From Microbes to Materials—ZymoChem's Vision for a Plastic-Free FutureZymoChem's Vision for a Plastic-Free Future

Welcome to the SinBioBeta podcast, conversations with synthetic biology's leading thinkers and doers on building a better world with biology. I am your host, John Cummings, the founder and the CEO of SinBioBeta, where tech meets bio and bio meets tech. This week on the SinBioBeta podcast, I'm joined by Harshal Chokwala, the co-founder and CEO of Zymochem. Harshal's journey began in India, where growing up around small business owners inspired his passion for innovation and entrepreneurship. His early interest in organic chemistry led him through a PhD at UC Davis, followed by a groundbreaking postdoc at UC Berkeley and Lawrence Berkeley National Lab, where he recognized the transformative power of enzymes and microbes. Today, as co-founder and CEO of Zymochem, accompanied at the intersection of biology and chemistry, Harshal is pioneering sustainable biobase materials that offer compelling alternatives to traditional plastics, driving industries towards a cleaner and greener future. In today's episode, Harshal and I are going to be discussing how Zymochem is using their platform of microbial production to take carbon feed stocks into some really interesting polymers such as biobase nylon and super absorbent polymers that go inside of diapers. We're also going to be talking about their partnership with Lululemon. Coming up soon, Harshal, welcome to the SinBioBeta podcast. John, it's a pleasure to be here and excited to chat today. I'm excited to chat too. I can't believe, I believe we've known each other for 10 years or more, and it's the first time that you're coming on the podcast. So it's an honor to have you here, and it's an honor to be speaking with one of the pioneers in the biobase chemicals and materials, SinBioSector, because they're few and far between. No, absolutely. Well, it's a pleasure to be here. I feel like it's an honor badge after 10 years to be here, right? No, and it's been a journey, and I'm very excited to share the lessons and the wins as well. So tell us, what does Zymochem do for people who aren't familiar with it? No, absolutely. So as you mentioned, we're really a biotech company that's focused on creating processes that are more sustainable that lead to production of chemicals and very specifically materials that go into everyday goods. And the aim here is to really use all the advances and breakthroughs that we have in biomanufacturing to enable a real zero economy, specifically by powered through making biobase materials for everyday goods. And so think about fermentation-based manufacturing of chemicals that go into materials and look at solving some of the world's most pressing problems around sustainability, end of life sort of thing, manufacturing, et cetera, through this. Last month, you announced a big partnership with Lululemon. Tell me what was that about, and what are the materials that you're producing for Lululemon? Absolutely. Yeah. So one of the products that Lululemon uses quite extensively is nylon 6-6, which is used in making fibers that go into textiles. They're present in some of their more iconic leggings products. Nylon 6-6 is made of two parts, adipic acid and HMDA hexamethylene diamine. Our partnership with Lululemon and the collaboration that was announced last week or last month now is really focused on making biobase adipic acid as part of the product portfolio in Nylon 6-6 and in the Lululemon universe. And the partnership is really focused on that. I want to dig deep a little bit into the chemistry of this, because we have a lot of listeners on the podcast who aren't chemists. So what does the 6-6 refer to? It refers to where the carbons are connected on the adipic acid, is that right? It's the chain length of the adipic acid, which is 6 carbons and HMDA, which is 6 carbons. So that's what 6-6 refers to. And it's a diacid and a diamine that get combined. So it's a 6 carbon diacid, which is adipic acid and a 6 carbon diamine. And that's why it's called Nylon 6-6. And if I'm the head of product at Lululemon, why am I choosing Nylon 6-6 to put in my yoga pants instead of another kind of Nylon? What's the difference between the Nylons that are out there? How many Nylons are out there? Lots of Nylons out there. It's really a performance-driven play over here. Nylon 6-6 gives you a type of a performance that other fibers typically aren't able to get to. And so Nylon 6-6 in general is an engineering polymer. It's a high-performance engineering polymer. And it's really selected where performance is an important criteria that is driving the use and adoption. So at a 30,000-foot view, that's the reason why people use Nylon 6-6 is because of the performance it gives in the end applications. Got it. And right now, what is the market size for 6-6? And presumably 100% of it is coming from petrochemicals. Is that right? Oh, absolutely. All of it is currently made from fossil-based inputs. And adipic acid specifically is about close to $8-10 billion a year, which is the first half of Nylon 6-6, and HMD is also the rough magnitude in the same order of $8-10 billion a year. And so Nylon in general, 6-6 specifically, we're talking $15-20 billion in market cap on what is being used today for different applications. That's fantastic. And we're going to talk about some of your other polymers that you're making as well and this platform that you've built and the technology behind it. But I just want to dig a little bit deeper on this Nylon 6-6 market because