In an interview with TimesTech, Pushkar Pendse, Co-Founder & CEO of Lemnisca shares how the company’s science-aware AI companion is transforming fermentation-based biomanufacturing. Pushkar explains how Lemnisca integrates learning across lab, pilot, and plant stages to cut development timelines by up to 50%, reduce scale-up risks, and help industries confidently adopt renewable feedstocks. He also shares insights into upcoming pilots, product roadmap, and the future of Bio-AI.
Read the full interview here:
TimesTech: Lemnisca Bio is building a “science-aware AI companion” for fermentation. Could you explain how this AI system works alongside scientists and operators to make biomanufacturing faster, more predictable, and more reliable?
Pushkar: Lemnisca’s science-aware companion stays with a fermentation program from the very first experiment to routine production. It works alongside scientists and operators by showing what is working, where a batch may be drifting, and what operating ranges are likely to be safe and high-performing. As it sees more runs, its guidance becomes sharper, so teams face fewer surprises and can reach a stable, reliable process faster — always with human experts taking the final decisions.
TimesTech: Scaling bioprocesses from laboratory trials to industrial manufacturing remains one of the biggest bottlenecks in industrial biotech. How does Lemnisca’s digital operating system address these uncertainties and reduce development timelines by up to 50%?
Pushkar: Lemnisca cuts development time by joining up learning from lab, pilot, and plant in one place. Today, each step often starts almost from scratch; with Lemnisca, what you learn early is carried forward and refined as you scale. This reduces repeated trials, avoids late-stage surprises, and helps teams reach plant-ready conditions in far fewer cycles. In the right programs, this can mean timelines that are roughly half of a traditional trial-and-error approach.
TimesTech: As industries shift from petrochemicals to renewable feedstocks and biological alternatives, how does Lemnisca enable manufacturers to adopt these sustainable inputs with efficiency and lower risk?
Pushkar: Lemnisca helps companies move to renewable feedstocks by making their impact visible and manageable. It helps teams see how changes in input quality show up in process behavior, and suggests ways of running that keep product quality and cost on track. This gives manufacturers confidence to switch away from petrochemical inputs without risking unstable performance.
TimesTech: You’re inviting collaborations across CDMOs, OEMs/SIs, and global ingredient brands. What kinds of early pilot projects or industry partnerships will Lemnisca be prioritizing, and what impact do you expect in the first 12–18 months?
Pushkar: We are prioritizing a small set of pilots where better development and scale-up clearly change the business outcome, such as fermentation-based ingredients in personal care, nutrition, and specialty chemicals. In the first 12–18 months, we want partners to see concrete results: fewer re-runs at pilot scale, smoother handover into the plant, and better use of their existing assets and teams. For CDMOs and technology partners, Lemnisca sits as an intelligence layer on top of their current setup, helping them offer more reliable and differentiated services.
TimesTech: Theia Ventures has backed Lemnisca as part of its deep-tech, energy transition, and decarbonization thesis. From an investor standpoint, what made Lemnisca stand out, and how does this tie into Theia’s broader strategy for building sustainable industrial systems?
Pushkar: Lemnisca stood out because it brings intelligence and predictability to a part of biomanufacturing that is still slow, variable and expensive to scale. The team has built an AI first approach where every fermentation run is modelled, simulated and improved through data before it ever reaches industrial scale. This creates faster development cycles, lower production costs and a system that becomes stronger as more data flows through it.
For us, this fits directly into our strategy of backing companies that build the digital and physical foundations for sustainable industry. We focus on technologies that make manufacturing easier to scale and bring the intelligence needed to move ideas from the lab into real world production. As industries shift away from petrochemical routes, we will need new ways to produce materials and that can only happen if biomanufacturing becomes predictable and efficient. Lemnisca sits at the center of this transformation, which is why it aligns so closely with our long-term thesis.
TimesTech: Your founders say they are “rethinking everything—from lab workflows to model architectures.” What are the next steps in Lemnisca’s product roadmap, and how do you envision the future of Bio-AI shaping global biomanufacturing over the next decade?
Pushkar: Lemnisca’s next step is to make the companion the common workspace for lab and plant teams, so experiments are planned with future manufacturing in mind and production experience automatically feeds back into development. For us, “rethinking everything” means changing how work is organized, how information flows, and how decisions are taken, not just adding another tool. Over the coming decade, we expect such Bio-AI companions to become standard in biomanufacturing, making it easier to bring new products to market and to trust biology as a stable way of making complex ingredients.
