160. Sequins Without Sin: Santa Puts Cellsense's Aradhita Parasrampuria on the Nice List

Aradhita I know in biology for some reason, green is actually very hard to achieve with microbial dyes.

Aradhita but I forgot to go in one weekend to remove the bacteria from the incubator. on Monday we realized that it had turned green

Karl Hey erum. How you doing?

Erum I'm doing great, Carl. Wow. Holidays are in full swing. How are you?

Karl Well, welcome to the Grow Everything podcast where we talk about biology as technology. And I think the holidays have been going really well, to be honest. I mean, we just got snow in New York City, which is a treat, and this weekend I drove up to, Saratoga County and back to go check on my father-in-law who just had surgery.

Karl He's recovering well, but there was about four inches of snow on the ground up there. And you know, in addition to, his recovery, we've been super busy. We had. A holiday party last week. We're attending holiday parties and we're kind of in this mad sprint to [00:01:00] close out the year with our clients.

Karl What do you have going on? What'd you do this weekend? erum?

Erum Yes. That snow was very beautiful. It was like the perfect type of snow where it had the right texture. It was soft enough to be able to, cover all the trees. And so it was definitely a winter wonderland here in Brooklyn and. You actually walk through the Brooklyn Botanical Gardens and it was like, I couldn't believe it.

Erum I was like, am I in Colorado? Like, what? What's going on here? Like, it's so amazing. And I just spent the whole, well, my husband, my son and I spent the whole day just walking around Brooklyn in our neighborhood. And I mean, we are lucky to live in a area that has such beautiful spaces, like the botanical gardens, like the museum, just even the streets, Eastern Parkway, looking up and down.

Erum it was just beautiful.

Karl we were driving down, FDR on the east side of Manhattan and to me it was like the perfect encapsulation of snow in New York City because on the one hand you [00:02:00] have the trees that are covered and snow and they're so beautiful. And then you look. Next to you on the concrete wall, and the snow is already like all turned gray and brown and black.

Karl And so that's what's gonna happen to the snow. Unfortunately, like the snow in New York City to me is always very beautiful the first day, and then it starts to turn gray on the streets. And then you remember, oh yeah, we live in the city. Yeah. And , luckily the parks don't get that. So the park can last for many days and, and really be so beautiful.

Karl But it's always a treat to get. Snow before the holidays and during the holidays. So I was very excited. Yeah. Yeah. And I'm so grateful.

Erum as long as it still happens, right? You know? Yeah. Current trajectory, how many more snow days do we have? So, definitely cleared out my schedule when it was snowy, y all went outside as you know, the snowball fights didn't have a sled.

Erum but it was fine. I mean, I should have picked one up, but we had a great time anyway. but yeah, for the rest of the year, we are slammed just to wrap everything up in a nice bow [00:03:00] so we can relax during the holidays and during the holidays. I know you do this and I do this too, is that, it's good to have something to think deeply about, you know, you have days where you're not just grinding away on meetings, delivering, delivering, delivering, but to be able to have the space to go deep into certain topics.

Erum And whether that's inspired by, I mean, of course our conversations here on the podcast, but you know, you and I love to read and, you know, watch different shows and let's talk about that because I have been in this rabbit hole since we had an amazing conversation with Mike Levin around the Thanksgiving holiday.

Erum our conversation with Mike Levin was really about the essence of consciousness and its pervasiveness from not only our perspective as humans, but how the agency of living tissues and cells and organs all have a type of agency, and it, differs [00:04:00] and it responds to its environment.

Erum And it could be a chemical thing, which, you know, Mike Levin talked about electroceuticals. So if you are like, what the hell are you talking about erum? Go back to that episode and listen to it. But that conversation kicked off this whole exploration for me, and I was reading Mountain in the Sea, which is also about, decentralized consciousness and, , animals being able to have Higher forms of intelligence like octopus. And now after I finished reading it, I gave it to you

Karl Yeah. And I, I had read it when it first came out. and, I'm super enjoying it because again,

Karl mountain in the Sea is about octopus consciousness and people who are, uh, studying that.

Karl And it was very widely praised when it came out just a few years ago. I remember very much enjoying it, and so I'm enjoying it again. And after this series that we just did last week where we talked about fungi, I really started thinking about Mike and whether he and his team have ever made Xena bots.

Karl [00:05:00] From, fungal cells. So it's just like, again, really thinking about consciousness in a different way. I don't think I'm thinking about it as deeply as you. I've been watching a lot of movies too, and just looking for little signals of biotech in movies or nature in movies, I watched a movie called The Outrun, and at the end of it, the main character was talking about getting a PhD in seaweed.

Karl ' cause she's in the OR knees, which is the islands off the coast of Scotland. And , she talks about the seaweed industry, which is something that I don't, with the exception of Julia from Sway. It's not something we've talked about very much. But there is an industry that has a lot of longevity, that is built around seaweed.

Karl But anyway,

Erum yeah,

Karl I digress. No,

Erum I mean, this idea of. Being inspired by different sci-fi movies and books and shows. that's where a lot of inspiration and new ideas can come from because biology has a lot of capability and potential and we are just scratching the surface [00:06:00] when we know how to use it. And so, you know, we mentioned Reading Mountain the Sea.

