Sustainability award for artificial milk firm led by Indians

A US-based company founded by a group of Indian-origin entrepreneurs which produces artificial milk has won a Dutch sustainability innovation prize of 200,000 euro, media reported.

An international jury chaired by Steve Howard, chief sustainability officer at multinational IKEA Group, awarded Ryan Pandya of Silicon Valley startup Muufri the runner-up prize of the Postcode Lottery Green Challenge 2015.

It is the largest annual international competition in the field of sustainability innovation, greenchallenge.info reported on Thursday.

Muufri has identified the proteins, fats, vitamins and minerals in milk and is developing a blending process that has the potential to eliminate vast amounts of greenhouse gas emissions being generated by commercial dairy farming.

The biotech startup was founded in 2014 by bio-engineers Pandya, Perumal Gandhi and Isha Datar.

The winner of the Dutch Postcode Lottery-organised award was Jurriaan Ruys (47), co-founder of the Dutch start-up Land Life Company.

Ruys won 500,000 euro for his technology for nature restoration.

"It is inspiring to see how these green entrepreneurs are contributing to a better world... All of these ideas have potential for business success and to go to scale -- which is the only way we are going to tackle CO2 emissions," Howard was quoted as saying.