In recent years, the micro and nano-breweries market has been growing at an accelerated pace in Brazil. According to research Beer Yearbook 2019 - carried out by the Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock and Supply - the number of brewery and beer registrations has grown 36% since 2014.
In this context, aiming to work with the beer industry, Aureliano Dias, Juliane Viganó and Manuel Barrales decided to create the startup Kalamazoo Natural Solutions to provide technological and innovative solutions based on hops, the ingredient responsible for the bitterness and aroma of beer.
The desire to undertake emerged in a bar table conversation in 2017, and, since then, the three fellow researchers from the Faculty of Food Engineering (FEA) at the State University of Campinas (Unicamp) have joined forces to get the idea off the ground and put innovations developed in the laboratory on the market during their academic training.
The company was officially founded in September 2019, in March 2020 it started a project with the PIPE Fapesp program and in August of the same year it became one of the newest startups incubated at Unicamp's Technology-Based Business Incubator (Incamp) .
Currently, with PIPE Phase 1 financing, Kalamazoo Natural Solutions is focused on developing processes to obtain versatile, refined hop-based products and ingredients (Humulus lupulus), using innovative and environmentally friendly technologies for application in the food and beverage industry.
The transition from an academic career to entrepreneurship, with the need to transform the research plan into a business model, was challenging for the then doctoral students. Adjusting a scientist's vision to satisfy market demands is not always simple, but entrepreneurs believe that incubation at Incamp will add to the learning previously obtained in the PIPE Fapesp training.
With the opportunity to take advantage of Incamp's infrastructure and receive training and mentoring, entrepreneurs' expectations for incubation are high: “We believe that incubation at Incamp will help us take our first steps towards the market and diversify our network of contacts . We also hope to increase our knowledge in management, financial management, planning, marketing and business,” says Dias.
In addition to Kalamazoo Natural Solutions, companies FemtoPeta Technology, EAproachS, Reuse and Kionova. To learn about each of the new incubated companies and the entrepreneurs responsible for the startups, check out the articles that will be published weekly on the Unicamp Scientific and Technological Park website and follow the Inova Unicamp Innovation Agency on social media.
Check out the environments available in the Park.
Learn about the incubation process at Incamp.
Matter original published on the Unicamp Innovation Agency website.
