Description
Perfect Day, Inc. is a food technology startup company based in Berkeley, California, that has developed processes of creating whey protein by fermentation in microbiota, specifically from fungi in bioreactors, instead of extraction from bovine milk.
The name Perfect Day is a reference to the Lou Reed song of the same name.
History
The founders, Isha Datar, Ryan Pandya, and Perumal Gandhi applied for the Synbiota biotechnology accelerator. Winners would have access to laboratory space, mentorship, and $30,000 in initial funding. Since Isha Datar was the Director of New Harvest, they decided to apply as the "New Harvest Dairy Project", hoping that New Harvest’s established network would help with the application. On April 22, 2014, their application was accepted.
Perfect Day was incorporated on April 28, 2014, under the name "Muufri", and was re-named "Perfect Day" in 2016. The Bay Area company was originally focused on the production of dairy goods (such as cheese or yogurt) for direct retail sale to consumers.
Bob Iger, former chairman of The Walt Disney Company, joined the management board in October 2020. The board consists of cofounders Ryan Pandya, Perumal Gandhi, as well as Iger, Aftab Mathur of Temasek Holdings and Patrick Zhang of Horizons Ventures.
U.S. dairy farmers have asked the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to enforce the definition of milk in Title 21 of the Code of Federal Regulations to prevent competition from Perfect Day products as well as plant milk, which can be labeled milk in the U.S. because FDA does not enforce the definition.
Perfect Day announced in late 2017 that it had been negotiating with possible food industry partners to incorporate its manufactured protein into existing food production lines, becoming a business-to-business ingredient company and marking a change in its business strategy of targeting the end-user (consumer). In November 2018, the company announced a joint development agreement with Archer Daniels Midland to provide commercial-scale volumes of non-animal whey protein.
