iGEM SORBONNE

Is NAWI a viable and sustainable business plan ? Our model is simple: sell microalgae-based candies to help combat malnutrition. By speaking with local actors and target consumers throughout the year, we were able to pick out the key notions that had to be developed in order to make our dream a reality. Pitching for funding also gave us some great feedback as to the expectations donors had of our project.

The team started by studying the market using a FITI model, From Idea To Innovation, that helped identify our selling points and define our future company’s main paradigms. Because of information scarcity and a quasi-inexistant market, developing a techno-economic model of candy production was difficult. We were nonetheless able to set a minimal price point for the sale of our final products, which fared quite well when compared to other gelatin-based candy brands available in the United States.

This process allowed us to realize how optimizable our production line could be if money could be invested towards research and development of large scale microalgae culture for Chlamydomonas, as well as batch process candy manufacturing, all of which would become proprietary technologies for an innovative company.

Regarding intellectual property, a vital criteria when raising funds, there are no current patents in the United States or Europe pertaining to the production of microalgae-based candies. While some companies already produce microalgae for use in baking and cocktails, registering a patent protecting the production of microalgae based candies for treatment of nutritional deficiencies, for example in both Europe and the United States, is a sound decision for the company.

In the future, we’d like to study more in detail the costs and challenges of marketing and distribution associated with a project like ours. Launching the company would require this kind of information, but with a few more steps, NAWI would become an amazing proof of concept for microalgae based foods. The advantages held by Chlamydomonas reinhardtii over other microalgal foods (see sustainability) would help breed a competitive marketplace for innovative and specialized food-producing strains. NAWI, the New Algae for World Improvement, can only benefit from its early arrival to a seemingly unavoidable market, becoming a forerunner and probable market-disruptor for high-density “superfoods” and dietary supplements.