Colours from Biodiversity: Pune Innovator Makes Hay with Agro-Waste Feedstock

What have been the challenges faced this far—be it in terms of product, the research and development, and finally the commercial roll out?
Vaishali Kulkarni: The challenges have been many. When we started our journey back in 2018-19, we could only make 10 gram products in a small shake flask. Today KBcols has been successfully able to scale up the technology to kilogram scale, but the journey to full scale commercialisation and operating scale has just begun.

Some of our early challenges also included making the product in powder form. Initially, KBCols used to give products in liquid form due to cost and operational benefits, but we soon realised the industry has been working with powder form of product predominantly and would prefer it in that form, also because it’s easier to mix the colours to create secondary shades that way. Hence in 2020-2021, we started working on the iteration of the product in free flowing powder form, which would be a drop-in-solution for manufacturers and brands. Today, KBcols gives out its products as a drop-in-solution (powder form), where the brands/manufacturers can replace chemical colours with our bio-colours in the existing setup and machinery. They do not need to change any existing manufacturing setup.

Other challenges included the number of shades which could be developed with microbial based colours. The chemical colour palette is huge, and we are still far away from matching the big colour gamut, but the good part is that the colours from KBCols can be mixed to create secondary and tertiary shades (for e.g. mix of blue and pink can create shades in lavender). It’s still early days but we are working to navigate this challenge in our product development journey.

Another major challenge faced is securing funding for a deeptech startup in India, a space which is growing here, but still in need of a lot of support to create impact at scale.

How different is the process that KB Cols Sciences employs from other organic bio dye makers?
Arjun Singh Bajwa: Natural colours/organic bio-colours earlier used to be extracted from plants, animals, ores and insects. However, disadvantages like long time of cultivation, requirement of large cultivable land, dependence upon season and geographical conditions and reproducibility of shade have prompted scientists to look for alternatives.

Microbes, the smallest living organisms on earth, offer this alternative. They are not only known to produce value added compounds like vitamins, amino acids etc., but also produce colours/natural pigments under defined conditions. KBCols Sciences, a deeptech startup based in Pune, through its unique technology sources these microbes from the rich biodiversity of India and cultures them in bioreactors to produce natural colours of choice. The final product (bio-colours free from microbes) are a universal drop-in-solution to dye the majority kinds of fibres.

What is your supply chain like? Where do you source your raw materials from for the dyes?
Arjun Singh Bajwa: KBCols Sciences produces its bio-colours from renewable biomass (microbes). They are renewable biomass because in each batch we only add one microbe which multiplies into two, then four, then sixteen, then thirty-two and so on. Hence the microbial fermentation process is autocatalytic and leads to millions of microbes that act as biomass to extract colours (renewable in nature). The colours are then separated from microbes and dried into powder form (hence the final product is free from any microbes and is only colour). 

The raw material supplied in bioreactors for growth and production of colours is composed of agricultural waste (thus making a circular production process, where waste is fed to create value added products). We are now in discussions with farmer groups and industries to source agricultural waste, thus providing them an additional source of income and reducing waste load by converting them into food for microbes. The other raw materials, if any, are sourced through local vendors.

What is the range of colours that you have started with? Do you cater only to the textile industry?
Arjun Singh Bajwa: KBCols Sciences initially has a colour palette of four — blue, brown, green and pink — which are at an industrial piloting stage. The four colours can even be mixed to create secondary shades. We also have few very exciting colours in the R&D pipeline like yellow, orange, red, etc., that we anticipate to be ready for industrial validation in the coming few months. Hence, soon we will be in a stage where the major shades used by textile industries would be under development and testing at KBCols.

When we started our journey, we always envisioned the textile industry as our target. But colours are everywhere, from the food we eat, to the cosmetics we apply. Hence a few years down the line we do anticipate our colours also being tested and validated in other consumer based sectors where colours are high in demand and define the product characteristics and its ability to sell. 

Which are the companies, designers, brands who use your products? What is the feedback like? What are the changes that they have demanded since you started?
Vaishali Kulkarni: KBCols Sciences brings to the fashion technology space a unique and different technology. Thanks to the impact shown with our technology, KBCols is piloting this technology with 12+ international apparel and luxury brands. It is piloting this technology in Europe, US, Japan, India, Sri Lanka with leading brands and manufacturers. Due to confidentiality reasons, all the brands cannot be mentioned, but a few industrial pilots already in news are:

1. Albini Group (Italy) with support from Kering Group: KBCols is piloting the technology with leading Italian manufacturing brand Albini group, with support from luxury brand Kering group. The pilot has helped the technology move from initial lab scale to industrialisation.
2. Shahi Exports: KBCols is piloting its technology with leading apparel exporter Shahi exports in India.

KBCols is not only working with leading apparel brands, but has also showcased its technology in collaboration with worldclass designers like Hul Le Kes (Amsterdam) and Ka-Sha (India). With Hul Le Kes our collaborative outfits were displayed at Fashion For Good Museum (Amsterdam). With Ka-sha brand, our collaborative outfits were displayed in a fashion show held at Lakme Fashion Week, (April 2022), one of India's leading fashion events.

The feedback has been very positive from all brands/manufacturers. The microbial bio-colours have shown more stability, durability and shade strength compared to other organic/flower-based colours. However, the feedback has also been on creating darker shades now (the likes of black, dark red, navy blue). So, we are taking that feedback and working on darker hues as well. We are also working on improving further in collaboration with our brand and manufacturing partners.

What are the certifications that you have gone for?
Arjun Singh Bajwa: KBCols is working on the Global Organic Textile Standard (GOTS) certification at present and in the coming few months would also be applying for ZDHC and Oekotex 100. Once these compliances are complete and scale-up established, KBCols would be eyeing a collection with some leading global brands to bring this technology and product to the consumers.

With respect to GCA, in hindsight what do you think you got right about the entire thing?
Arjun Singh Bajwa: The GCA application form is a very exhaustive process which involves scrutiny at multiple levels. In hindsight, if I have to point out a couple of things that we got right, firstly it would be clearly communicating our USP or point of differentiation that makes KBCols stand out from other companies working in a similar space. The fact that we are one of the only companies providing a drop-in-solution helped position our product correctly. Second, we could clearly demonstrate our applications, present stage of development and the support we envisaged from the GCA programme. I believe some of these points helped us position our application in the best possible way to the jury.