Erum as we're talking to Mike Levin, but I was also watching Stranger Things, the season finale. So there was a lot of ideas that I started coming up with, and just thinking about deeply. And now I'm reading Dawn by Octavia Butler and I'm so, like regret that I haven't read Octavia Butler until now I'm in my forties.

Erum I feel like that would have changed a lot of my perspective if I read it as a younger person, but it is. Very interesting about, if alien life and human life interacted, what would that look like? how does alien life look differently? How do they act differently compared to humans? How do they perceive humans?

Erum in terms of human strength and human flaw? And then my, book show pairing is Pluribus. Which is on Apple tv, and I know you're ahead of me when it comes to that show, but Wow.

Erum Talking about biology [00:07:00] and intelligence, I can't wait to go in my rabbit hole and just go under, you know, under my covers and just think,

Karl yeah. Yeah. I mean, pluribus is an incredible show. It's by the same creator as Breaking Bad and, , better call Saul. I think, Vince Gilligan.

Karl is at the height of his powers. pluribus is an incredible story and I will just spoil the beginning by saying it does involve biology, so

Erum yes. Yeah. And consciousness.

Karl Yeah, and collective

Erum consciousness.

Karl And as the story evolves, you might forget how this whole thing got triggered, but it definitely has to do with biology.

Karl So I can't recommend it enough. I think it's an incredible story.

Erum Okay. Yeah. Well that's, so homework for listeners. You have to watch that show. it's on Apple tv, so if you don't subscribe to Apple, go to a friend's house or figure it out, or just subscribe, just to watch that and unsubscribe. Do what do you have to do?

Erum Apple's not sponsoring us, unfortunately. Otherwise we'd say stay [00:08:00] subscribed. but yeah, and I think this is like, again, this is about, you know, fundamental use of biology and how it can work, the potential and the capability. And of course, you know, we talked to Mike Levin about, and others about how biology can make materials, and that's what today's episode is about, is using biology to make unique materials that you may not think to use biology to make.

Karl Yeah, exactly. I mean, materials touch every part of our lives all day long. If you're wearing clothes, which I hope you are, those clothes are made of materials, whether they're, sourced from natural sources like cotton or wool or polyester, which is, manmade from oil. these things are materials.

Karl And what's interesting, at least to me it's interesting is like we spent time talking about bio materials a fair amount here on the podcast. And, we know that the material sector overall has been performing poorly. Mining has been in the news a lot because of the interest in rare earth metals and kind of geopolitical issues with [00:09:00] that.

Karl Other minerals have been in the, you know, like lithium and, cobalt have also been in the news because those are very important for the green transition. But other areas where materials have not really done well are like in chemical and agriculture or construction materials that have been challenged by geopolitics.

Karl today's guest is someone that I saw, or at least I saw their material. At an art exhibit at bio bat many years ago, and I ended up, blogging about it on LinkedIn.

Karl And then I ended up meeting aradhita at, the Biomaterials Bio Couture event that was held a, I believe, in October at Indie Bio erum. Was that the first time you had met aradhita?

Erum Yes, that was the first time I met her. And, you know, I was. Talking to a bunch of people and you came up to me like, you have to meet her, go see what she's doing.

Erum And I, you know, went to, she had a table of different materials that she's made and you know what aradhita makes is embellishment, which we'll get into. And I was like, this isn't me with [00:10:00] biology. What are you talking about? Because it looked so good and like it looked like it wasn't a plastic, but it wasn't.

Erum It was just like, okay, yeah, we need to get you in the pod asap. And here we are.

Karl So just so that people understand what embellishments are, when you look at a piece of clothes, it could be embellishment is even something like a zipper. But the embellishments that Aradhita makes, through her company cell sense, are things like sequins and beads.

Karl And the reason I was very touched by this story or by her story was because it's one of these things I don't really think about. But then when you look around and you see that other people have beads or. sequins on their, clothing. Someone has to do that. And it's done mostly by hand.

Karl And many of those materials are produced through petrochemicals. So a lot of people who are, producing these things, are manufacturing them, are breathing these things all day long. So their not in these for very long because these things end up [00:11:00] affecting their health.

Karl So Iran, before we introduce aradhita, why don't you talk a little bit about her background?

Erum Yes. So our aradhita is materials designer from India.

Erum She's based in New York City, actually right in Brooklyn. So we're very lucky to have her close by, and her company sell sense. Addresses microplastic pollution, as you mentioned, that's very problematic, the way that these embellishments, whether buttons or beads or sequinss are made. artha has a master's in textiles and a bachelor's in fashion design from Parson School of Design.

Erum So she's been thinking about this very deeply, and she has five years of experience in material science and sustainable design. She was a materials and colors researcher at Slow Factory Labs, and she also was an embellishments designer at Tory Birch. So she has a lot of great experience working with different brands and has successful pilots raised venture capital.

Erum She's been recognized by Forbes 30 under 30. She's a perfect person to speak with about how [00:12:00] we can make biomaterials cool, sexy, beautiful, that we are very proud to wear. so let's let Aradhita take it away.

Erum Hi there. I'm chiming in quick because it turns out that our guest audio cuts out a little bit throughout the show. It's a great episode with all of the insights and inspiration that you've come to love about this podcast. But we just wanted to give you a heads up. Enjoy the show.

