Impact Connections: Growing Hope Through Fungi Vitae Mushrooms

By Aliya Carr, GSLI Student Associate, and Bianca Busogi, Co-Founder of Fungi Vitae

“Fungi Vitae” is Latin for, quite literally, “mushroom of life.” This phrase is exactly what co-founders Bianca Busogi and Riya Varadhachary set out to do — create a startup that mitigates the problem of inadequate waste management in informal settlements, otherwise known as slums, by growing mushrooms while also providing food security for the communities.

Created in 2023, Fungi Vitae sought to address waste management issues in informal settlements through three steps: collecting organic material from waste sorters, growing mushrooms on the waste, and selling both the intact mushrooms and leftover substrate to farmers as fertilizer. Fungi Vitae went on to win second place at the 2023 SEED Challenge and Best Ideation.

Busogi spoke about the impact SEED made on her understanding of sustainability. “SEED is a really fulfilling program,” Busogi said. “It’s a really good way to get your foot in the door for social entrepreneurship, to see the whole side of the puzzle pieces of sustainability.”

Fungi Vitae’s early days involved many hours of research and ideation before the ball started rolling toward success. These creators wanted to address communities of need with an innovative approach. After identifying waste management as an issue, Busogi and Varadhachary realized that they had to get creative if they wanted to propose new solutions that weren’t already in place.

“We were thinking, how can we take action within waste management? Plastic cycling is a big thing that happens already within informal settlements. There are a lot of waste pickers who pick up plastic and sell it to recyclers. Some of [the issues] were already taken care of in a way,” Busogi said.

Busogi and Varadhachary then noticed a lack of structure in these waste management systems. After identifying the problem, the two went on to develop a more structured approach for these communities to dispose of waste organically. However, mushrooms were not the first idea that the pair had.

“Algae is a good fertilizer as well, and it would be a great thing to use,” Busogi said. “We didn’t know how algae was grown originally. When we found out [how it was grown], we noticed it took huge vats of water. We were like, wait a minute, this isn’t feasible.”

After additional research and continuing to bounce ideas off of one another, Busogi and Varadhachary finally landed on their thousand-dollar idea.

“We looked at mushrooms and decided that it was the most feasible,” Busogi said. “Mushroom fertilizer was a big thing already, so it became twofold. Not only helping waste management but also helping make fertilizer for local farms too.”

Busogi and Varadhachary experienced such success in part due to their natural chemistry. The female-dominated duo turned their existing friendship into a powerful partnership. The Global Sustainability and Leadership Institute sent them to their eventual win of the “Women’s Entrepreneurship Award” at the Fowler Global Social Innovation Challenge.

Busogi spoke about what made their partnership so strong. “We had the same interests, naturally, as friends do,” Busogi said. “[Varadhachary] is an economics major, and I’m in biochemistry, so I knew she’d fill the gaps I had within the space of business.”

The friends went into pitching not expecting their big win. Both Busogi and Varadhachary simply wanted to put their best foot forward and display their work for the public to see, unsure of what would lie ahead.

“We knew what some of our peers were working on, and knew that they were doing great things as well,” Busogi said. “We knew we’d be happy, even if we lost, knowing that good work was being put out there.”

Since their win, Busogi and Varadhachary both continue to further their work within the social impact space, extending their research and testing the feasibility of their product on a wider-scale basis. Busogi stated that opportunities like SEED were instrumental to helping both partners create the impact they wanted to make on the environment.

“If we all do as much as we can, then change will occur,” Busogi said. “I have the opportunities and the resources to do a good thing for the environment.”