together those two markets, that's almost $20 billion. So you're picking a nice big, juicy market. Tell us about the scale of the company. How much money have you raised? How many people are you? I know you're based here in the East Bay in San Francisco. You have your lab there. Give us a little bit of background of the company. And then I want to talk about how you're going to make a dent in this market in a biobased way. Yeah. So we've raised, so we closed a $21 million series of financing that we announced last year in January. Congratulations. Yeah, absolutely. A tough time to be raising money. So it's a double congratulations. Absolutely. I feel like I was prepared for the worst going in and I think we came out quite well on the other side with some really anchor partners as part of the round. So really happy about the quality of the investors that we got and what they bring to the table. And just throw out a couple of those, throw out a couple of those investors that were in your round. Yeah. So Lululemon was an investor in the round, Toyota Ventures, which is the venture fund of the Toyota Group looking at decarbonization was an investor in that round as well. And then obviously Breakout Ventures and KDT led the round for Simon Kim, key market investors in this space that I'm sure a lot of our audiences know what here. That's great. And for those listening coming to SinBioBeta coming up the conference, you're going to be able to meet KDT, you're going to be able to meet Breakout Labs and Lululemon as well. So it's definitely a good forum. There's a lot of people excited about biobase chemicals and materials right now. Absolutely. Yeah. So we're very excited that we got on that journey last year. And currently we're around 50 people at Simon Kim. So we're based out of the East Bay in San Leandro. Excellent. Well, my wife and daughter are both big fans of Lululemon. So I hope that they can be wearing biobased nylon 6.6. When do you think that might be? What does the scale up path look like and what are your biggest challenges over the next few years to get there? Yeah, absolutely. So we're trying to get this to the market as soon as we can. Obviously, I think I've shared with you this before, but we've been wanting to be in the nylon 6.6 space for almost a decade. And finally, being able to work on it with the world's leading brand's weight behind our success is a really big thing for us at Simon Kim. And so we're working very aggressively, John, to get products into the market technology up at scale. You know, can't really say on a definitive timeline basis at this point. It's a bit early to comment on that for our collaboration. But certainly, as you can imagine, this has been a dream for us for over a decade now and very excited to be able to talk about it and hopefully share products as well soon. That's great. And then thinking about the 10,000 foot view of your technology platform, you have a proprietary microbe that you developed in the lab. It's spun out of UC Berkeley. This proprietary microbe takes in all matter of feedstocks. It could take in glucose, it could take in cornstover, it could take in many different kinds of feedstocks for fermentation. And then it is spitting out adipic acid, which is one of the key ingredients for nylon 6.6 via, you know, scaled up fermentation process that you're getting done. Is that right? Is there anything in terms of the core functionality of your tech or your microbe? No, that's correct. I mean, any carbon-based feedstock is applicable over here, you know, sugar from industrial then corn, from lignocellulosic sources, glycerol is another feedstock that we're also interested in and can our feedover platform can accept. So it's quite agnostic with regards to the input. Great. There's something very special about your microbe that allows you to reuse all of the carbon in it. And that's why you're able to make this bio nylon cost competitive with the Petro version. So tell me more about how this microbe uses this efficient pathway for recycling carbon. And this is, you told me earlier, this is a novel pathway inside the microbe that you've engineered in it to recycle or maximize the use of all of the carbon flowing through the microbe into the nylon. Is that right? Yeah, absolutely. So the platform that we created, we call this carbon conservation platform. And as the name suggests, the microbe and in the underlying chemisties that we do inside the microbe are really optimized to ensure that any carbon that you put in ends up in your product and doesn't get wasted. And so one of the things, one of the reasons why we started Xymochemin and was really around us realizing that the existing biobase approaches were losing a lot of carbon in the form of CO2. And given my background as an organic chemist, when I look at biology and how is it structured, most of the naturally occurring pathways that's used for production of secondary metabolites, amino acids, et cetera, they lose a lot of carbon in the form of CO2, at least a third of the carbon goes there. And when you look at it from a chemistry perspective, you know, typically you look at like, hey, 99, 99.9% yields starting from your raw materials to your product. And when you look at biology with this inherent limitation of being capped at 67% model yields, because a third of that carbon is lost to CO2, that was an inherent limitation of biology. So in 2015, we kind of sat down and thought about like, hey, how could we design chemistries inside the cell such that all the carbon actually ends up in the product and