When entering the world of business, entrepreneurship, and innovation it is important to remember that one cannot approach these matters without certain tools and knowledge, and most importantly, without the notion that this is a world that relies on different rules when compared to the academic world. Thus our team decided on a business approach that could best represent the values that emerged with the project itself, those were: Honesty, Respect, equality, and Communication. Those were the foundations of our organization as we evolved our project to an actual hands-on industrial and commercial application.
The financial and technological positive impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the Biotech sector carried out by the investigations of research centers, companies, and startups, in search of a solution for the state of emergency, placed the Biotech market as one of the most emerging worldwide. Here we carry out a detailed analysis of our three main markets: vegetable cellulose, synthetic biology, and bacterial cellulose using The Brazilian Tree Industry (IBA) and the stock market data (NASDAQ) as a reference to analyze the feasibility of the implementation of our project as a company within the economic market. To diagnose the critical points of our company we used SWOT-type business tools. Furthermore to assess the sales process and decision-making between lead/customer we build a canvas-type business model and we use funnel and pipeline tools to define the contact iteration channels with the Customer Relationship Management (CRM). With all this analysis we made the organization chart of our company CELLULOPOLIS as an innovative and sustainable product for market implementation.
The cellulose and paper sector plays an essential role in the national and international economy. This is due to the revenue generated, the high investments, the impact that this sector has on the other various economic sectors, before and after its production chain, as well as its influence on the generation and consumption of energy.
The cellulose industry has different characteristics from other markets since it has a high level of technological development that uses industrial facilities with large production capacity, a broad base of planted forest resources, and intense capital invested in technology. Even with the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic, cellulose production in Brazil grew by 6.6% in 2020 compared to 2019, configuring this sector as one that quickly organized itself to meet the demands of the new consumption format. The country remained the second largest producer in the world, reaching 21.0 million tons manufactured, behind only the United States.
The cellulose and paper market represents investments, job creation, income, and advances in tax collection, which make the sector one of the pillars of the national industry. In Brazil, this segment has great market efficiency, and its high competitiveness is mainly explained by favorable soil and climate conditions, investment in planted forests, and research over the years.
Although there is the idea of replacing paper with other technologies, the sector has shown growth over the years. The demand for paper has shown an increase that is proportional to the development of the population. In addition, there is a worldwide trend towards replacing plastic with paper, due to the shorter decomposition time of paper. In line with this trend, the R&D areas of cellulose and paper companies have sought solutions in the development of new materials, the use of co-products, and new markets for the application of cellulose. There is also a constant investment in improving processes, aiming at gains in production and quality in the final product, to serve an increasingly demanding customer, who prioritizes the consumption of certified and environmentally responsible products.
The international synthetic biology market is in a strong long-term uptrend, giving good scope for future development.The number of startups that have synthetic biology listed as a primary activity and with capital above USD 100,000 doubled between 2017 and 2020, which indicates not only broad economic success in the multi-company market but also a large growth of professionals in the area. In addition, 8 of the 10 companies with the highest market value in the industry were founded in the last decade.
Of these companies, the largest number are concentrated in the US and Europe, but with strong growth in investment in research centers in Asia between 2018 and 2020, mainly in China. Despite the growth in international hubs, the vast majority of the financial movement of the branch takes place on the American west coast, mainly in the state of California.
The first peak and crash of investments in the Synthetic Biology sector within the NASDAQ Stock Market occurred between 2015 and 2016 with the widespread notification and development of alternatives to fossil fuels through the production and synthesis of biodiesel. Currently, the subject has returned to the agenda through the synthesis and manipulation of marine organisms, which could lead to a new peak in investments as international oil prices soar. There is also heavy investment in the food sector despite the breadth of technology allowing a wide variety of services and products.
The Synthetic Biology market is on the rise until 2021 according to the movement in NASDAQ ALL-TIME SYNBIO STOCKS points.
The international synthetic biology market is in a strong long-term uptrend, giving good scope for future development. The number of startups that have synthetic biology listed as a primary activity and with capital above USD 100,000 doubled between 2017 and 2020, which indicates not only broad economic success in the multi-company market but also a large growth of professionals in the area. In addition, 8 of the 10 companies with the highest market value in the industry were founded in the last decade.
Of these companies, the largest number are concentrated in the US and Europe, but with strong growth in investment in research centers in Asia between 2018 and 2020, mainly in China. Despite the growth in international hubs, the vast majority of the financial movement of the branch takes place on the American west coast, mainly in the state of California.
