About the Innovator

Nivatha Balendra has always been fascinated by science. In the eighth grade, she began participating annually in science fairs in Montreal, with her later projects focusing on the efficiency of ethanol as an antibacterial agent and the feasibility of isopropanol as a safer, more effective alternative. The devastation of the Lac-Mégantic disaster motivated her to find environmentally friendly surfactants that could be used to clean up oil contamination. As a CEGEP student, she collected samples of soil to analyze for bacteria that could produce surfactants. She enrolled at McGill University, where she continued her research, but shifted focus from environmental remediation to replacing surfactants derived from petroleum or palm oil in everyday products. She founded Dispersa® in 2019 during her undergraduate studies at McGill University. The catalyst, being selected as one of 6 finalists for Canada’s first Women in CleanTech Challenge, which came with over $1 million in funding and business support to scale ideas into a growing business. In 2021, Dispersa® patented its BioEterna® microbial fermentation technology which unlocked the ability to create affordable yet high-quality surfactants from food waste, the first of its kind globally. In 2023, Dispersa® fundraised over $3 million in private capital and grants, allowing it to fuel larger production in Cape Breton to further the work done at the research and development facility in Montreal. Earlier this year, the company closed a seed round of $5.8 million to scale its production commercially. Dispersa® will be rapidly scaling the world’s first waste-derived biosurfactant, PuraSurf M, in 2025, the first of what Balendra hopes will be a series of environmentally-friendly, affordable alternatives.