minimize the loss of carbon in the form of CO2. And this is particularly important during the production phase of the microorganism. Typically the CO2 loss is required for energy generation and growth, et cetera, and sustenance of the cell, but not really that much is needed when you're looking at manufacturing. And so we devised kind of going back to undergrad organic chemistry and here's my product, here's my study material, what sort of reactions can we construct that maximize the carbon efficiency from point B to point B. And so we came up with a number of different designs. All of these were non-natural, and when I mean non-natural, meaning none of these reactions were natural, they were not, you know, they were not naturally present in the cell. And so we came up with this reaction route, and then over the years we basically found enzymes, engineered enzymes, assembled all of this and demonstrated that we can do this much more carbon efficiently. Now the reason why this is so important is because if you can get more carbon into your product, you know, with any technology, your cost of production goes substantially lower. You know, typically 70%, 80% of your cost of production is really driven by the cost of your raw materials, especially for materials that you're talking about that are, you know, sold for five bucks a kilo, you know, or less, right, which is where nylons or adipic acid generally is. And so that's a very big driver of economics, and when you are so much more efficient on the largest cost input, it has implications on the ability to be competitive with oil-based manufacturing at different levels. And once you are at that stage of like, hey, you can compete with oil-based manufacturing on a cost basis, and then you're bringing a substantially differently derived product that can be manufactured locally, domestically, and on top of that, bring in sustainability. It creates a value proposition for a lot of different folks to adopt this technology and commercialize it. And so that's been something that has been a major force in our carbon conservation platform with regards to the different products that we're making, because they were really leading in with an economics first story, following it up with performance, scale, and sustainability. Fantastic. And we're going to come to a second product that you're making shortly. But before we do, you said there's adipic acid, and then what was the other molecule that makes up the nylon 6-6? HMD, wow, one-sixth hexamethylene diamine. HMD, and are you making HMD by fermentation as well? No, we're quite excessively focused right now on adipic acid, although HMD can be a product for us, our focus currently is adipic acid. And one thing, John, I would love to add is adipic acid, the use is so widespread, right? There's an application in nylons, which then gets segregated into textiles, right, and fibers that go into textile applications. And then there's a commercial application, as we have discussed with textiles, like leggings with Lululemon, as an example. But then there's also a military application. So think about sort of parachute systems, tactical gear, like anything that requires that high-performance durability, strength in military applications, right? So there is a very diverse pool of applications of this material, both in the textile world, in the defense world, and in the automotive world, like anything inside your car in the hood, that is a plastic that's most likely going to be a nylon 6.6 material that's been used over the years to replace heavy steel parts with something that's lightweight, but still delivers the performance that you need. And so there's a lot of end markets here that are really wanting this product, you know, for different reasons. I'm speaking with Harsho Chokwala, the co-founder and the CEO of Zyma Chem, and we're going to be taking this short break for this message, and we will be right back. Welcome back. This is John Cumbus, the CEO and the founder of SinBioBeta, and today I'm talking with Harsho Chokwala, the co-founder and the CEO of Zyma Chem. We just talked about the partnership with Lululemon and your fundraise for scaling that. And now I want to talk about a second product or a second polymer that you're making, which is the one that goes into diapers. And first of all, let's talk about diapers, because if you're a parent, you very rapidly have your trash filled up with diapers. And then also, unfortunately, if you're caring for elderly people, you also probably have the same situation. So describe the size and scale of this biobase polymer problem in diapers. Yeah, absolutely. And so just to give you a little back story, I'm a parent of twins, a boy and a girl. And my wife was pregnant about seven years ago now. And as we were building Zyma Chem again, that point in time, we were focusing more on the material sector. As every good scientist does, once your wife is pregnant, you start reading about the unborn baby and how they're doing, et cetera. And one of the things that I read that blew my mind was that microplastics would basically go in and out of the human placenta. And you need special skills to design drugs to do that, but microplastics just went in and out of this. And so recognizing what the mission we were on is to using science to design more sustainable products and processes, we thought, OK, is this something that we can also add to our portfolio of products is to create biobase and biodegradable plastics that would perform as they are intended to, but then disappear after the intended use. And with this information and the fact that we're having twins and realizing firsthand and no pun intended here, the shitty problem that you have with diapers, like I was putting our pales and pales of diapers out with two kids in our household, and this was becoming a huge problem that I was facing. And then as we started to look into this, the global hygiene industry is $145 billion, which is a massive market, one that is kind of ripe for disruption from a venture capital perspective. And then if you look at the sustainability footprint, it's just insane. And so after food and paper, the third largest item in landfill in the US is diapers, right? 