The first peak and crash of investments in the Synthetic Biology sector within the NASDAQ Stock Market occurred between 2015 and 2016 with the widespread notification and development of alternatives to fossil fuels through the production and synthesis of biodiesel. Currently, the subject has returned to the agenda through the synthesis and manipulation of marine organisms, which could lead to a new peak in investments as international oil prices soar. There is also heavy investment in the food sector despite the breadth of technology allowing a wide variety of services and products.
The global bacterial cellulose production market has shown a strong rise since 2018 and the perspective is to increase even more until 2027. The means of production specifically in Brazil have a constant investment in improving processes, aiming at gains in production and quality in the final product, to serve an increasingly demanding customer, who prioritizes the consumption of certified and environmentally responsible products.
The global Cellulose market size was about USD 317.2 million in 2020. Global COVID-19 has drastically impacted the global economy. However, microbial and bacterial cellulose has witnessed a positive impact of the Pandemic. According to the Microbial and Bacterial Cellulose market size, Share & Industry analysis published on the Business Research insights periodics the market is projected to weigh USD 889.5 million by 2027 and exhibit a CAGR of 13,3% during 2021-2027. The increase in the market is attributed to the growth and demand of the market returning to pre-pandemic levels after the COVID-19 pandemic is over.
After evaluating the three potential markets we consider our project as one of the most promising in the educational, health, and industry sectors, positively impacting the national and international economy. Then, after identifying our strengths and weaknesses with the Swot tool analysis, we decided to go one step further with the creation of the organization of our company. Based on all this we plan to be part of the incubation program for young companies of the INOVA Unicamp group, where we can interact with universities, researchers, and companies in search of future partners.
Bacterial cellulose arises as one of the best alternatives to the use of vegetable cellulose because of its purity and eco-friendly material, though it has some big problems, it can't be produced on a larger scale due to difficulties in its production. Here we present to you some of the disadvantages of current Bacteria Cellulose and how our Cellulopolis project will improve this product to make it available and more attractive for its implementation in the market.
Working together gave the team good insights into what the ideal cellulose company could be. When deciding our hierarchical structure of the organization we debated on what would be the most justifiable way to share responsibility and control of the operations in a way that allowed people to voice their thoughts and share ideas. Therefore we decided to go with a different approach. Our Company's structural organization relies not only on a CEO but on a board of directors that takes the major decisions together according to the sectors they preside. In our organogram, it's possible to see that we designed the board to count with all the directors of each sector, this way every decision made by this board will count with inputs from all sides of the company. We also decided to have 2(two),Bioplant managers, as this is the sector that we need to know the most about and also a very demanding one. So sharing the leadership over the plant will allow the managers to better organize their tasks with the team and the directors' board to have two different views on how the operation workflow is being executed.
Our team wanted to generate a positive impact in Society with the project from the very beginning so this was essential as we developed our business ideals. The business strategy was developed thinking about sustainability(both internal and external) and ESG development. So we focused on a B2B approach where the extra revenue from the sales would be directed to our future projects and the improvement of the methods, instead of being distributed as profits for the company's board of directors. This meant that our business view meant more than just making money for the sake of it, but also that people would grow inside of the company not because they wanted a better income but because they want to help with the cause.
With the goals and ideals in mind, the team set on a journey to find out how to structure our business into a canvas that would make the visualization of the most important aspects more intuitive and visually appealing. The final result of this canvas incorporated other stakeholders and possible partners that can be useful in the sales process as influencers in the decision-making of the lead/customer, also spreading the word of the product to other possible customers. We developed this model in conjunction with the sales strategy. Inside of it, we defined our customer segments, the channels we would use to contact and interact with them, and the Customer Relationship Management (CRM) plan that was organized using the sales funnel and pipeline tools, therefore depending on the stage that the customer was in the pipeline the contact would be more or less frequent.
Knowing that what we would sell, bacterial Cellulose (BC), has its market opportunities and establishing our segments according to the business, it was time to move to the next stage of our entrepreneurial process which was to develop a concrete sales strategy by implementing widely used and efficient sales tools. Such as CRM interfaces and sales pipelines & funnels.
These tools were used taking into account the previous scanning we had made of the market and its main drivers(see market overview) and the definition of our Customer ideal persona( see customer), therefore with those in hand the only thing left to do was to organize the stages of our sales process to make sure every information would be taken into account to improve our efficiency more and more.
The steps of the sales process were organized using the following method. We would first approach the potential customer with the proposition of doing simple market research, establishing then the first contact in a friendly way. With this approach, it's also possible to gather information about the needs and demands of the customer, and with this secure that as many people know about the product as possible. We would also contact possible influencers on the decision-making process of the customer. These stages are followed by the instigation of the client’s interest and then finally ending with a final offer to the customer to seal the deal. This strategy allowed us to measure which steps were less successful or more engaging with the client thus strengthening our control of the process.