Indian startup StrainX Bioworks has secured $13 million in funding to expand its precision fermentation platform and accelerate the commercialization of high-value nutritional and flavour ingredients.

The company plans to use the capital to scale production capacity, strengthen research and development, and expand manufacturing infrastructure as it prepares to bring its first ingredients to market.

According to co-founders Akshay Mittal and Alok Malviya, this milestone is not just about capital, “It is a strong validation of the belief that India can build globally relevant, frontier biotechnology companies,” they said.

StrainX develops ingredients through precision fermentation and manages the full value chain internally, from technology development and scale-up to manufacturing and commercialization. The company is also building formulation expertise to help customers incorporate novel ingredients into finished products.

“When we started StrainX, we believed that biology would become one of the most important technology platforms of this century – transforming food, nutrition, health, beauty, personal care, and several industries beyond that,” Mittal said.

“Over the last few years, we have been quietly building one of India’s pioneering synthetic biology and precision fermentation platforms with the ambition of positioning India as a serious global player in the future of biotechnology and biomanufacturing.”

The company currently operates 10,000 litres of fermentation capacity at its facility in Bhopal, where it has achieved repeatable production results. The site was designed with a modular approach that will allow capacity to expand to 100,000 litres by the middle to latter part of next year.

The company sees India as a competitive manufacturing base because of its cost structure, established industrial ecosystem, access to equipment suppliers, skilled workforce, and availability of raw materials. It also cited government support for biotechnology and biomanufacturing as an important factor in its growth plans.

StrainX has not disclosed the identities of its first two commercial ingredients. However, it has already secured self-GRAS status in the United States for one ingredient and has submitted a dossier to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. The company’s initial commercial focus will be the U.S. and Indian markets.

The Bhopal facility will include downstream processing capabilities such as centrifugation, microfiltration, ultrafiltration, ion exchange chromatography, nanofiltration, and spray drying.

The founders said the company remains focused on establishing India as a leading centre for biotechnology innovation and manufacturing.

“We genuinely believe India has the opportunity to become a major force in the future of synthetic biology and biomanufacturing globally – and we are excited to contribute toward building that future,” they said. “The next decade in biology is going to be extraordinary. And we are just getting started.”

The investment round was led by Prime Venture Partners and Leo Capital, with participation from Good Startup, Sparrow Capital, Sun Icon Ventures, Dholakia Ventures, and WindT (IIT Delhi) Angels.