Loopworm first started in 2019 as a way to process organic waste using insects. Three years later, the founders realised there was a deeper potential that insects held—they were a bio-resource with high-quality protein, fats and antibiotics that could be put to multiple uses. In an interview, Ankit Alok Bagaria, Co-Founder at Loopworm, tells us about the potential he sees.
Edited excerpts…
How did you come to realise the commercial value of insects?
My co-founder (Abhi Gawri) and I graduated from IIT Roorkee in 2019. During our days in college, we were already working on different waste management projects—upcycling waste from flowers, paper and plastic. Realising that insects could be a major solution to a waste-to-value process because they are nature's scavengers, we decided to start Loopworm, during our final semester.
However, while insects consume food waste and organic rejects, their bodies are made up of 30-70% of proteins, 20-50% of fats, and a bunch of other useful biomolecules. So by 2022, we shifted our focus from using insects to process waste to using them to create sustainable products.
We also realised that if we could produce products from insects, automatically the backend value chain would get established where more insects would get utilised to consume waste, and other types of insects could also come to the forefront.
What have been some newly uncovered applications of insects?
We’re seeing various applications of insects. Insects are being used as bio-pesticides to consume other insects, silk derived from silkworms is a 5,000-year-old industry in India. Cochineal insects are used to create a USDA-approved red food colour, beeswax and honey are popular products derived from honeybees, and earthworms are used for vermicomposting. So if you look at the horizon of what insects can produce, it's very large.
Turning insects into animal feed is one aspect which has been the easiest to commercialise. We already supply products to aqua-feed manufacturers and pet food manufacturers in India and abroad.
But many other products can be developed from insects. Like protein hydrolysates (broken-down proteins that allow faster absorption) as plant biostimulants. For example, spinach takes two months to grow but having protein hydrolysates sprayed on them can boost productivity by 20%. We also have products made from chitin, the shell of insects. It has applications in joint health for pets and is also a fungicide.
Another moonshot project we have is transforming a silkworm into a mini bioreactor. We have been able to produce high-quality precision proteins and biologicals inside silkworm bodies. These are proteins like insulin, growth hormones, antibodies, antigens and industrial enzymes that are required in lab reagents for research in biotechnology, pharmaceuticals and vaccines.
Are there benefits of insect proteins in terms of quality?
While using insects as feed is a fairly new industry, it has seen fast growth because of the hypoallergenic behaviour that insect proteins have. Many dogs and cats develop allergies towards conventional protein sources derived from plants and animals. Insects are naturally hypoallergenic. They are also sustainable to produce because they don’t need to over-consume any natural resources. They feed on plant biomass or organic byproducts.
Another example is omega-3 fatty acids—silkworm pupae oil has the same amount of omega-3 fatty acids as flaxseed oil. Animals naturally take to the meat-like, umami flavour that insect proteins give. Moreover, it is not just the core fatty acids which are important, micro-ingredients and micro-biomolecules are important too. Insect proteins contain a bit of selenium and vitamin E which are good for eye health. They also have a higher amount of essential amino acids compared to plants like lysine, methionine, arginine, threonine and taurine, which are essential for pets.
Protein digestibility is another important factor. Normally, plant proteins have lower digestibility in comparison to animal proteins for pets. And animal proteins would have bones processed along with the protein which creates a higher mineral, ash and heavy metal content. Insects, on the other hand, don't have any bones. So those anti-nutritional factors get eliminated.
Which are the insects currently used in Loopworm’s production?
If you want to create a high-quality insect product, you have to feed them high-quality stuff. So, we have mulberry silkworms that we use to produce all of our products currently. But we have the capability to use six other domesticated insects which are black soldier fly larvae, mealworms, superworms, roaches and crickets. Our company will be focused on silkworms for the next three to five years because India has a distinct advantage with silkworms.
The silkworm industry is concentrated in only two countries—China and India. And China leads by a large percentage. In India, we have over 100 institutes teaching sericulture research or silkworm farming, silkworm processing and silk research. So, we have an abundance of talent there. It is a 5,000-year-old domesticated insect. So, research data availability is much higher in comparison to the other newer insects which have been identified in the industry.
Tell us about the ethical implications of using insects in products. What is your perspective?
As an agrarian country, India has always looked at insects as pests. We use mosquito repellents, kill cockroaches and spray pesticides on crops. What about killing insects for the greater good? Moreover, insects are invertebrates. They don’t have a neural system and don’t experience pain.
If I were the regulatory body, I would label insect-derived products with a purple mark rather than a red mark—just the way that eggs are marked with yellow. Because it is not the same as consuming meat. And if you look at livestock, 33–36% of global farmlands are devoted to growing crops specifically for animal feed. The larger the animal, the more food it requires. Insects, on the other hand, feed on biowaste and have higher quality proteins and oils than plants, to feed animals. They essentially help us build a better, more sustainable world.