Karl Aradhita of Cellsense. We are so happy to have you on the Grow Everything podcast.

Aradhita i'm very excited to be here, big fan of the podcast. So thank you guys for having me on.

Karl So you're another Brooklyn person. so those of you who can't tell from s accent, she is actually from Brooklyn. And, your journey started, from textile factory visits in Gujurat in India to founding Cellsense, which is amazing.

Karl What was the catalyst that took you from being a designer of embellishments to a material scientist working with algae and bacteria?

Aradhita Right. So growing up in [00:13:00] Gujurat and visiting these factories, being in contact with craftsmen,

Aradhita where I saw the human impact of fashion's textile dyeing system.

Aradhita Long before I understood the environmental one and working for fashion houses in New York City, I felt like there was often a disconnect between design and production. And materials were superficially accepted as sustainable, yet they tended to have a major negative downstream effect. and my.

Aradhita Motivation was really to develop a genuinely sustainable, yet scalable solution. I was very interested in dyes in the beginning, and I was looking at natural dyes as a source of replacement that were plant-based. But then studying it a bit more, realized how resource expensive the system was, how much human labor, fertilizers, fuel for transportation.

Aradhita And even though it's better for the human body and for producers, it's not that much more sustainable as a system. I was really intrigued by the potential of bacteria to have vivid color and fluorescent. Properties. so that was really the catalyst for what made me interested in [00:14:00] biotech. but to answer the embellishment parts of the question, people often think of it as like a niche solution and don't realize that the fashion industry is worth about 1.8.

Aradhita Trillion dollars and one in five garments that are produced annually contained embellishments. So it is a pretty big industry and a lot of European brands are facing regulatory pressure. In 2027, the EU is going to ban microbeads and lead, which is going to severely impact both exfoliants as well as embellishments.

Aradhita And so I saw this big demand. I was working as an embellishment designer at Torry Birch, and we were talking to over 900 fashion brands headquartered in New York. City and realized just how many were looking for the solution, but were lacking anything viable that was sustainable and could replace plastics.

Aradhita So it wasn't the lack of motivation, it was just the lack of, existing solution.

Karl can you for our, listeners explain what embellishments are? I think a lot of people don't know what that means.

Aradhita Yeah, definitely. So embellishments would be [00:15:00] things like beads or sequins, as well as trims would include hardware, like buttons or zippers as well.

Erum Okay, cool. Yeah, I wasn't sure if it included zippers and buttons, but I'm glad you clarified that. 'cause I was like, oh, one in five. I'm like, because in my mind it was just sequins. I'm like. One or five garments have sequinss on them. I'm like, definitely, I know in some parts of the world that would be the case, but yes, buttons and zippers for sure.

Erum Okay. That really helped, kind of frame the world in which you're living. And so, before I get into this next question, I wanted to know a little bit more. Like you saw the problem. And how did you get introduced to the idea of using biology as a solution to make embellishments?

Erum Was there a class you took, a person you met? I'd love to know a little bit more about that. Like what was that light bulb moment?

Aradhita Yeah, so I had spent some time with the D fixation developed like a thesis around that and got a regular nine to five and went to work in the industry.

Aradhita But I did have some synthetic biology experience and [00:16:00] curiosity. and with sustainable solutions, the only replacement I found in the market were, for instance, plastic sequins or recycled plastic. sequins, but they themselves act as a source of plastic waste upon disposal, right? So they're only so sustainable and the colors are pretty like black or very lacking in like the vivid color profiles that design brands generally would want.

Aradhita The other solution was wooden beads, but they would sometimes look crafty. and so I started as a passion project working with, algae for its. Base properties such as hydrophobic properties, antimicrobial properties, and I combine it with cellulose, which is one of the most abundant organic materials on the planet.

Aradhita We source it from textile waste as well, and it has excellent color retention. So we know color especially was of utmost importance to the brands. So it started off with me just like playing around with these materials. When I first brought it to the brand, they said it sucked. and they told me that they wanted to see the vivid colors.

Aradhita [00:17:00] They wanted to see a smooth finish and they wanted to see iridescence. Without that, no one would use it, and it just became like a back and forth where I was getting active feedback from the designers at Tory board who were telling me how to iterate the product, and then it got to a point when it became something that could be commercially viable.

Erum Wow. Wow. I love that. I love the fact that you are talking to, you know, a customer, like the end user or the, industry and you're iterating along with them to really hone in on what type of specifications they're looking for versus, being in your,in your lab or in your office, just doing it yourself and making assumptions.

Erum So this is a wonderful, I think, lesson. I just wanna point out, 'cause Carl and I were talking about this earlier, about just getting out there and talking to people first and doing it as soon as possible because time is money. Right? and then again, this, combination of, using cellulose and bacterial dyes.

Erum But, is it purely,Biology product or are you combining it [00:18:00] with other types of materials? what does it look like in your daily work in terms of, how your products are being made? Is it like fermentation? Tell us a little bit more about that.

Aradhita That's a good question. So we create our base polymer.

