can we go beyond that? We started asking how we could achieve the structure? And in that regard, the showcase of our product shows that we actually can do the structure meat. So some of the basic challenges, we started asking the questions, and we are well on the way to resolving those questions. On top of that, our current main focus is how do we bring down the cost. So that’s one of the major barriers for most products to go to the market is the cost of producing it aggressively, focusing on reducing the cost of our culture.
Andrew D Ive
So reducing the cost is a key barrier to bringing this product to market. Have you estimated current costs of producing the meat that you guys are working on? That and I don’t know if there’s a difference, but because your a year old, but I’m wondering if in the last year, that cost structure has changed, as far as producing the meat is concerned?
Vin Srinivas
Yeah, when we started our company, our cost of bed mass of the cells, just one kilo of meat was around $13,000. US dollars and now we are well under $6,000 in the calculation, these are thanks to very minor changes in the whole technology, we thought we can remove some of the components, which are very expensive, and we managed to do that. And going forward we are collaborating with a bunch of different startups and also established companies to source some of this materials. So this should be able to bring the cost down to around 1000 $2,500, next one to two years, and again, when the economy of scale kicks into producing this product, I think they are well underway to being around $200 range within next three, four years.
Andrew D Ive
An extra kilogram?
Vin Srinivas
A kilogram of meat.
Andrew D Ive
Okay, so started off at around how much $1,000 for a kilogram, you’re now at around five or six after a year and given the technology that you’re working on, you see it ultimately coming down to what amount?
Vin Srinivas
Within the next three to four years, it will be around $100. But we still have a lot of ways to reduce the cost because one of other economies of scale. I didn’t talk about this one right now, what we are doing our calculation based on 5000 liter bio reactors, but once the scale is around 20,000 liter reactor, we will again further reduce by another half meaning 50% reduction will be there. So, we have very many more weapons in the toolbox to reduce the cost to the actual cost of meat that we are all used to, exteriors coming in the future.
Andrew D Ive
Got it. Perfect. So you think in the next three to four years using did you say 2000 liters bio reactors or what size did you mention?
Vin Srinivas
500 fine under 2000 liter bioreactors.
Andrew D Ive
Got it 500 to 1000 perfect. How much is a kilo of steak today from a traditional source from cutting up the cow. How much does it cost?
Vin Srinivas
Depending on where you go and what kind of meat you’re talking about. It can vary anywhere from around 20 to $30 per kilo to anywhere from few $1,000 per kilo. So if you’re going for the highest rated wagu It costs around 300 to 400 US dollar so we can do the maths.
Andrew D Ive
I’m not sure I would be able to do that. Yeah, that’s fine. Okay, so the least expensive possible meat per kilo is probably said 20 $30 per kilo. You guys are going to be able to get it down to 100 or less in the next three to four years. So it’s possible, I would guess in four to five years that you guys could actually be down to a similar price point to traditional meat. Now, you mentioned that wagu and other sorts of prime meat, which includes marbling and various other things from a cow, a piece of beef that’s been particularly difficult to grow and ultimately sell lines that are incredibly expensive. could be two to $3,000 per kilo. Are you guys able to produce the Wagu beefs of the world using your technology, and that way you can actually get to product and a price point that makes sense sooner than the four to five years?
Vin Srinivas
Yeah, the ultimate idea is to produce meat like wagyu, just to show the extreme proof of concept for people with the same same quantity of nutrition, same type of nutrition, everything exactly matching, like wagu that’s our ultimate goal, but at a much, much cheaper cost, if you want to produce wagu for under $1,000 per kilo. I don’t think that it’s fair market but that’s not our aim, we want to bring down the cost to significantly lower level. The main idea is we are trying to challenge the old conviction of traditional animal farming, factory style farming. So for us to do that, it’s not just the wagu, it has to be majority of the meat we have to target also.
Andrew D Ive
Okay, so you not only think that within the next four or five years, you can potentially get to work you mean in terms of the type of meat that you’re producing with the characteristics, but you believe that it’s possible to do so at a far lower price. I was talking to someone on the cell based side the other day, and they mentioned that some cell based companies are using cell lines from sources where there may be some copyright or some sort of intellectual property that needs to be recognized and they’re not clear on that they weren’t sure that all cell based companies take that sort of thing into consideration. So for example, they’re either taking cell lines from universities, which don’t have the right to use those cell line for commercial purposes. Or they’re, you know, buying animal meat, or cells from a company and that company would be thinking it’s just doing a meat transaction, it doesn’t realize that it’s selling the cells of their animals that they’ve spent, you know, 20 years, 30 years, 50 years, growing from a breeding perspective, and using that cell line for commercial purposes, which could upset their entire industry in a decade’s time. Do cell based companies need to be thinking about this?