300,000 diapers a minute are either incinerated or landfill all over the world, which is, to me, is like little insanity. And then the other piece that kind of really struck me is, as a world, we have done a really good job of putting single-use plastic and regulations all over the globe to get that out of the system. It's been happening over the last decade or so. But you know what you can use more than once is a plastic spoon or a plastic bag, which is now qualified as a single-use plastic. What you can't use more than once is a diaper or a feminine hygiene pad or an adult diaper or light-black or leakage, which are mostly plastics. And so to me, the diaper is this quintessential single-use plastic. And nobody's been trying to, or I shouldn't say nobody, a lot of people have been trying to create a more sustainable version of the diaper and that everybody getting stuck in the whole hygiene industry was around this super-absorbent polymer, which is the polymer that goes in these articles that absorbs the pee and the water, and it's real the performance driver over here. And so when we started six years ago, you could basically design a diaper to be fully biobased and natural materials in it, except for this sort of polyacrylate, which is the super-absorbent polymer in the diaper that doesn't degrade, sticks around for a long period of time and is a major headache. And so when we looked at the opportunity, it was too good to be true, it's like, hey, if you could design a biobased, biodegradable super-absorbent polymer, this could be sort of the last missing piece of a masterpiece that allows the hygiene industry to be really reinvented around sustainability without compromising performance, scale, or cost. And that's the journey that we set on six years ago, is to create this polymer. And since then, we have come a long way in terms of proving of its performance, its scale, its sustainability, creating a whole consortium of partners to bring this commercialization. I love it. So, and for those, you know, for those geek dads out there, you've probably played around with the diapers and put in water on it, taken it apart, seeing what it's made of, seeing how it works. And so it did when I had kids. And so it's got this kind of lining of this polymer, and then when that polymer gets wet, it just balloons up, you know, double, I don't know how large it gets in size, and it absorbs all the water and makes the thing, you know, big and heavy. So it's that molecule that you've got a biobased route to production of. Is that right? Yeah. And biodegradable. So it's invented a new polymer. So it's not just the sourcing piece and the carbon footprint piece, it's also biodegradable. So when it goes into the landfill, it's still going to go into the landfill, correct? It depends on where you are on earth, you know, it's either burned or landfill, right? So depending on the country you are in, it's one way or the other. Okay, got it. And in the U.S., it's mostly into the landfill. Is that right? Mostly into the landfill. Yeah. Okay, got it. So that's where the planned life end is going to be in the landfill, even for your biobased product. There's no plan for recycling or being able to put it into the green trash can, is that? So from our perspective, I think with our polymer, regardless of how the diaper gets handled at the end of life, whether you burn it, whether you compost it, whether you landfill it, there's a value and across all of these sort of, you know, post use verticals or whether you want to recycle it as well. Okay, got it. And so give us a status update to this diaper polymer then. Where is it at in terms of your product pipeline and have you announced any partners for that one? Yeah, so we do have multiple partners, but we haven't officially announced any of them. But you know, earlier this year, we did announce and, you know, as an industrial biotech company, you know, this is probably one of the biggest milestones that you've been dreaming of since the day you start working. It's really going from, you know, kilogram level to tons level and scaling it to a commercial level, right? You've heard so many stories of folks getting stuck in this transition and kind of being in this loop of not being able to scale or get to the point and it's just too expensive, etc. And so earlier this year, we scaled the first part of our SAP manufacturing process, which is making our polymer via fermentation and then purifying it, etc., to 45,000 liters with our CMO. And the most exciting piece of this is not only did we scale it, the whole process, fermentation, purification, but we were also able to demonstrate equal or better performance than what we were getting at, you know, 250 mil scale. And so, you know, this is a, this is a scale-up journey that is about 200,000 fold increase without compromising performance. And so really proud of the team at Zymalk and that we've been able