Washington D.C.-based non-profit Good Food Institute, the government of India’s state of Maharashtra, and the Institute of Chemical Technology located in Mumbai will set up a Center for Excellence in Cellular Agriculture.
Good Food Institute India is looking for funding of $8 million to set up a lab at the Institute of Chemical Technology by the end of 2019. Additionally, the partnership aims to build a greenfield facility for the research center in the next two years. By early 2020, it expects to offer taste tests of meat grown in the lab from samples of animal tissue.
Varun Deshpande, managing director of Good Food Institute India, which promotes both plant-based and cell-based meat, hopes the research center will spur Indian researchers, entrepreneurs, and funders — including traditional meat companies — to create products not only for the $3.5 billion Indian meat sector, but also the trillion dollar international market.