Vin Srinivas
I think one thing we should start from very basic point of view is they should be upfront about what is the usage of material that they are going to collect from the animals? They should be told, that’s what we did. We told them we were going to capture meat even though the farmers didn’t understand what exactly we are trying to say. Cultured meat, they don’t even grasp the idea of what we were trying to say. But we mentioned to them about the usage and that it was going to be for food purposes and for the growing of meat. So good thing with our interaction that it was not a meat farming farm. It was a milking farm. So they were okay with that. But one thing in Japan especially, you can’t simply take a wagu cell and produce meat. Because these are all very copyright restrictive and area restricted, in order for you to use anything apart from consuming it, it’s considered illegal right now. So we have to work with the government because this whole concept of how do we share the intellectual property or how do we even post intellectual property in the first level, because we are taking from the farmers. Do they own any part of it or are we the owners. So we have to figure out a way because there is no standard template for us to follow. So we have to keep them engaged and also ensure that they understand what we are going to use it for. In general, before we go first for small farming communities, mainly because they are much more open and understanding of our requirements rather than big animal farms, so we have to have a much more active discussion with the whole supply chain of people, like one of the unintended victims of our cultured meat will be small farmers, because then it will be too expensive for regular audience, they will, they will still have consumers, but we have to keep that in view.
Andrew D Ive
Got it, I didn’t realize that this area was actually as complex as it is. But you know, you’re right, some farms, some breeders have been breeding certain strains of cattle, etc, for decades, and they’ve invested a lot of time science, money, etc. to create these lines of animals, these different types of animals that have certain characteristics from a meat production perspective. So just taking their hard work and sort of converting it into a disruptive technology you need to, as you say, bring the farmer with it, bring the farmer and the breeder with you, and make sure they understand what’s happening and why and you for you for you all to sort of partner together around that is probably the best way forward. Question. You’ve been going for a year, where do you see Gaia being in two to three years time, obviously, you’ll be struggling, you know, working hard to make that meat down to the $100 and the $50 level from a price point perspective. But where do you see Gaya being?
Vin Srinivas
I think our ultimate goal is to be one of the major players, which can give people real meat options. Reducing the impact of factory style animal farming. That’s our main goal. When it comes to our target markets, since we are in Singapore, and Singapore is very open to this kind of new innovation, which was witnessed by the approval of the first cultured meat sale in Singapore. So we will be launching our products in Singapore, mainly because this market is something which we understand a little bit. And also we have some understanding of the deeper understanding of the markets. But eventually we will go to other Asian countries, mainly because some of the data that we are trying to produce are mainly meant in the Asian foods. Any Asian cultures will be able to consume our food. But we are going to focus on where are the major centers that have this kind of meat consumption happening. So that is in Japan, Korea, and East Asia and Southeast Asia, some of the countries are because that’s the we also need. If I go to Indonesia and sell my meat for $100 per kilo, I don’t think I’ll have enough market for me to capture the biggest people as there price point is different. On top of that, we also have to do education amongst the general consumers about what is this technology just because I gave something they don’t consume. So we have to do a lot of consumer education before even they can like this kind of product.
Andrew D Ive
Okay, so it’s interesting, in two to three years, you’re kind of focus is on how do you build this into a business, which is in multiple countries and take the consumers with you?
Vin Srinivas
Yeah, I think that’s the main goal for us because we want to conquer the world but it doesn’t simply work like that. You want to understand each and every market, even though it’s a beef. In Japan beef is very different from Korea. So we want to make sure that we are creating products, which our consumers require not for some corner shelf of the supermarket. We want to engage our consumers right at the very beginning also to make sure that they understand and they consume our products.
Andrew D Ive
So you guys started a year ago, if you were talking to other entrepreneurs that were about to start the journey in the future of food space, and it was, you know, day one for them what would you want them to understand about the last year for you and things they should take into consideration as they build their business?
