India’s Arboreal Bags $24M to Scale Yeast Proteins, Next-Gen Sweeteners & More

Indian food tech startup Arboreal Bioinnovations has secured ₹23 crore ($24.2M) in Series A funding to scale up functional ingredients like yeast and plant proteins, sugar replacers, and fibres.

To bring its functional ingredient solutions to an Indian market increasingly hungry for them, Lucknow-based Arboreal Bioinnovations has closed a major funding round.

The startup has raised ₹23 crore ($24.2M) in Series A financing led by EAAA Alternatives and Omnivore, with further participation from existing shareholder Rainmatter by Zerodha.

Arboreal makes a range of ingredients targeted towards the evolving nutritional, sensory and commercial needs of Indian consumers, spanning proteins from yeast and plants, a suite of sweeteners, cocoa, fibres, and marine collagen.

Through its Bioprot label, the company supplies yeast protein to popular Indian brands SuperYou, Cosmix and Yoga Bar. It will use the funds to expand its manufacturing capacity, boost its R&D activities, and accelerate the commercialisation of its next-generation ingredient portfolio.

“The shift towards clean-label and functional foods requires engineered ingredients that deliver clear health benefits without sacrificing taste or margins. Arboreal fills a critical market gap with locally developed formulations,” said Jinesh Shah, managing partner of Omnivore.

“From sweetener alternatives to novel yeast proteins and collagens, Arboreal’s R&D stack positions them to power the next wave of health and wellness brands,” he added.

Enabling big cross-category shifts via ‘ingredient-first innovation’

Founded in 2018 by CEO Swati Pandey and COO Manish Chauhan, Arboreal develops proprietary functional ingredients for food, beverage and neutraceutical brands, built on a tech platform that combines ingredient engineering, process research and development, formulation science, and precision manufacturing.

It operates across five distinct ingredient streams. These include its protein labels Bioprot and Evo – under the latter, it is developing superior plant-based protein isolates with neutral taste, smoother textures, and superior protein quality.

Pyure is its range of zero- and low-cal sweeteners, which includes monkfruit, stevia, erythritol, and more. Cococo is a line of cacao-based ingredients, tapping into different regions and better-controlled fermentation for an array of food, nutrition, confectionery and industrial applications.

Ori, meanwhile, is described as India’s first marine collagen peptide ingredient with a molecular weight of 1,000 Daltons. Arboreal is working on additional ingredients, too, such as OptiWhey (optimised whey protein solutions) and fibres for gut wellness, sugar reduction, healthy ageing, and functional nutrition.

The startup says its ingredients serve more than 1,100 consumer and nutraceutical manufacturers, and have powered over 300 product launches in the last 18 months. That includes SuperYou’s yeast protein powder, which is now on the menu of every Starbucks store in India.

“This fundraise is a strong validation of the direction we are taking as a company. It gives us the fuel to accelerate our mission of building clean, science-led solutions that address some of the world’s most pressing nutritional and food challenges, with innovation originating in India and reaching consumers globally,” Pandey said.

Chauhan called the Series A round a milestone in the company’s journey from “building IP-led ingredient technologies to enabling big shifts across categories through ingredient-first innovation”.

“It gives us the ability to invest more deeply in science, manufacturing, talent and long-term innovation, while building a platform capable of creating differentiated ingredients for some of the world’s most important food and nutraceutical brands,” he said.

Investors highlight potential of Arboreal’s yeast protein amid GLP-1-led boom

Arboreal’s funding comes amid a wave of sizeable rounds raised by next-gen and functional food brands in India. In June, TruNativ secured ₹290 crore ($30M) to expand the footprint of its supplements, proteins and sugar alternatives. That came months after Good Monk closed a ₹33 crore round ($3.6M) to scale its dietary supplements and plant-based proteins.

Elsewhere, Shark Tank alum Earthful raised $2.9M to support the expansion of its women’s health products (which include plant protein powders), and Cosmix Wellness, another Shark Tank success, agreed to sell a 60% stake to CPG giant Marico in a deal worth $25M.

Proteinmaxxing and functional nutrition are top of mind for India’s consumers. Polling shows that 37% of them want to add more plant proteins to their diets, and a larger share of consumers want to increase their intake of protein from plant-based sources than from animal sources.

It’s why EAAA’s private equity managing director, Ashish Agarwal, said the VC firm is “particularly excited at the long-term growth prospects of Arboreal’s next-generation yeast protein products”.

India ranks third among countries with the highest share of functional food purchases, with nearly 90% of its citizens doing so. A PwC survey in 2025 found that 38% of them consider high nutritional value one of the top three factors influencing their food purchases. And more than a fifth (21%) said superior health benefits could convince them to switch brands, more so than any other factor.

This shift is being driven by Gen Z, which accounts for 27% of the population and controls 35% of consumption spending. In the Ipsos survey, 82% of this cohort said it’s important to consume protein, and 91% are open to adopting plant-based foods.

It’s also a response to the burgeoning GLP-1 market in India, which has already skyrocketed from $16M in 2021 to nearly $100M today. Weight-loss drugs are entering India at much lower prices than in the West, and analysts expect more than 50 branded semaglutide medications to enter the country this year.