Aradhita It's made in-house, so we don't use like industrial PHA, PLAs for instance. one of the unique properties of our biopolymer is that it can set at room temperature. So you don't really need a machinery that you would need for like thermosets that require about a thousand degrees Celsius. You can make materials at room temperature.

Aradhita We can directly deposit it on fabric to create. Beed fabrics without any manual labor. and that makes it cost competitive with plastics because we are eliminating the most cost intensive part of the process, and significantly simplifying the supply chain. And that is only possible because of our biopolymer, which we create in.

Aradhita It's a hundred percent biobased. It's all algae and cellulose and some other sort of, materials that we use that are also, for instance, we [00:19:00] use natural cross linkers instead of synthetic cross linkers. We were inspired by, people often think that bio-based materials will fall apart or they're fragile, but they don't realize that wood or wool are also in a way like bio-based, right?

Aradhita They can, survive natural, bare and tear, yet they safely compost. And similarly, we've tried to recreate their structure by using, um, Natural Cross Linkers. as a result of which we've created pretty durable materials. We did a skincare pilot recently with FKA Heckles for whom we created these.

Aradhita Coating pads that you can use in high moisture environment. and then with the fermentation side of it, our dyes are the ones that are more conventionally like, fermented. And then we extract the pigment from the bacteria. and all of our material is solution died. So with plastic beets, for instance, they died in a leaded coating.

Aradhita and that often chips and leads to poor appearance over time. Whereas because our material is solution dy, it retains the color pretty well and [00:20:00] doesn't chip, or isn't prone to poor appearance with wear and tear.

Karl So before I ask the next question, I have a question. What does it mean solution dyed, it means that like the DY is actually put into the solution that you produce the beads from.

Karl Is that correct?

Aradhita Yeah, your spot on essentially means that the biopolymer itself is tied with a pigment. Usually it's post-processing where they're coated on with like a colorant.

Karl Got it. And then before we get any deeper into it, I'd love to, there's two things I kind of wanna describe. for someone who hasn't been,around the fashion industry, I'm not someone who has been, but I have done a lot of walking in like the thirties of Manhattan where the fashion industry is centered.

Karl So a lot of times if you're doing that, and if you're paying attention. You can walk by stores that are just like, Hey, this store sells beads. Hey, this store sells buttons. Hey, this store only stills sells zippers. And like, those are the kinds of places I think where your product either is or will end up.

Karl And it's really amazing [00:21:00] that there are still these people, of course there are, there are these places that are only selling like one little piece of the bigger pie that is fashion. but give us a sense in terms of like, what does it feel like when you're looking at or touching one of your, bio embellishments.

Karl If someone was wearing it or if someone saw it, what would they see?

Aradhita they feel quite delicate, yet they're study like a lot of people, when they touch them, they're like, oh, we don't want to break them.

Aradhita and then they, I encourage them to try. and they're often taken aback by how, durable they feel. they have, I would say it's closer to like glass in appearance where it's. 3D and transparent, but it's quite lightweight, almost like a plastic. if you drop it, it has like a similar clinking sound to glass.

Aradhita and the surface finish highly varies. Our material is very customizable, so we can 3D print molds and create a finish prototype in a day. So you could get like a faceted surface spinach or you could get a very smooth [00:22:00] spherical surface spinach. and yeah, that can differ at times.

Erum Yeah. Amazing. Yeah, I remember.

Erum so you know, we met at the Bio culture event. And that was, co-hosted by Bio Fabricate and Juniper VC at Indie Bio. And you were showing some of your beads and Carl had met you first and he is like, oh, you should go meet aradhita, and I was like, I didn't

Karl say it that way. Okay. Or maybe, maybe I did

Erum orita. Okay. That's how you said it. so, so then I was looking at it, I'm like, okay, these are made with cellulose because they looked exactly like beads that you would see. like, it just felt like, earlier you're talking about vibrancy and you talked about glass and It's, it was incredible. And there's actually the,the same day we met Gabe tva, who we interviewed,a couple episodes ago where he was making wood out of bacterial cellulose. I've been, constantly blown away by founders like yourselves who have been using biology to make just really like hyperrealistic and even better than what already exists.

Erum So it's like, not that you're, settling for [00:23:00] something that's like. You know, sustainably made or bio made. It's actually even better sometimes, which is beautiful.

Aradhita Thank you. I appreciate you saying that. It took us a lot of time and effort to get it, to have the appearance. It does. and yeah, that was like a big motivation for me was to understand biology in a way that we created not only like lower value replacements, but enhancements like with our fluorescence or with automated production, realizing how it can surpass the capabilities of plastics was a big motivation.

Erum Yeah. Yeah. So let's talk about that a little bit, right? So I know it's a lot of work to work with biology, so there must have been like unpredictable moments, things that went awry that you learned and you pivoted. Can you tell us some of the surprising moments that helped you down this path of creating these really beautiful, embellishments?

Aradhita Yeah, the quality goal is always, um, issue with biology at times and for us, that really involves studying the [00:24:00] organism, what it naturally wanted to do, and recreating that patterns in a consistent way over and over. That's how we've been able to get a lot of our dyes. I know in biology for some reason, green is actually very hard to achieve with microbial dyes.

Aradhita but if we would incubate it for a longer period of time. And what that meant is I forgot to go in one weekend to remove the bacteria from the incubator. on Monday we realized that it had turned green and we were like, oh, that's so interesting.

