Picture: Helge Jochens (Co-Founder and CTO) und Frank Wallrapp (Co-Founder and CEO), Twogee Biotech

Twogee Biotech develops and commercialises material-specific enzymatic solutions that enable a wide range of biomass residues to be efficiently converted into sustainable sugars. The approach combines highly specialised enzyme systems with biological production processes and aims to transfer these into industrial applications through scalable licensing models.

Motivation: Making Sustainable Sugars from Biomass Residues Economically Viable

The company’s motivation is clearly rooted in the transformation towards greater sustainability and a circular economy. Many enzymatic solutions currently available are not sufficiently tailored to the diversity of real-world biomass residues. Their differing material properties and processing histories often result in enzymes that are insufficiently efficient or too unspecific – and therefore frequently not economically viable overall.

In practice, this often prevents the material use of biomass residues, meaning they are predominantly incinerated or used solely for energy recovery. Twogee therefore pursues the goal of enabling its customers to convert waste materials into waste-based sugars in an economically viable way, creating sustainable, non-food-based biological feedstocks for the chemical and biosynthetic industries – and thus establishing applied, profitable sustainability.

Challenge: Navigating a Fragmented Funding Landscape

Alongside technological development, the start-up faced a key challenge at the beginning of 2025: the targeted identification of suitable funding programmes and mentoring opportunities. The funding landscape in the chemical and technology sectors is highly fragmented, with programmes differing significantly in terms of objectives, evaluation criteria and funding logic.

For a young, innovation-driven company, this entails a substantial time commitment and requires in-depth knowledge of funding mechanisms and system logic in order to meaningfully align development stage, technology and funding instruments and make strategic choices.

Technical Assessment and Strategic Orientation in the Funding Landscape

The Chemie-Cluster Bayern supported Twogee Biotech in navigating the funding landscape in a structured manner, contributing its expertise at the interface of chemistry, biotechnology and public funding.

The collaboration focused on:

• assessing and selecting suitable funding programmes with regard to technology, maturity level and programme fit
• strategically structuring the application content, particularly in terms of value proposition, target vision and funding logic
• several focused feedback and revision rounds to sharpen the content and clearly position the project

Structured Path to Funding Success – From Programme Selection to Approval

This structured approach led to the approval of the DBU Green Startup Grant by the Deutsche Bundesstiftung Umwelt(DBU).

Timeline:

• End of March 2025: Joint assessment of relevant funding options
• Early April 2025: Decision to apply for the DBU Green Startup Grant and start of application work
• Mid-April 2025: Targeted revision rounds with a strategic focus on DBU criteria
• End of April 2025: Submission of the funding application
• September 2025: Final pitch in Osnabrück and grant approval

Voice from the Network

“The targeted and practice-oriented support provided by Chemie-Cluster Bayern was a key success factor for us – from structuring the application content through to final submission. It made a significant contribution to our project being clearly assessed and positively approved within the DBU Green Startup Grant.”

Frank Wallrapp
Founder & CEO, Twogee Biotech

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