Vin Srinivas
I think if if you’re coming out of school, that’s pretty good. You can start and dedicate a lot of time. One of the biggest fears that I had to overcome for myself, was not having a salary coming into my account every month to get rid of the fear. It took quite a bit of time for me and that can be very scary. So you have to get out of the fear and you will eventually find ways to survive and live. On top of that, I think startup in general is very, physically and emotionally draining. It’s not simply like, Oh, you just put in 80 hours a week you are done with it, it can also be very emotionally draining. So be ready with it and surround yourself with people who understand you and support you on different levels, this is absolutely crucial. So if you can start and do things on your own, that’s good. But in general, majority of the time you need friends, family and other supporters surrounding you, to be there with you throughout the journey. So find some good partners to hang around with, that will make your life so much easier, rather than doing things on your own.
Andrew D Ive
So I remember when I started my first company, and the investors came in and gave me a small amount of money so that I could continue and I went through the same thing you did. Feeling really insecure and wondering, you know what the future was going to be, even though I’d been given a X number of $100,000, to sort of roll the business forward. And then I sort of I don’t know why, but I envisioned a curtain and I was standing on one side of the curtain and I was sort of working in a traditional job and when you’re in a traditional job, you’re waiting for the 15th of the month or the 30th of the month, and somebody invisible is going to be sending you some money. And you’re going to go along with your ATM card to a bank and you’re going to pop it in and you’re going to look and see that a little bit of money has been hit your account or you know a lot of money has hit your account, depending on what job you do. But either way, you’re on one side of the curtain where somebody.some sort of faceless finance person, sends you some money and you’re feeling grateful for the fact that you’ve got some cash. When you make that transition, that you walk through the curtain, from employee to founder, or startup, if you’ve got some money, and it’s not always that you do, but if you’ve got some money, you may end up writing checks to yourself at the end of the month and it’s a bit of a mindset shift. But you know, at the end of the day, as long as you have the ability to meet your bills, you know, pay for some food, those sorts of things. I found it a little bit more reassuring that I was the one writing the cheque and I knew I was going to write a check at the end of the month and there was no unpredictability about it unless you ran out of money, of course, versus this faceless accounting person that you may not even ever meet sending you this money and you were sort of is it there? Okay, yeah. I’ve been paid today. So how do you cope with that? I mean, you said it wasn’t easy when you it’s your own company, there’s an insecurity and you sort of spoke over it not really explaining how you coped with it, how you dealt with it.
Vin Srinivas
So, in my case, at least since I’m a freshman in college, I had planned, at least for four or five months, I can push this off. Even I hadn’t made myself mentally prepared for four or five months without salary or any money still, I can survive and that kind of helped a little bit in the beginning stages but again, first month, I didn’t see any salary. It was shocking, again, even how much I prepared? It didn’t really help much. But I think one of the things you mentioned is like, once you have enough money and you have enough planning and passion with you, you will find ways to succeed in one another way. And that actually was one of the drivers for me right now. Now I’m already taking the plunge to find a way to survive. So it took us quite a lot of mental adjustment. I’m done. It helps you to drive also, that’s a good thing. Like it helps you to drive towards your goal. When you are squeezed, you will become the best part of yourself. I think that helps a lot and yeah, I think that was one of the main ways and also my family and everyone was very supportive and that was one of the biggest advantages I had compared to many other investors, because if your family is not along with you, I think you’re fighting water to France, which has a higher chance of failure than pressing the water at one point.
Andrew D Ive
So I think you’re right. I think it’s great to have family and friends and people who are supportive, even if they don’t necessarily understand exactly what you’re doing or even why you’re doing it but as long as they’re supportive, I think that’s really important. But I wonder, did you discover anything about yourself in the process?
Vin Srinivas
Yeah, I think that’s a major thing that changed. Actually, in our last jobs, we were good at what we were doing but it’s just like, we have to wait for governments to decide, some, as you mentioned, person behind the curtain, I have no idea what I’m going to do if the person rejects my idea of something? I think one of the biggest thing that has happened is my confidence, believing in myself, I have achieved certain things and this has significantly changed me. Now, I think I can go out much more confidently and I face the challenge much more effectively, rather than passively, like just putting under the rocks about some of the issues, I can face them directly and that has made a much bigger impact than any other thing, at least for myself.
Andrew D Ive
So having full responsibility for your actions is the biggest change for you and you’re not waiting for somebody else’s approval, you have to figure it out for yourself.
Vin Srinivas
Yeah, I think that that’s the main thing for me.
Andrew D Ive
Wow, okay. There’s so much more I’d love to get into, but I’m not sure we have a lot of time left, unfortunately. So we’ve spoken about how you started, in terms of you mentioned that there are two of you in the company. You’re a Singapore based business and is there still only two of you or are you growing? Or where are you at from a team perspective?
