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Fermenta Biotech, India’s leading manufacturer of premium-grade APIs, intermediates, and nutritional premixes for the global markets, announced the signing of an Exclusive Licence Agreement with Vellore Institute of Technology (“VIT”), Vellore, for the commercialisation of a technology for Natural In-Situ Vitamin B12 Fortification in Fermented Foods.
Vitamin B12 deficiency remains a significant nutritional challenge, particularly among vegetarian and vegan populations with limited natural dietary sources. Fortifying widely consumed foods offers a potentially more accessible approach to improving intake than relying solely on tablets or injectables. The demand for Vitamin B12 solutions is also being supported by trends such as vegetarianism, ageing populations and greater focus on fortified foods.
Against this backdrop, VIT’s technology, covered under Indian Patent Application No. 202441015300, has been developed by Dr Krishnan Venkataraman and his team at the Centre for BioSeparation Technology (“CBST”), VIT Vellore. It provides an approach to enhancing Vitamin B12 directly within fermented foods during the natural fermentation process, rather than through the conventional addition of Vitamin B12 to the finished food product.
The process uses selected nutrients and cofactors during fermentation to enhance the formation of Vitamin B12 within the food matrix. It is designed to integrate with existing food fermentation processes without requiring substantial alterations to conventional production methods. Laboratory studies demonstrated approximately 80 per cent retention of the enhanced Vitamin B12 levels following cooking, indicating the technology’s potential applicability across both fermented and subsequently cooked foods.
Commenting on the milestone, Prashant Nagre, Managing Director, Fermenta Biotech said, “Fermenta’s collaboration with VIT Vellore brings together scientific depth and industrial capability with a shared purpose: to make nutrition more meaningful, relevant and accessible. This technology opens a differentiated route to Vitamin B12 enrichment and extends Fermenta’s food fortification capabilities beyond customised vitamin and mineral premixes. It also reflects a larger ambition of translating emerging nutrition research into scalable solutions that can become part of everyday foods and, over time, contribute to better nutritional outcomes. Our focus will now be on advancing this technology towards practical, market-ready applications with the potential to support improved nutritional outcomes.”.
Commenting on the milestone during the signing and exchange of the exclusive licence agreement, G . Viswanathan, Chancellor  VITv said, “This MoU with Fermenta Biotech Ltd is a significant one and it reflects VIT’s long-standing commitment to transform academic learning into a solution provider for real world challenges especially in healthcare industry. I am confident that this MoU will contribute to India’s capabilities in nutritional science and also fight against micronutrient deficiency.”
The next phase will include application development, nutritional validation, assessment of final Vitamin B12 concentrations, regulatory evaluation and development of commercially viable solutions for relevant food applications. The commercial potential extends across FMCG, food and nutrition, nutraceutical and broader health-related applications. Fermenta will leverage its capabilities in this domain to enable scale-up into accessible pre-mixes and fortified food solutions, exemplifying a meaningful industry-academia synergy to combat widespread dietary deficiencies worldwide.
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