Bussiness Ideas
Urjiva Bioinnovations is an environmental biotechnology startup focused on pioneering sustainable and nature-based solutions for the remediation of industrially contaminated land, along with the recovery of REE (strategic metals) from the waste streams. The core concept of the start-up is optimising and harnessing the plant-microbe system to primarily remediating industrial waste (increasing soil quality) and significantly bioextracting REEs from the waste streams. Technology is then optimised for other strategically important metals relevant to Indian industries.
Industrial waste sites such as fly-ash ponds, mine tailings, e-waste-affected soils, and legacy pollution zones pose serious environmental and regulatory challenges while also containing untapped metal value. After optimising plant and microbe on a lab scale, Urjiva Bioinnovations ultimately aims to address this dual challenge by further developing modular biofarming systems on every industrial waste site where optimised elite plant species, supported by tailored microbial consortia, enhance metal solubilization in soil, uptake through plant roots, translocation, and sequestration within plant biomass. The harvested biomass can then be processed to recover metals, while the treated land undergoes ecological restoration, thus restoring soil quality.
At the current stage, the startup is focused on proof-of-concept (PoC) validation at TRL 2–3, involving laboratory-scale experimentation, protocol optimisation, and analytical validation of metal uptake and translocation in green house. Prior work on Nickel metal hyperaccumulation serves as a technical foundation, which is now being adapted and tailored toward REE-focused biomining applications relevant to Indian conditions.
The long-term vision of Urjiva Bioinnovations is to deploy decentralised, low-energy, and environmentally responsible bioremediation units across all industrial waste sites, creating a feasible, scalable model that efficiently supports environmental compliance, circular resource recovery, and also rural employment. By integrating biotechnology with sustainability and resource recovery, the startup seeks to contribute to cleaner ecosystems and resilient domestic supply chains for critical minerals in India.
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