Aradhita If we just leave it for a longer period of time, it can actually have this property that would be very difficult for us to engineer otherwise. so learning from mistakes like that has helped as well.

Karl But you know, on the other side of it, you're a designer and so you're probably used to controlling outcomes and aesthetics.

Karl You need to have, this uniformity, and yet when you work with microorganisms, you have to enable this type of agency in the material. How do you navigate the tension between control and collaboration with biology?

Aradhita Yeah, I think both skill sets have been [00:25:00] useful for me, like having the sense of how a regular designer would want to work with this material where they can have predictable outcomes and some control.

Aradhita And I myself would want that as well. so developing processes with which we can achieve that, but also just being very patient. and, we had like a time lapse camera and it was so cool to just see the organism acquire color over time. and I think we just talked to appreciate what biology could do and that resulted in me who can normally be impatient, developing patience and then studying it and recreating it over and over to have a perfect result over and over that designers can rely on.

Erum Yeah. Yeah. I love that. Let the biology take the wheel and see what happens. I love how you forgot about, the project or the, the material being made and it turned green. It's just like, okay, the secret here to get the green was time, and the patience.

Erum I just love those types of stories. but so, so cell sense as a company, it's not just about materials, it's about creating a [00:26:00] circular system. So. Tell us the hardest part about building this ecosystem where you're creating, you know, this company that's making this replacement for business as usual embellishments, and, you're talking to some of these brands.

Erum But tell us what's been, the hardest part about this.

Aradhita Yeah, I think you know what a lot of sustainable material companies probably have to deal with is just the price expectancy, right? the industry is used to a certain price point, but sustainable materials are often higher.

Aradhita and products are limited to like boutique solutions. And that was something that we really wanted to overcome. And what brands love most about Cell Sense now is that we are not just a material replacement, but a smarter, leaner supply chain. We're simplifying production. They would have to source the beads.

Aradhita They would have to create tech packs, then they would get beaded fabrics. Often with the long timeline, and we're creating it in one go, our robotic syringes can create the beads and beaded fabric in a single integrated step. So this means it's resource [00:27:00] efficient for them. Fashion is a very trend based industry that changes.

Aradhita Quickly. And so they want something that can be produced with a lower lead time. Our lead time, for instance, is about a day versus with conventional systems, it takes over a week to make a yard of complex beaded fabric. So we have significantly simplified that and our program can pixelate the images brand send.

Aradhita So we create the file, it's like a file to fabric system. We are able to create the beaded patterns for them. We are able to create the beads for them, and we are able to deposit the beads directly on fabric for them. and that is really the value add we provide. And with this system, we can compete with plastics on price and bead them on lead time.

Aradhita So it has really been one where we've. Talked to the industry a lot. We figured out what the challenges are and we figured out what unique value proposition we can provide that would help them get over some of the humps that normally come with adopting sustainable materials.

Karl that's amazing. And I mean, you guys are also creating materials like glow that are bioluminescence that [00:28:00] potentially can either absorb carbon, can deepen, compose rapidly, and really challenge what's conventional in fashion, which is supposed to be like this leading edge industry.

Karl But what feature of your materials do you believe in is the most powerful or most underappreciated and why?

Aradhita Yeah. What I love most is just the ability to customize the material for anyone who's dealt with injection molding. Right? You're familiar with the MQs, the long lead times, the high price point.

Aradhita and with us, if a brand is like, has this unique idea of a unique form they want to create that's never existed before, they can send us a CAD file. We can 3D print molds, and then we can show them a finished prototype and just the speed that, allocates and the ability to achieve unconventional shapes that you haven't seen with a plastic or a gloss is something that's really exciting to me.

Aradhita and the fluorescence is something that, I think I did for fun when trying to create a sample. And it kind of was the thing that made cellsense a little bit wider. It got a lot of brands. interested. [00:29:00] And it was cool to see how if you create a material that doesn't just mimic the qualities of conventional materials, but provides something like unique in appearance, how so many people are instantly excited about it.

Karl That's amazing.

Erum Yeah, I would love to see that. I mean, um,is that something that you kind of just prototyped and played around with, or is that in production and like, because I have Dinoflagellates that bioluminece and that, it's, According to like their circadian rhythm.

Erum And it only happens at nighttime. So, I would love to know a little bit more about it 'cause I love bioluminescence instead when people are talk to me like, oh, what kind of applications can you make with biology? And I always try to tell them like, oh, you can make things that bioluminece and I think it's one of the most beautiful things that nature can offer.

Erum But tell us a little bit more about that. I'm really excited about.

Aradhita Definitely. So that has been one where we can't always predict the result consistently. And so we have to put that into production at a bigger scale. But for the piece, we made that went viral. That was when I was still working a nine to five job and was kind of making some progress with this, project.

Aradhita It [00:30:00] wasn't even a company at that point. and started creating this comment as a passion project. And I had these like secret images and things that you would only be able to see once it would express its fluorescence. and it's sort of similar to charging a battery. Like you would have to expose it to UV light and then it would glow.

Aradhita I made that about three years ago and it's still glowing, which has been very interesting. It's

Karl amazing.

