Shifting to Lab-Grown Meat

ShapeShifter will shift the current culture of Red Meat Consumption to Lab-Grown Meat Consumption which is an environmental friendly solution.

Lab-Grown Meat is made through Biopsy, in simple terms stem cells taken from the animal (For instance: Cow) is converted into meat in the laboratory. It certainly reduces the animal cruelty and also the amount of animal in our earth. As a result, the amount of methane released by animals reduces significantly. Other than that, the land usage is also reduced which leads to less deforestation. Furthermore, the meat industry uses nitrite to make the meat red which is carcinogenic for the consumers. I believe we all need to be cytovores (consumer of cells) and shift to Lab-Grown Meat one day or another as we only have one world unless Elon finds a way to mars. Even then it will certainly contribute to the healing of our environment.

Bangladesh is in the coastal region and if the environment condition worsens and it will if we continue to consume red meat in the amount we are doing, Bangladesh might not even exist in the map. The majority religion in our country is Islam and mostly they consume beef meat. As a result, we need to have a lot of cows. I am not saying we should eliminate the cows and make the cow farmers jobless, at the very least we will need cows for dairy products until we make that lab grown as well but we can certainly reduce the reliance on cow and Lab-Grown Meat comes into play in this case. If people are made aware through the right marketing strategies they will choose Lab-Grown Meat. The good thing about Lab-Grown Meat is that it is halal in Islam and most consumers in our country will be comfortable about it. (Halal Food means which is allowed to eat according to Islamic Religion). Finally, did you know that is take 1,847 Gallons of water to process 1 pound of beef? (Equivalent to 39 Bathtubs full to the brim) Yes, it does and people might say that we have 70% water what's the benefit of showing this statistic? What people don't know is we have 1% drinking water and at this rate it will finish in the blink of an eye and we can certainly imagine what we will be like without water, right?

I don't if it is right or wrong but we cannot deny a lot of people loves to eat. Even if they are an environmental lover they cannot but eat meat, then there is lot of people who turned into vegan just because of the environmental issues caused by the red meat consumption both type of consumers require a solution which gives them mental peace while consuming meat. I think that is the best way to describe the customer avatar of Lab-Grown Meat. Apart from that, we have to admit that our target customers will need to have the willingness to change. So, mostly young people are not laggards rather innovators and they will need to have deep pockets to have afford $5-$8 Per Kg of meat. I know there are startups focused in Lab-Grown Meat in Denmark, Singapore, Israel and in the US but I think it will require a lot of startups of this nature to shift the entire culture of red meat consumption to an environmental friendly solution. That is why even the founders of Lab-Grown meat startups said that they welcome competitions.

I am a sustainable development minor at The University of Liberal Arts Bangladesh and I know a lot of people who are concerned about the environment. Most of them cannot but consume meat even after knowing the environmental consequences because they no other viable alternatives which they can shift to. Lab-Grown meat of our company promises to deliver the same taste if not better. Though at first we are willing to import from Singapore for test trials but eventually we will have our own machineries and produce our own Lab-Grown Meat. It is not available in Bangladesh, so we will be the first mover. As a result, there is no organization existing in my country where I can learn about this but the least I could do was to discuss with my faculties to learn more about it and I think the rest will depend on what happens in the market. We will have to wait and see about that because a lot of people usually didn't used to like the revolutionary innovations but it turned to be successful and made billions of dollars. In our case, it is exactly the opposite, my one to one communication suggests that a lot of people love the idea of our product. So, we will have to wait and see until we launch our product in the market through proper funding and how the market will reach will determine the future of our company. 

Basically we sell meat in a more environamental friendly way. Rest is written in details in the above paragraphs.

I have accomplished not much to be honest, I need a mentor for it which I think you can provide, a little bit of guidance and I am curious enough to learn even the branches of the mentioned things. My idea is still in the concept stage and I decided to implement this idea in a coastal country like Bangladesh (which requires environmental solutions the most to save its existence) when I got to know Google Co-Founder Sergey Brin invested in a Silicon Valley Lab-Grown Meat Start-Up. Now, I think I managed to decide where I need to place my stores, which is in Gulshan in our capital Dhaka, where most of the rich people of our country live but we will eventually try to make Lab-Grown Meat main as more the people more better for my pocket as well as the environment. Then again we don't want to sacrifice the quality, hygiene and taste of the Lab-Grown Meat, which is the most essential thing to maintain for my business according to me, to reduce the price. We will scale slowly and steadily, we want to play the infinite game as Simon Sinek would say.

In simple terms it is made through biopsy, biopsy is a process where you take stem cell from an to give the texture and flavour of a meat to the Lab Grown Meat. The good thing here is we don't need to slaughter an animal for it and it will to some extent will reduce the Animal cruelty and I think it will happen. Events like COP 26 in Glasgow shows our planet is in a stage where we desperately require environmental friendly solutions.

I believe if we can make Lab-Grown meat an habit of the children then we can make the product compatible to our culture. Apart from that, the people we want to adopt our solution are the urban middle and higher income people, who have income to put effort to save the planet and the people who love the environment but cannot but eat traditional red or the people who left meat and became vegan after knowing the consequences that tradition red meat has on the environment (Release of methane which is the most destructive Greenhouse Gas for the environment, then excessive land usage leads to deforestation), has on the animals (Many might hate the cruelty that exists in slaughtering animals), has on the consumer (The usage of nitrite to make the tradition meat red in colour is carcinogenic for the consumers). We expect to serve conservatively 500,000+ people in our first year. (When we launch our solution)

We want as many consumers to be consuming, we might not be profitable in the first few years but we will certainly want to increase our market size for ourselves as well as for the environment, because even if we don't face the consequences our children will of what we are doing to the environment. I think people might not notice the difference at first but we should remember that a drop of water builds an ocean, if a significant amount of our population adopts the solution it will certainly help the environment. Finally, I think people who are concerned about the environment and also the vegans will have a guilt free experience of consuming meat.

I think our solution directly connects to 5 SDGs. SDG 12, because consumers will show responsibility in their consumption of chosing the sustainable solution over the unsustainable one and we will also be showing responsibility by producing an environment friendly solution in the form of Lab-Grown Meat. Reducing the release of Methane from Cow and excessive land usage which leads to deforestation certainly helps achieving the SDG 13 and SDG 15 as animals will have their land by reducing deforestation and the environment will also be saved. Finally, the amount of waste produced by animal are thrown into the water, if we can reduce the number of livestock animals by shifting our culture to Lab-Grown meat than  it will certainly help achieve SDG 6 and SDG 14 as we will have clean water in many more places than before and it not only helps us by providing safe water that won't cause harm to us but also the life below the water.

I don't have the money to start it but I have the vision and a little bit of guidance will help me.

Shifting the culture will be difficult but we are willing to take it that's why we are ShapeShifter.

I do more of the market research and will hire the right team and my partner is more of a sales and negotiation guy and based on my idea he also designs the marketing campaigns we will do as he is a graphic, technology part we understand but a tech co-founder won't be bad. Currently, we both are studying at University of Liberal Arts Bangladesh (ULAB) at our 9th Semester.

EMK center in Bangladesh helping us develop our solution.

Not qualified.

Not qualified.