to do this quite fast and with a very small team as well and in a way that is, you know, commercially relevant. So and is it the same story as the adipic acid in terms of the carbon efficiency? Is that what makes it cost competitive with the petrochemical version? Absolutely. So all our processes, underlying process is a design to be carbon efficient and inherently scalable. And so that's the sort of the fundamental DNA of the design of our microbe in a process. Great. So we've talked about the two products. Tell me about the technology platform. It's called BAISE, what does BAISE stand for and why is it a platform that you're building and not just a couple of products? Yeah, so BAISE is our trademark name over here and it's really refers to, as you can see, BAISE means it's a foundation. And so we think what we have created is essentially sets a new foundation for the hygiene industry and the non hygiene industry to be rebuilt from a sustainability perspective. So that's sort of the meaning, the underlying connotation of why we're calling this base. The other portion of this is kind of a homage to where we were born, which is the Bay Area, which is why we have the BAY as the spelling on that. And the Y, which is a bivoum on the play to us is also kind of a fork in the road as you think about the Y, right? You can keep doing business as you have been or you take on a new path and create a new foundation and create a new industry out of this foundational material, out of this foundational platform. And so we're very proud of the branding that has been done over here and really excited to bring BAISE to consumers and our partners at large scale very soon. That's great. Let's talk about the future then. About other molecules you're thinking about in the pipeline, what are the other big problems out there that you see similar to the nylon problem and the super absorbent polymer in the diapers problem? What else are you excited about in the future? Yeah. So John, I'll be honest, our hands are quite full with what we have on the plate. We have one more molecule that we have partnered with a very large company, which we can unfortunately talk about, but it's also in the space of sustainable plastics and sustainable materials. And the underlying theme that we see repeatedly is one where if you're able to compete on cost and demonstrate scalability, I think that is a huge value driver to be commercially relevant and win customers and partners who are invested in your long term success, right? And so that's a repeated theme that we've seen at Zymochem as to how you could break into either existing products through a replacement, right, but create additional value or come in with the existing market like the super absorbent polymers, bringing all functionality that allows brands, consumers and others along the value chain to really craft a different narrative around adoption, right? When you think about the need for scale up and the future, there's been a lot of discussion in the U.S. about pilot scale facilities, scale up facilities, the need for capital, risk capital, the scale up, and there's been a lot of policy, particularly the executive order that was just rescinded by the Trump administration on biomanufacturing. Let us understand what does the environment look like for a startup like yours that's looking to scale the production of this? Are you looking, you know, where are you looking to do that? And what are the right incentive mechanisms that are going to enable a biobased economy to thrive here in the U.S. and globally? And then what are your thoughts on the policy landscape and the future of how that looks? Wow, how much time do we got? So one of the great things about the Vivium Structured, the company the Vivium built, it is, inherently, we're not really relying on government subsidies, tax rates, et cetera to be competitive in the marketplace. We've always picked technology and products with that lens in mind, but again, it's a very nascent industry and any incentives through the government or otherwise that can help domestic biomanufacturing grow are going to be a huge win for the industry. And so whether this is loan guarantees, and there have been several programs on the blog on that one, whether it is through manufacturing or infrastructure grants, whether it's through institutes like Biomade, like anything that we can do to show up domestic biomanufacturing is going to be a huge plus, right? And particularly the U.S. is such a well-placed position because we have the talent, we have the technology, we have the sugar infrastructure at a very large scale at the right locations. We have more green electricity now coming in than ever before. We have a trained workforce to a large degree, given that a lot of fermentation based manufacturing has been happening in the U.S. Midwest. And so really there's a big opportunity when you culminate all of this together, along with the investment and the risk-taking capacity from Silicon Valley, right? It creates a really perfect storm for us to be leaders, to leverage the natural resources that we have, to create a domestic supply chain and create manufacturing jobs in the U.S. all in a way that is competitive in a global landscape. And so I'm a true believer that there's a massive opportunity for the United States to lead this revolution as we go forward, right? And there's a lot of facilities, too. I mean, I think the advantage is that there is infrastructure available at different scales that are different challenges for different products, so you kind of have