Erum Yeah. Yes, I like that. Still glowing. Keep glowing.

Karl listen, we've been talking for a long time about, working with the people who come on this podcast. And having a store, we need to get together and collaborate and do like a limited edition of a cell sense, messaging lab branded something Erum.

Karl We need to put our thinking hats on and we need to go to the factory industry city to see what we can do together.

Erum Yes. All right. Let's do it. Okay, here we go. Where we're brainstorming. how it happens everybody.

Karl you started off by talking about like the human component of design and this is what you and I talked [00:31:00] about, when I first was exposed to your material at Bio bat.

Karl and then when we met, at Bio Fab here in New York a couple weeks ago, we talked about like the human element, which really struck me. This is the kinds of things that people don't think about. Like who are the people that are. Be onto garments. Who are the people that are the, like a lot of this stuff is still done manually, but what's the impact of having a bio-based material for them and what has been the response?

Aradhita Yeah, definitely. That was one of the biggest motivators for us. I mentioned that I grew up in Gura, which is one of the biggest textile production hubs. The impact you see on the labor that works in these factories is mind blowing, like it's a well known fact that the die master dies of a heart attack every three to five years.

Aradhita Because the chemicals they deal with on a daily basis are just that toxic. And it's also, just fascinating to understand that we are wearing that chemical against our skin 24 7. There is so much to learn about eating organic food, but not really about wearing organic or [00:32:00] healthy materials. and. The impact for, like right now, 60% of the workforce that is involved in the embellishment industry comprises of women and children, and a majority of them have been documented to develop health issues.

Aradhita Whether that's cancers because of exposure to carcinogen, like lead is commonly used in plastic beads, for instance. Or they develop vision loss as well as carpal tunnel because of the constant repetitive hand movements. And it is just. In incredible. And that there isn't many ways to automate it yet. So the industry almost exclusively relies on cheap manual labor from overseas to attach these embellishments of beaded, like buttons, trims to garments.

Aradhita and for us, we are trying to upskill the very same craftsmen, but trying to use their ability like their creativity or they're very good at quality check for us. They know what. The material needs to have, like how sturdy it needs to be, what the Strength resistance needs to be, or the appearance and they can [00:33:00] constantly give us feedback.

Aradhita So they would, for instance, there we have these machines like, similar to open trons that have robotic syringes that can directly deposit beads on fabric, but the pipettes can clog if no one is looking at them. And that will create issues. So we still need like technicians to help us with the process, but it isn't as manual, for instance.

Aradhita and so we are trying to. Skill, the same laborers. it's been amazing how many factories have reached out to us that do embroidery, who wanted to license everywhere from India to China to New York. Again, we are like a young startup that hasn't advertised or marketed ourselves as much yet.

Aradhita These very niche factories have been reaching out, wanting to license our technology and wanting better for their own craftspeople, but there simply isn't a solution that exists that they can adopt. And they're often painted as like, problem. And that is just not true.

Erum Yeah. Yeah. And like these factories with these laborers are servicing like the fast fashion, the everyday fashion industry versus, the luxury [00:34:00] niche space.

Erum Right. Where, you have like someone graduating from FIT, you know,or the Fashion Institute of Technology and like they're helping like Balenciaga develop a dress for the Met Gala, right? That's, there's like this, difference of between the volume of embellishments that are being made. and used.

Erum you aspire to work with these large factories so that they can use not only your embellishments, but you know, the technology and the automation. Tell us a little bit more about, what does that look like?

Erum and where do you start? Right. Like, just to paint the picture for us, because I mean, I would love to know, the plan to. Can it scale up is was one question I'm asking here. And then also like, which type of garment have your embellishments been on the most?

Erum Right. Are they on dresses, are they on, pants? I'm just curious.

Aradhita Right. Yeah. So we, thankfully closed up Pree round recently. Hey, congratulations.

Karl Congratulations. That's great.

Aradhita yeah, with that we now have the funding to be able to scale. We are looking [00:35:00] for engineers to join the team. So shout out if any engineers are listening to the podcast, please, feel free to reach out.

Aradhita We have. Already who are helping us with the automation and making the technology as simple and versatile as possible. We are not trying to reinvent the wheel or create completely new machinery. We are trying to use existing ones and make them work for our process. For a factory for instance, it would look like something like they would buy the hardware or the CapEx to set up, our machinery and it's significantly lower than like conventional CapEx.

Aradhita So that would be the first step. And then we would provide bio on a subscription basis so that they're able to create whatever materials or garments they need. and for the second part of the question on what the material has been used so far, we've completed four paid B2B pilots. So again, what you mentioned earlier, Duram, it was very important for us to move out of.

Aradhita The lab and talk to the industry, get feedback, get our material in the hands of end customers. We were very against doing any collaborations that were just for marketing purposes that wouldn't be available to end [00:36:00] customers. So all four of our pilots have been available to people so far. we've done one in fashion with a New York based designer, Ian Allen Greer who. Exclusively uses dead stock fabric. our second collaboration with this Roma Singani, who's a Mumbai based, jewelry designer, we collaborated to create an initial collection which sold out, and then she's placed seven reorders since the initial pilot. That has been great validation for us.

