Business Showcase : ZooProtein

By @SimonCocking. Zooprotein is a resident company at Skolkovo Innovations Center

Describe the company – the elevator pitch …

Our company develops the technology of producing insect protein feeds from organic waste. This solution is offered to agricultural companies to replace fishmeal and soymeal in animals diets. Our protein feeds are cheaper and of higher quality – this will allow to save fish and land resources for human consumption and feed those people who are starving.

How are you different?

There are not so many insect feeds producers in the world. We’re going our own “Russian” way – we focus on another type of fly, their larvaes grow only 5 days. And we’re focusing more on recycling agricultural and food waste because those things really matter in Russia. Additionally we pretend to sell licenses on our technology at relatively low price.

Why will the company / product do well?

Our product is invented by Nature. Nothing that is invented by Nature goes wrong. Our organic feeds affect animals organism in the most positive way, increasing their health and speed of growing.

Where are you based?

Russia, Lipetsk

When was the company launched?

2015

What have been your biggest wins to date?

We manage to attract first investments for scaling and first customers

What type of people (market segment) are you trying to attract to your product?

We are focusing at agricultural producers: pig farms, poultry farms, fish farms – as they need to recycle their organic waste and they need high quality protein feeds

Tell us about your team?

Our business is the business of family. My dad manages organizational questions, me – doing with promotion and sales, my brother – is technologist, my wife is doing with export/import operations. Also we have an engineer and PhD in biology in the team. And this collective makes it possible to successfully develop our project

What are you long term plans for your product / company?

Our dream is to save people. We see the great unbalance in the fact that we use our food (fish and grain) to feed animals. Because of this 15 million people are dying every year! And to change this situation we need to replace all fishmeal that is used in the feeds for insect proteins. 200 000 of modules around the world will be enough. So we’re looking for partners to make our dream real.

What are your favourite tech gadgets?

I’m not a geek in the terms of gadgets. I have a smartphone and a tablet – that’s enough for reading and calling)

What tech gadgets do you wish you could use to help you?

I started to think about smarthome solutions for our production – flies need specific conditions in different time. But frankly speaking, people now are not surprised with VR, robots, super computers… People are inspired by nature, by something alive. During startup conferences we are really inspired by the way how children perceive our technology: they like alive flies more than games and robots! This inspires us for doing what we do and going to our dream!

How do people get in touch with you?

zooprotein@gmail.com
+7903 866 71 81

http://www.zooprotein.com/

If you would like to have your company featured in the Irish Tech News Business Showcase, get in contact with us at Simon@IrishTechNews.net or on Twitter: @SimonCocking