Vin Srinivas
We are total of five people now. We started with two and now we are five, mainly because we need to think about advancing. While we can take the route we are on, it’s very slow, or we can get support from different individuals, VCs, to go faster is just that we can achieve the same result at a much faster timeline. I can, I think that’s the main difference, we are expanding.
Andrew D Ive
So at the beginning, your nervousness was about paying yourself. Yeah. And now you have five people in the company does that add to the nervousness that you now have to worry about paying salaries for the other three or four people?
Vin Srinivas
It actually multiplies every time you add another employee, it keeps going, like when you see a bank account going negative are going down and down. Every time you open it, you find the heart to go and find ways so it kind of motivates us to make sure that we are well resourced. It’s not just like, we want to do everything at the smallest of the amount, we want to make sure that it’s not a random five people we just picked up. Once we pick the people, we also want to ensure that they do get salary and also they do improve on a personal level. That’s also one of the key points when they’re hiring. They don’t randomly hire people we get unless the reference or network by people we don’t randomly randomly hire people mainly because we will be live we are getting a reference means we are responsible for reputation of the person who referred referred to us and also for our reputation that thanks for referring me but a good person might be able to improve that person. So in that regard, yes, it is more scary, but also more fun.
Andrew D Ive
You make the amount of money you have available sound a little bit like oxygen. You know, the as long as you’ve got oxygen, you’re fine, but you’re sort of aware that the oxygen is decreasing and it gets more and more nerve wracking. Obviously when there’s no more oxygen …..
Vin Srinivas
The aim to not to get to that stage.
Andrew D Ive
Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. So in terms of key challenges, what do you see as the sort of next barrier or two that you guys need to get through to take Gaya where you want to take it?
Vin Srinivas
Yeah. So when when it comes to the challenges, right now we are restricted by covid, we can’t bring in people whom we want, because we can’t do everything. We need the expertise from other industries. Like I can talk about biology for hours but if I want to talk about designing a bioreactor, and things like that, I am not equipped for that. So we need to find that set of people. And since this is a very new industry, and there are so very few players, there’s not a large enough talent pool available for us to tap into. So we have to compete with the biopharma industry, which are much better stocked up in cash. They can offer much bigger incentive to their employees. So to find passionate people who can help us achieve our goal is a challenge. We want to find the right people to ensure that we are on the correct path, and to make sure that we are keeping the promises that we planned for ourselves.
Andrew D Ive
That’s interesting. So it’s not the science that you see as the barrier to making this company work or changing the industry or moving the technology forward, it’s finding good people to join the team who will ultimately help you get there. That’s the challenge finding the right people, you make this, you make the science sound inevitable.
Vin Srinivas
Yeah, I think that you can. If I can give an example of COVID and COVID came in, in a traditional sense, if you want to develop a vaccine, it takes about 10 years minimum. So it showed that COVID was a new thing and we didn’t have enough material to start with but given enough of a talent pool coming in together, we managed to crack the problem within a year’s time. So something like that, even in our field. Yes, the science is still not there but if you find the right kind of resources, we can pull that off, but finding the correct set of people who are motivated also, is the hard challenge for us right now. So because ultimately, we are borrowing technology from bio medical industry, many of the challenges we are facing, they have solved some of the things one of the thing is dating. In the biomedical industry cost was never a consideration when they’re planning to produce any product. In our case, everything hinges on the cost, how much further down, I can push the cost. So we know how to do certain things already, an extra pair of hands will be able to help us with that but when we’re trying to change some of the things different from what biomedical industry have been doing, for that we need a new set of talent pools. So that’s our body of products.
Andrew D Ive
So you mentioned that from an employment recruitment perspective, you’re competing with the biomedical space with more resources, the ability to pay bigger bonuses, and so on. Obviously, what you guys are doing, though, has the potential to produce food that could you know, sustain the human race in a far more sustainable way than traditional large scale animal factory farming. I’m guessing there are scientists who may be swayed by the bonus. But there are other scientists who, for example, may be swayed by, you know, the planet. Is that the case? So you’re finding that the best way of giving the right people is to communicate with them and to you know, make sure they’re aware that the impact they’re having the work they’re doing can actually change the world for the better. I mean, obviously, biomedicine is also changing the world for the better, but just in a fundamentally different way.
