Investors
Strategic partnerships enabling advanced bamboo‑to‑chemicals platforms for nutraceutical, food, and personal‑care applications.
Funding
Current grantChemSus Technologies attracts mission‑aligned funding to translate laboratory breakthroughs into industrially viable, low‑carbon chemical processes built on bamboo biomass.
Biotechnology Industry Research Assistance Council (BIRAC) – Biotechnology Ignition Grant (BIG), North Eastern Region.
Rs. 50 Lakhs Innovation Grant
BIRAC, under its Biotechnology Ignition Grant – North Eastern Region scheme, supports ChemSus Technologies in developing a scalable process to convert bamboo biomass into high‑value specialty chemicals for health and personal‑care markets.
Key technical objectives:
- Design and optimization of a robust, modular process for bamboo biomass conversion.
- Production of pharmaceutical‑grade calcium levulinate as a nutritional supplement component.
- Development of food and cosmetic preservatives based on levulinic acid and sodium levulinate.
- Establishment of a pilot facility targeting a throughput of approximately 10 kg/day.
The grant accelerates the journey from bench‑scale chemistry to pre‑commercial deployment, enabling process validation, regulatory data generation, and early customer evaluations.
Project overview
The project focuses on transforming abundantly available bamboo biomass from the North‑Eastern region into value‑added levulinic‑acid derivatives using green‑chemistry routes with minimal waste and solvent footprint.
By integrating upstream biomass pretreatment with optimized reaction and purification steps, ChemSus builds a flexible platform capable of serving nutraceutical, food, and personal‑care markets from a single process backbone.
Impact and outcomes
The funded work is expected to generate new income opportunities for bamboo growers, reduce dependence on petrochemical‑derived ingredients, and provide traceable, India‑origin inputs for regulated markets.
The resulting pilot data, formulations, and supply‑chain partnerships will underpin future commercial plants and additional products built on the same bamboo‑to‑chemicals platform.
Key milestones
- Laboratory optimization and kinetic understanding of the bamboo‑conversion route.
- Design, fabrication, and commissioning of a pilot‑scale module targeting 10 kg/day output.
- Quality, stability, and application testing for calcium levulinate and levulinate‑based preservatives.
- Generation of safety dossiers and regulatory documentation enabling early customer trials.