to navigate that because one facility doesn't really fit all purposes. And so there are some challenges around how do you get to commercial scale in the U.S.? But if I zoom out, you know, for all the countries that are around the planet, we're very well advantaged of catalyzing this industrial revolution. If we think about the last 13 years of your company, I'm curious which bits have been easy and you've loved and which bits have been really hard and you've really not enjoyed? And yeah, this is a, so as I've evolved from a founder with three people right together, starting with an idea on paper to now 50 people with, you know, commercial scale product, you know, as I reflect on this journey, I think there's been always roles in this transition, in this period over the last 13 years that I've liked and that I've disliked and they keep changing and a part of the fun in this journey is that it keeps changing and it keeps challenging you to think about what's the most critical thing for the business and how do you solve for it? And their answers are always going to be different as you go through the different stages of growth, of growing the company in terms of operations, hiding people, talent, in terms of expanding who the investors within the company are and what stage you are at from that perspective, thinking about partners as well and how do you expand on that? And so it's really been a journey of what needs to get solved for, where the value needs to be created, keeps changing as the business grows and even at a product level, that challenge keeps changing and that's the fun portion for me is, you know, you're kind of skating at the edge and you get to do things in many instances for the first time and you get to learn from it. There've been aspects of the role that I haven't been happy about or not, you know, not looking forward to, you know, accounting, finance, etc., in the early days was all us and that's not something that I really enjoyed doing, but that was a key part of the business and you have to take that in your own stride. More recently, I'm so excited to have an executive team, a leadership team at ZymoCamp, who's just phenomenal and I'm so glad that I'm surrounded by people who are far more, you know, expert at things, you know, at many different core competencies than I am. And one of my true joys right now at ZymoCamp is kind of learning from this phenomenal set of people, you know, that are leading different divisions and aspects of ZymoCamp. And so that's really exciting for me personally, you know, is to learn. Give us a few examples of the senior leadership that you've brought in. What are they doing and where have they come from? Yeah, absolutely. So you might have heard of Tim Dummer, he's been a veteran in the industry, he's been close to two decades at GE, Plastics, DuPont, et cetera, looking at fossil-based materials and their commercialization, and then spend a number of years at ZoloZine, looking at biobased technologies and commercializing that, and then also at Genovia before starting ZymoCamp. So I've really enjoyed working with Tim. He brings in an expertise from both sides of the world, having seen commercialization of fossil-based and biobased processes, and just the phenomenal mind on business development and identifying risk two years later and structuring collaborations, partnerships, and the narrative to address those key risks. So that's something that I've enjoyed over the past five, six years working with him. Another leader is Joe Gellanella. He is the head of marketing and the general manager of our Consumer Products division. He comes formerly from Unilever and Heinz, a very different DNA to the company, but we have really enjoyed and fed off on the sustainability-leading mission that he brings to the company as well, just from a very different lens. And having an internal customer for your products is a great position to have as well. So we've been very thoughtful and great experience for me to have them as a leadership too. And then on the technical side, we have Ritu Bansal Mutalik, who is formerly in leadership roles at Bolt Threads and MyCoWorks as well, and really bringing in the materials perspective on sort of like, hey, what does it take to craft a new material, scale a new material, and get it commercialized, right? So having folks who've been through this journey, and more importantly understanding what is either the imminent payment or the coming pain point and adjusting the strategy to be successful lab that has been something that I've truly enjoyed these leaders execute on and learned from. That's wonderful. It sounds like you've really built a great team and you don't need to do the finances yourself anymore. I'm sure every CEO who's listening to this appreciates this to a certain extent. I want to end on one topic, which was my recent trip to India. It's my third time to India, and I was really impressed with seeing the scale of the buy manufacturing infrastructure that's going in there. We see companies like Zenfold that are building scale manufacturing plants. We visited StringBio that is using natural gas and producing nutrients and food additives. And I was really impressed with the entrepreneurs that I met. As I meet and understand more Indian entrepreneurs, I see a common theme, which is financial stewardship is really strong, the frugality and treating the investor's money as your own. I think I see a trait there. Kind of a calm, collected, methodical, slow and steady wins the race, very different from the Silicon Valley mentality. And