Ankit from Loopworm - Protein from Food waste

People usually squirm or reach for pest control when they hear the word "insect."

However, insects are food for birds and chickens and it seems they are their favourite food, just as Mango  is for many of us.  Since animals are now commercially farmed, and have no access to natural food such as insects, they must eat man made feed. Consider exchanging Mango for some diet food. 

Loopworm’s Ankit Bhagria is trying to restore natural order by enabling insect-based feed for animals and saving land and forest that are used to produce conventional feeds.  Since insects love food waste (which is why cockroaches infest kitchens), Loopworm is also able to redirect food waste from landfills to feed it to insects.

Ankit founded Loopworm along with his classmate Abhi, right after his engineering at IIT Roorkee. Loopworm farms Black soldier Fly (BSF), which is then processed to make poultry and pig feed. It has recently raised its seed round to start commercial scale operations. Ankit and I had a very interesting conversation about

1.       How Ankit Started Loopworm

2.       Why is insect farming more environment friendly than Soya and other conventional feeds

3.       insect-based feed’s competitiveness vis a vis conventional feed

4.       Loop worms’ business model & its plan to scale up 

5.       Hacks for raising capital for a social start up