If there is one thing that Vinod Kumar, chief executive officer and cofounder of String Bio wants to call out from his entrepreneurship journey it is a critical pivot at the right time, which eventually helped the company get the right product for the market.Back in 2015, two years after having started String Bio, the founder couple Kumar and Ezhil Subbian understood that their first idea of building biodegradable plastics hardly had any takers in the market.
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“We had a small team then and we sat with them and told them the problems we were facing and asked for suggestions, that is when we realised that the nutraceuticals market was opening up and we quickly pivoted to creating ingredients for that industry,” Kumar told ET.
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Even before they started String Bio, when the couple was working in the US back in 2009 they initially wanted to build an AI model for deep science companies which can help reduce the incubation period for these startups.
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But both these ideas seemed to hardly have any takers in the market and the founders quickly changed tracks.
In the space of deep science and hardware innovation, when one is building a product company in a country like India, founders need to understand when to pivot and when to hang on, Kumar added. And it is that decision to pivot that has worked wonders for the company.
Currently, Kumar is trying out different options to take his biomass, produced from gases like methane, to the market. While his initial idea was to partner with large brands to let them manage distribution, now he is trying out if he can brand his own products. Kumar wants to leverage the existing distribution channels to power sales, but the branding and fulfilment will be done by the company itself.
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“There are too many middlemen between us and our final consumers, that is farmers, that eat into our margins. With this pivot we are trying to change that,” Kumar said.
String Bio runs three major business units, one for animal feed, one for plant feed and the third one for human consumption targeted at the nutraceuticals industry. For the plant feed business, String Bio is trying to build the supply chain itself.
“We are already building a plant on the outskirts of Bengaluru to manufacture plant feed from methane and we are looking to take this to the market by the next kharif season,” he added.
Building a hardware product company in India is tough, like Kumar pointed out how they would take four to five days to source basic ingredients in India, which would take a couple of hours in the US.
But there is a policy push from the government now, which is helping.
FCO or Fertiliser Control Order, under the department of fertilisers regulates the sector and they are open to discussing policy issues directly with the industry participants.
“Even the department of Biotechnology is helpful, there is even a plan to build a biomanufacturing policy for the country,” he said.
But getting approval from FSSAI or FDA is tough and that is why String Bio will take much longer to enter the human consumption industry. But even with the existing business plans, Kumar hopes to push up revenues by two to three times by the end of FY24.