How Loopworm Is Turning Insects Into Protein for Feed and Pharma — India’s Biomanufacturing Startup Projecting 4x Revenue Growth

Loopworm occupies a small but strategically important intersection in Indian biotech: it is simultaneously a sustainable animal nutrition company and a biomanufacturing platform play — two businesses that happen to share the same raw material, the same 6,000-tonne processing facility in Bengaluru, and the same founding team of IIT Roorkee graduates who bet, in 2019, that insects were a grossly underexploited biological resource.

The animal nutrition side — insect-derived protein meal and oil sold to aquaculture, poultry, and pet food manufacturers across Europe, South America, and ASEAN — has reached commercial scale and is generating the revenue base that funds everything else. The pharma side — Loopworm’s LoopBac Protein Expression System, which uses gene-edited silkworms as living bioreactors to produce recombinant proteins at a fraction of conventional bioreactor costs — is the strategic bet that, if it commercialises, transforms Loopworm from a sustainable feed company into one of India’s more unusual deep biotech plays.

The revenue trajectory: Rs 4.5 Cr in FY25. A projection of Rs 15–18 Cr in FY26 — a 233–300% increase, led largely by export demand in animal nutrition. A Series A funding round opened in September 2025 to commercialise the recombinant protein platform at scale.

The Two Insects — Silkworms and Black Soldier Flies

Loopworm has built its entire platform around two insect species, chosen for complementary biological reasons:

The sericulture connection: India already has one of the world’s largest silkworm cultivation ecosystems — historically for silk production. Loopworm is repurposing this infrastructure: instead of extracting silk thread from silkworm cocoons and discarding the protein-rich pupae (as the traditional industry does), Loopworm processes those pupae into high-value nutrition and, via the LoopBac platform, recombinant proteins. It is an upcycling play inside an existing agricultural value chain

The Three Core Products

LoopBac — The Pharma Bet That Changes Everything

Recombinant proteins — proteins made by engineering a host organism to produce a specific protein of medical or industrial importance — are the foundation of modern biologics. They include diagnostic antigens (used in test kits), therapeutic proteins (used in drugs), growth factors (used in cell culture and regenerative medicine), and industrial enzymes. Globally, recombinant proteins are a market worth hundreds of billions of dollars.

The problem: Traditional recombinant protein production requires inserting a gene into yeast, bacteria, or mammalian cell lines, then growing them in stainless steel bioreactors — expensive capital equipment that costs $10–100 Mn+ per facility, requires continuous energy input, skilled operators, and stringent sterile manufacturing conditions. For each new protein target, the process must be re-optimised. This makes recombinant protein manufacturing one of the most capital-intensive and time-consuming processes in biotech.

Loopworm’s answer — LoopBac: Instead of a bioreactor, use a living silkworm pupa. Loopworm engineers silkworm pupae to express the target protein within their bodies using a proprietary gene expression system. The silkworm does the fermenting work — no bioreactor required, no sterile facility required, far lower capital cost, and a production system that scales by simply rearing more silkworms rather than building more fermentation tanks.

Revenue and Financial Trajectory

Why exports are the growth driver: India’s domestic animal feed market still under-indexes on insect protein relative to developed markets — awareness, price sensitivity, and regulatory familiarity are all lower. Europe and ASEAN are ahead on sustainability mandates, regulatory clarity (EU allows insect protein in poultry and aquaculture feed), and willingness to pay premium prices for traceable, certified ingredients. Loopworm’s ISO 22000 / GMP+ / HACCP / EU Traces certification stack was specifically assembled to unlock the European supply chain — and it is working.

Funding — The Full Stack

Total raised: $6.65 Mn — a lean capital base for a company that has built a certified 6,000-tonne/year processing facility, launched commercial exports to three continents, and developed a novel recombinant protein platform. The capital efficiency is partly explained by India’s lower manufacturing costs and partly by Loopworm’s use of grant funding (Tata Trust, Gates Foundation paid pilots) to de-risk early R&D.

The Enrission India Capital (Japan) angle: Japan is one of the world’s most advanced markets for insect protein in animal feed — the Japanese government has invested heavily in the sector as part of food security strategy. Enrission’s participation signals that Loopworm’s products are being evaluated for the Japanese aquaculture market, potentially the highest-value distribution channel the company could access outside Europe.

Certifications — Why They Matter More Than Revenue

Market Context — Why Insect Protein Is a Real Opportunity

The Founders — IIT Roorkee to Insect Biotech

Ankit Alok Bagaria (Co-founder and CEO) and Abhi Gawri (Co-founder) are both IIT Roorkee graduates who founded Loopworm in 2019. Their thesis was straightforward: insects are the most efficient converters of organic matter into high-quality protein on earth, yet the global feed and pharma industries were almost entirely ignoring them.

Bagaria on the core vision: “Recombinant protein manufacturing has long been constrained by expensive infrastructure and slow scalability. Our reactor-free approach using silkworms changes the economics entirely.”

Gawri on the platform: “As biotech evolves, the demand for manufacturing platforms that combine speed, cost-efficiency, and scalability continues to grow. Our silkworm-based platform is uniquely positioned to meet these needs with unmatched flexibility and affordability.”

Five years on, Loopworm has grown from 5 people to 50, built one of India’s only GMP+/EU Traces certified insect processing facilities, and made technical breakthroughs — expressing complex proteins including antigens and growth factors in silkworm pupae — that justify the pharma platform ambition.

What’s Next

• Series A close: The Series A (announced September 2025) will be the most significant signal about how institutional investors value the LoopBac platform relative to the animal nutrition business. A large Series A (Rs 50+ Cr) would validate the pharma angle; a smaller one signals a feed-first story
• LoopBac diagnostics and vaccines: Loopworm’s first commercial LoopBac targets — diagnostic antigens and animal vaccines — are chosen for lower regulatory barriers. First commercial contracts in this category would prove the unit economics of the silkworm biofactory model
• Japan market entry via Enrission: Japan’s advanced aquaculture and pet food markets are high-value targets for LoopMeal and LoopOil — the Enrission relationship creates a direct distribution channel into a market that most Indian agritech companies cannot access
• India aquaculture scale-up: The CAA approval positions Loopworm to serve the Indian aquaculture market domestically — India’s shrimp and fish farming sector is one of the world’s largest
• FY26 Rs 15–18 Cr: Achieving the upper end of this projection requires sustained export order flow through Q3 and Q4 of FY26 — the key metric to watch in quarterly operational updates

What do you think? Can India become a global leader in insect protein biomanufacturing the way it became a global leader in generics pharmaceuticals? Tell us on X @StartupFeednews