Aradhita Then we worked with, Enform, a CBE jewelry brand that creates these like really intricate chokers and different necklaces with the beads. and that was our largest order of about 50,000 beads. And most recently we worked with, a Midrin skincare brand based in the uk, FKA Heckles who used our material in the form of exfoliating pads as a replacement to microplastic like beads as well as cotton pads.

Aradhita These can be used for over five years. And, they did third party testing to ensure the materials performance and durability in harsh environment for months continuously. And found [00:37:00] that we were one of the only sustainable solutions that met their performance standards.

Erum Yeah. Is that the, what you were holding up earlier that, that material that you printed out, is that the pad?

Aradhita it's like a version of this, it's a small version of this that goes on your face. And you can kind of use it

Karl That's amazing. So, looking ahead,either near term or long term, what kind of scientific discoveries or tech tools are you most excited about that you think, well, you would apply in your work, something that you feel is gonna transform, sustainable materials in the next decade.

Aradhita Yeah, I know people have become like sick about hearing of ai,

Karl We're not

Aradhita Material discovery platforms are tools. Like Radical AI is an interesting company based out of Midtown New York. Yeah, and they make these, computational tools with which you can access a biopolymer structure and feasibility before you do all the r and d or get all the materials and tests for yourself.

Aradhita And I'm curious to use something like that in the future and [00:38:00] see how helpful it can be in the whole material development process.

Erum Wow. Yeah, I love it. I mean, if you don't have an AI strategy, you don't have a company, so, there you go. Great. Um,that's great that you're thinking about it like that.

Erum So then kind of continuing in that frame of thought, you just raised some funding, but what if you had unlimited resources and no technical constraints? So what would your dream project be at Cell Sense? what radical design material system would you build if anything were possible?

Aradhita That's a good question and something I daydream about. And I would say that, I love how versatile the material is. As I touched on before, it can be molded into any shape, ranging between two millimeters to eight inches. And we only looked at embellishments as the first sort of application That was an industry I was familiar with and as.

Aradhita Saw a need in, but I think it has a range of applications across industries to replace small format plastics. So my dream would be to create almost like a website that a customer or a brand [00:39:00] could log into, upload their design, and receive a bioplastic or bio made solution, as like a drop in solution within a very limited timeframe to any.

Aradhita Small format plastics that's used across, say, like buttons or bottle caps or different types of packaging. I think this material has the potential to replace all of that.

Erum Wow. Yeah, because I have some garments that I'm like, the, this could use a little embellishment and like, I wish I could just take it like, rather than order it and bring it to my house, I wish I would just like able to go to like a shop, like a target or something and like go to a machine and like put my clothing in there and be like, yeah, put these things on it, add a little bit of, flare over here and over there and you know, boom.

Erum You know, like something comes out. But,we could daydream about this. I love it.

Karl I love it too. I love the whole like, collaboration with the person who's using dead stock, materials. That's amazing. so we've reached the part of the podcast where we do some quickfire questions. I'll kick it [00:40:00] off by asking you a question.

Karl you could answer as long as you like, but we try to keep it moving fast. So what's one material you've never worked on but secretly wished you could explore?

Aradhita Probably beauty industry solutions I would love to work on like face masks or different things like that.

Erum Ooh, nice. All right.

Erum We have so much to talk about. All right, so now we've got, now you're gonna put your design, hat on. So what's one design rule you'd love to break?

Aradhita Symmetry or like perfection. I think some of the brands have come up with such kooky designs and I love it. I want to see the material being used in the most unexpected form possible.

Karl I love that. If you could eliminate one material from the fashion industry forever, what would that be?

Aradhita I might be cheating here, but I feel like I have to say plastic embellishments, right?

Erum Yeah. Yeah, you do. Good job. Okay. All right. So a non-fashion industry. so outside apparel, textiles you believe will adopt your materials [00:41:00] first.

Aradhita the beauty industry as well. I feel like they have the most regulatory pressure and a lot of the companies have been willing to work with us and move fast with us already.

Erum Oh, this is getting exciting.

Karl What's one common misconception about sustainable fashion or biomaterials that you wish people would stop saying?

Aradhita Probably just thinking of it as a boutique solution or something that can only serve luxury with our system and our production method, we can serve everyone from luxury fashion houses to a Zara. and just seeing sustainability as being more versatile or remembering that it's not always like fragile, it won't fall apart.

Aradhita Remember that wood or wool are also natural materials is something I often tell people, and you can recreate chemistry similar to that.

Erum Amazing. Wow. What a great answer. Well, I mean, this has been an incredible, credible conversation. I feel like, first of all, we live close by, we're having some hive mind happening here, so we gotta meet up and, sketch some stuff out on a,on a [00:42:00] napkin.

Erum but we don't wanna take you away from your, global domination of, natural embellishments and more. And more in the beauty space. Ooh, exciting.

Karl I just wanna say, thank you for coming on. It was like when I first saw your materials at Bio Bat, I was super touched by them and just having this conversation with you.

Karl I just continue to be super impressed and inspired by the work that you're doing. So keep it up. We wanna hang out with you and we wanna do some work together.

Aradhita Thank you guys for being so welcoming. it was a fun conversation and please, anytime you're welcome to Industry City, come by our studios.

Aradhita We'd love to brainstorm and keep it going.