Vin Srinivas
I think in general, finding the motivated people who believe that they can change the world is very limited. There are a few people who definitely believe that, but we need more, much more than that, because we are tackling a $1.5 trillion industry and for that, just a few 100 scientists here and there doesn’t do the job. We need way more personell than that. And also we have to think much more radically. If you want to bring down the cost, they simply cannot rely on old ways to do things. So for that, we need much more passionate people, if you don’t have passionate people, and if you don’t give them challenges which they can think outside the box and solve, this industry will have, meaning the price parity to the traditional, will take much longer. That’s why we have to bring in the passionate, driven people.
Andrew D Ive
I think you’re right. The only thing in what you just said, though, that I wonder about just a little is, you said if we’re going to tackle the traditional 1 trillion or however many trillion meat industry I don’t see this technology necessarily as something that is tackling the meat industry or is sort of fighting the meat industry, I see it as the natural progression of the meat industry, to the point where if I was in the traditional meat industry, I would be trying to figure out how to partner with the right companies like you, like others, to be able to evolve my industry to where it is, you know, inevitably going to go. So it’s not a tackling of the industry as much as you know, working with and evolve evolution of the industry. Because you know that i think that’s how we’re all gonna win in this case,
Vin Srinivas
I think the very thing that you know, inner workings of many of these big companies like Tyson dow, they already are investing in companies like cultured meat companies. So, they understand the thing but they also know that it is a natural progression and where they will have a limited option for butchered meats. So they are doing things but at a much smaller scale meaning if I’m growing cells, I’m producing meat, do I have the whole supply chain in place for scaling up? And do the other partners also have enough resources? I mean, are we taking raw materials from that sources or not? There are a lot of things that have to be worked out before this industry can really do the job. And we definitely can take the lessons from traditional farming industry because they have hyper optimized this whole sector so we can definitely learn from them, there is a great opportunity for us to learn. I hope we can partner with many many of these companies because there’s always something interesting to learn from it whether it’s biology or business side of things. So we hope we can find partners who can help us achieve a sustainable world for all of us it’s not just for one company or one animal or one type of product or something in general for a whole sector.
Andrew D Ive
Perfect. So Vin I’m going to slowly wind this call down. Very quickly where can people find out about you and Gaia if they want to help you support you, ask you questions, invest in you, you know whatever it might be what’s what’s a good way of people getting a hold of you?
Vin Srinivas
So you can just go to LinkedIn and type my name Vinayaka Srinivas or gaiafoods. Or you can just google search you will find Gaia Foods. LinkedIn is the fastest way for us to get in touch and we respond quickly. Or email us at www.gaiafoods.xyz
Andrew D Ive
So then vin@gaiafoodsxyz In terms of LinkedIn, Vinayaka Srinivas. Anyone wants to get hold of you. That’s the best way. I’m guessing you’re not talking and instagramming and dancing to music on various platforms, are you that’s not where you’re at?
Vin Srinivas
No …. We’re not there yet.
Andrew D Ive
Maybe personally, but not from a business point of view.
Vin Srinivas
We are not the way to reach an audience, though.
Andrew D Ive
It isn’t. It’s a good way, isn’t it? All right. So Vin I really appreciate your time today. I’m sure I would love to have spent another kind of 45 minutes or more talking to you. Maybe we can do this again sometime soon. I’m going to I’m going to say thank you very much any last thoughts for entrepreneurs out there? And then we’ll we’ll press pause.
Vin Srinivas
Absolutely but it’s my pleasure again, it was really interesting to talk about this idea, or anyone who’s interested in the field it’s a much up and coming field so If you’re an entrepreneur, I think take the plunge. It’s going to be very rewarding both mentally and also hopefully, monetarily in future. But I think the main thing is, it’s going to be really, really fun. It’s going to be tiring, but it’s going to be fun. So if not, if there are multiple ways to join the communities, please do get in touch. There are many, many options available and we do get expertise. We need expertise from diverse range of fields and that’s all I can say about.
Andrew D Ive
Perfect. Thank you for your time today. Really appreciate you coming on board and having this conversation about you and Gaia foods. This is Andrew from the Big Idea podcast focused on food, saying thank you for coming along. And that’s it. We’ll be going out in a second. Thanks for listening or watching the podcast today with Vin from Gaia foods. This is the big idea food podcast. And we appreciate you watching, listening and participating. Please do leave any comments or questions you have by all means reach out to Vin at Gaya foods spelled Gaia or reach out to us at Big Idea Ventures by big idea ventures.com or Instagram, LinkedIn all the usual places. So I look forward to connecting with you next week, with next week’s podcast and another conversation with a great founder focused on the future of food. Thanks very much. Appreciate you coming by