When honey experts Sri Govindaraju and Sunil Pinnamaneni cofounded The Experiment Company in late 2019, their goals was to elevate the profile of kānuka honey.

Little did they know they’d pivot to address a major challenge in global health and food security.

From humble beginnings testing glycoproteins in honey, the biotech startup is now developing a platform that could transform how laboratories worldwide detect and manage antimicrobial resistance.

A much higher cause

The company’s journey began with a niche project: building a repeatable, reproducible test for glycoproteins in kānuka honey. 

The work, though specialised, led to a valuable commercial service and it was during this R&D phase that the founders saw a much bigger opportunity.

“We started with a very specific area in honey. Now we are actually targeting a much higher cause,” says Pinnamaneni. 

That cause is antimicrobial resistance (AMR), which the World Health Organization has described as one of the top global public health threats. 

The Experiment Company is developing precision hardware and software to automate bacterial resistance testing, a process that currently takes seven to ten days. 

Their system can cut that to just two to five days – saving laboratories up to 40% in costs and enabling a tenfold increase in throughput. 

Global impact

Despite being a team of just four, The Experiment Company has already been recognised as a finalist in the prototype category at Fieldays and the Parnell Innovation Awards. 

Plans are underway to establish a pilot production facility and distribute early hardware units to overseas partner labs. The feedback and data collected will form the backbone of their seed funding round planned for early 2026. 

With five years of perseverance, The Experiment Company is positioning itself for global impact. Its combination of commercial traction, IP protection, international validation and a clear fundraising pathway makes it an emerging biotech venture in New Zealand.