Erum Okay. Yeah. We'll bring our camera so everyone that's listening can also take, check it out. Maybe we will do something and like, on the ground, grow everything on the ground. Okay. Look, we're just brainstorm. This is great.

Karl Yeah.

Erum Alright. Talk to you soon. Hey, this episode is sponsored by Messaging Lab. At Messaging Lab, we translate complex science [00:43:00] and economics into compelling business narratives, and we have done so for the most successful biotech forward companies across pharma, agriculture, personal care and beauty materials, and the list goes on. We are here to make sure your ideas not only get heard, but resonate with your audience. So if it's time to amplify your company's voice. Elevate your business. Visit us@messaginglab.com. Let's grow.

Karl erum, what did you think of that episode?

Erum aradhita is phenomenal. I mean, her focus for looking at the world of embellishments, which I'm so happy she. Shared what that is. It's not just sequins. We're not just going to the disco with what she's making, it's buttons, it's zippers, it's everything.

Erum Yeah, I mean, what struck me about the conversation is when I said something at the beginning where one in five garments has some kind of embellishment on it, and clearly she really knows what she's talking about.

Karl She's really [00:44:00] thought about embellishment, she's thought about the impact that they have on the people that are putting nail on clothing. And what it reminded me of was something that Suzanne Lee said a few months ago, , that sustainability is not the lead story, the shift. From selling buy materials on ethical or environmental grounds is not as important these days as selling them on performance functionality and new capabilities that they unlock.

Karl And Does that with her company? Cell sense?

Erum Yes. Yes. And looking at different types of biology to help make these materials right. So bacterial cellulose for the beads, you know, looking at allergy for dyes. I love that she's open to exploring different biology.

Erum I love the fact that she really pushed the limits. You know, she made bioluminescent, materials.

Erum That's the holy grail, I think. 'cause I, my sense for cell sense and other things is that being able to push biology to do things [00:45:00] that traditional petro chemistry or traditional materials manufacturing cannot do and say, yes, this is what biology can do. And to make it bioluminescent, I think is the experience that triple underscores that.

Erum Here's what we can do. And yeah, I guess you can make like fluorescent, you know, black lit things, using petro chemistry. But I feel that, you know, bioluminescence is a, beautiful thing to, experiment with and to see if she continues down the path. You know, we'll let you guys know, but I love that she's, she's thinking of how to, uh, use biology in all sorts of ways.

Karl I would just add one thing that, there's something I want our listeners to understand. One of the nice things about working with biology, if you do it the right way, is you can make this stuff happen at room temperature.

Karl You don't have to heat things up, you don't have to cool them off. You don't need that energy input if you've got your biology right. And so Arita has, these beads and these embellishments that she's making and she's able to [00:46:00] make them at room temperature using biology. That's a huge unlock. Decreases the amount of energy that you need as an input to produce these materials, which are so widely used, and it's another one of the benefits that you get from using biology to produce materials or ingredients. So just thought I would give another shout out to biology as technology, because that is what this podcast is about.

Erum Yes, lots of wins when it comes. To using biology as technology. So let's do it. Let's do it safely. Let's do it in a very interesting way. Yes, there's drop-in solutions, but then let's take it a bit further. but thank you so much for Aradhita for joining us.

Erum We're gonna have her back on as things Progress, and we had a great conversation with her, as we do with a lot of our guests. One of the things that we are going to bring back on the Grow Everything Podcast, if you've been a long time listener, you might know that we were doing definitions where, sometimes when we have a conversation with guests, we'll get deep into some topics [00:47:00] and some of them are very niche and you might not know the definitions and you know, it's not very, widely accessible.

Erum and we stopped doing them because it tended to be a lot of work. But now that we have more help. We're going to bring it back and we have an amazing science communicator and associate Lizette who will help bring back definitions in the new year, so stay tuned for that.

Karl Yeah, I'm very excited about that and I'm excited to introduce Lizette to the audience because Lizette is an integral part of this podcast.

Karl She joins us a few months ago and, she's really proven to be an essential part, so having her do the definitions I think will be very useful For our future episodes.

Erum Yes. Absolutely. Can't wait for Lizette to come on and do some definitions. And you guys, first, everyone wanna say hi to her, but. So everything is growing and we've been doing a lot of work to make sure that we bring the beauty of biology, the capabilities of biology to you. We wanna thank people that have been supporting us.

Erum We do have a Patreon page, which we'll have in the show notes. we have Tom [00:48:00] Baruch, an investor, Beth Tuck, who's a former executive director at Gen Space who are Patreon members, but. We also have a Substack. So if you are into reading Substack and being a participant in that community, please.

Erum Support us. We are really looking to do very exciting things in 2026, where we wanna do more live events, we wanna do competitions, we wanna create some merch. We really wanna build out this community for people to learn more about what's going on in the biotech industry and have biology can be applied to envy industry.

Erum So please consider joining us as a supporter on substack and also Patreon. Whatever you'd love to do, we'd love to have you as part of our community. It's just like having a cup of coffee with us per month. So we would love it for you to be a part of it. So thank you so much for listening. And is that the pod, Carl?

Karl I think that's the pod. Thank you so much for listening. We'll talk to you soon.