then I also see just the huge growth potential of the country and where it's going. I'm curious, you told me earlier that you grew up in Gujarat in a town that's known for manufacturing. I'm curious if you can reflect a little bit on your upbringing, where you grew up and how that influenced where you go and what you did. And then also tell me a little bit about what you see as the future for buy manufacturing and the role that India could play in that. Absolutely. Just FYI, you summarized it very well, John, so very well put. So I was born in a family, which my father, my first cousin, second cousin, his grandfather, we were all in business. And so I grew up in a culture where manufacturing was a key component of my everyday life. And so we were one of the first importers of rayon in India, we went into textile manufacturing, we went into copper wire manufacturing, et cetera. And so from a very small age, the ownership mentality was ingrained in me. And unfortunately for my father, I decided I really wanted to study. I fell in love with chemistry and just couldn't let go of it. And so I moved to the States to do my PhD, because that's sort of I was really passionate about it. And I had the privilege to be able to do that, and not a lot of people get to do what they really want to do. And so I'm really thankful for that. But as I finished my PhD and my postdoc with UC Berkeley, I think this inherent nature of ownership and looking at the lens from an entrepreneurship perspective, married with the sort of the technical insights that you gain through the trainings and the exposure that you have had kind of came together where some things about the bio-based technologies that were being commercialized in the 2013 era just did not make sense to me. And that's why we started Xymochem, it was really around, we just had a different technical vision and from a business perspective, also I thought like, OK, this is not what I would do if I were running things. And that just led to the foundational start of Xymochem. And so yeah, I mean, that's sort of made a full circle there, going back to the roots of my family. Coming back to sort of your observations around India, I think it's absolutely true. I think it's a very entrepreneurial, driven economy. And specifically, biomanufacturing is growing quite rapidly. India is one of the world's largest sugar manufacturers, right? And so that works very well for India as well to be a bio-manufacturing carhouse. Obviously labor is quite abundantly available. This is quite low compared to, you know, if you were to manufacture their things in the US, and that works in that advantage too. We've seen a lot of FLL processes in India, but up till now no advanced sort of manufacturing from a materials perspective has been popped up in India. There have been some enzyme businesses, et cetera, you know, historically. Recently, Malrapul Sheen Emils, which is a big sugar house in India, announced 75,000 ton facility to manufacture PLA in India. And that to me is a signal that this is a world-class polymer, a world-class manufacturing capability being now built in India. It means like the system, the infrastructure, the incentives, the consumer is ready for something like this. And so I'm really excited as how all of this comes together from my native country as well. And that's biobased PLA? Yes, biobased PLA. Would you know anything about the details of that, how they're producing it or which organism or where the organism is coming from? So I believe this is the same technology and technology package that a lot of folks in the industry have been using for commercializing lactic acid and PLA. I think we have a bunch of plants in the US, in Thailand. So I don't know specifically which organism, et cetera, but I do believe that this is a commercial-ready technology that's being inlicensed and commercialized. I think we're both in agreement on the tremendous opportunity in India for biomanufacturing, but I think you've also laid out the great infrastructure that there is here in the US for biomanufacturing as well. So I think in terms of the long view of where we're going in a biobased economy and bringing about the century of biology, there's definitely plenty to go around. And as McKinsey says, 60% of global inputs could be made with biology. It's a real honor to be able to chat with you about ZymaChem and the dent that you're making both in bio nylon and in these superabsorbent polymers. So I really want to thank you for taking the time to share your insights with me. It's a real pleasure chatting with you. Thank you, John, the pleasure is mine. And I want to thank Harshal Chokwala for joining us today and thank you, our listeners, for tuning in. We always appreciate your feedback. We'd love to hear what you love about the speakers and the topics that you're interested in. You will be able to hear Harshal speaking at this year's SIN Biometer, which is coming up in May at the San Jose Convention Center. If you enjoyed the podcast, please leave a review and more importantly, share it with your network. This is John Cumber's signing off and hoping that all of your DNA dreams come true. Hey there, SIN Bio lovers. Before we wrap up, here's your chance to connect with the future of biotech. Join us May 6th through 8th in San Jose, California for SIN Bio Beta 2025, the premier conference for synthetic biology innovations. Network with industry leaders, discover cutting edge breakthroughs and help shape what's next for biotechnology. Secure your spot now at SINBioBeta.com, we'll see you there.