Sustainable natural ingredients (medicinal/aromatic plants) – growth capital

The natural ingredient market (essential oils, extracts or powders from aromatic and medicinal plants) within food and beverage, nutraceuticals, cosmetics, personal care and (phyto-)pharmaceuticals is enormous (globally >USD 100Bn by 2030), but the value chain is broken. The pain points are availability of niche and innovative ingredients with dwindling active ingredients, hazardous contaminations such as pesticide and heavy metal residues, traceability and sustainability attributes. Almost 90% of contaminations, as specified from Swiss/European Food Safety Regulations can be eliminated at the farm gate operational level in India which majority of customers has no levers to control. The company founded in 2018 achieves this by making farmers adopt organic agroforestry (regenerative farming) and controlling the process from selection of seeds, cultivation, post-harvest, processing to delivery of ingredients to these very customers. This vertically integrated proprietary Quality-by-Design management system enables creation a high quality with European pharmacopeia standards, sustainable traceable and niche offer of natural ingredients. Various testing results demonstrate significantly increased active principles, significant controlling of contaminants and most importantly cost reduction of the ingredients despite being of very high quality. The company has got positive reviews and now plans to scale.