Michela Puddu
Co-Founder & CEO of Haelixa, EU prize for Women Innovators
At the laboratories of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, Michela developed an innovative system of anti-counterfeit DNA-based tracing technology. Based on these findings she created a start-up that operates in the textile sector, agri-foods and luxury goods. Once a compulsive clothes shopper, today Michela has made sustainability and traceability of supply chains her mission, as a consumer and businesswoman.
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If someone were to ask Michela to describe herself as a young girl, she would say three things. First, her prowess as a student, both in the sciences and in the arts. Second, her passion for sports, starting with athletics and third, of no less importance, an overwhelming desire to shop, which as you can imagine resulted in the purchase of inordinate quantities of articles of clothing, most of which remained unworn in her closet.
At the end of high school, and despite help offered by the university orientation course at the Normale di Pisa (The Scuola Normale – University of Higher Education in Pisa), her uncertainty about which university to enroll at was focused around two choices which had little in common: medicine and materials science. Having opted for the latter at Tor Vegata, near her home in Rome, she soon discovered that she had made the right choice, but at the same time she realized it was not the kind of applied science course that she had envisioned. It was much more theoretical primarily because of the lack of infrastructure and laboratories available to students.
Her desire to put what she had learned into practice, meant that on graduating, Michela decided to move away, and with her family’s aid and support she crossed the alps to Zurich in Switzerland, where she began a doctorate at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH Zurich). “I was immersed in a stimulating environment, both work-wise and socially”, she says. “It was the ideal setting for a researcher, and most likely what I have managed to do here would have been impossible in Italy”. It comes as no surprise that her experience in Switzerland, which should have been temporary or just limited to the time it would have taken for her to complete her doctorate, continues today.
In Zurich in particular, there were a couple of elements which when combined were to be pivotal in the years to come. Michela was familiar with the world of start-ups and innovative business, and at the same time was working on a DNA technology which lent itself to interesting practical applications.
If at the start of her doctorate Michela had been almost certain of not wanting to continue in academia but rather of looking for work in a company, now together with her laboratory colleague she decided to go a step further and start a business venture thus becoming a business woman in her own right. After all, since she was little, she had learned from her mother, a businesswoman herself, that there was never a good reason to worry about launching yourself into a real working adventure. For this reason, the temptation to be independent and accept the challenge had become irresistible.
“From my point of view, entrepreneurship and sports have many merits and share common benefits”, she comments. “Not only in the sense that they present a challenge, but they also demand discipline, of knowing how to face and manage defeat and the allure of being rewarded”. It comes as no surprise then that while she grew as an entrepreneur, Michela also started swimming and cycling, and became a triathlon athlete. “And to counter-balance the emotional stress of work I began doing yoga”, she jokes.
Let us talk about the company, called Haelixa, like the DNA double helix. It was officially founded in 2016 as a spinoff of ETH in Zurich. During her studies for her doctorate Michela had refined a technology to make products unequivocally identifiable, using an intelligent DNA-based tracing system. From a scientific point of view, the challenge was to make this DNA marker resistant to temperature fluctuations and to chemical agents, so that indelible data remained in the products that could then be identified under suitable analysis. The result? A formulation that can be sprayed on each single product to remain stable as a robust in-product marker.
From a business perspective, however, the crucial choice was which sector to choose to apply the technology and market it in. Michela initially identified two sectors, the first was fashion with potential for expansion into agri-foods. As Haelixa took shape, Michela changed her view on certain things. “The more that we looked into supply chain mechanisms”, she says, “the more we modified our eating and clothing habits, increasing the attention paid to food, clothing, and general purchases”. In fact, as is often noted at the time of sale, green washing mechanisms prevail or the supply chain is not transparent, meaning that labeling does not necessarily reflect the truth, becoming more of a marketing gimmick than a certification of quality. It is not uncommon to find that the source of the materials is unknown, you do not know under what conditions the products have been made or whether women and children have been exploited or even if the work has been paid for adequately and how much the process has been a polluter.
In short, Michela developed a personal interest that went above and beyond her professional duty, with the intention, in a certain sense, of redeeming herself from her compulsive shopping habits of the past.
No longer hands on in the laboratory she changed jobs and dedicated her time to raising funds, meeting partners and clients, developing a better understanding of production processes and managing her company staff, which very soon grew to 10 employees.
She also began speaking frequently at public events, encouraging people to become more aware about what they buy, even though sometimes this can prove to be an impossible task for an end consumer. In fact, at a certain point, as you go back up the supply chain it gets interrupted.
In 2019 Michela won the European Union prize for Women Innovators under 35. She is recognized for her scientific and technological efforts in creating an accurate and reliable labeling solution, far superior to any other system based on paper trails, digital codes or even blockchain technology. The DNA, in fact, cannot be counterfeited, and the information is coupled with the product, thus averting falsification and substitution. All of this is fundamental for another sector of application: gemstones and minerals. In the case of natural cotton on the other hand, one idea could be to add a DNA marker to the raw material, and then add additional markers at each phase in the fabrication process. This way all the derivable information is a guarantee of sustainability and ethicality, at each stage of the supply chain. Should an item of clothing be marketed as organic cotton, it really must be organic cotton.
Today Michela continues innovation in her own way, she combines being a businesswoman with a desire to bring social and environmental benefits. She says she misses Italy, most of all the lifestyle, but will not leave Zurich until her company has run its course. Maybe it will be bought out by a big entity able to make molecular and nucleic acid labeling an industry standard.
“Very often the goods that we find on shop shelves both physical and digital are so far removed from their origin that the topic is completely forgotten about”, she reiterates. “From food stuffs to clothing, we are often so caught up in our habits that we lose the sense of things, limiting ourselves to just thinking about the next step, putting food on the table or wearing an item of clothing”. She says this, thinking about what she was like a few years ago, and now she also appeals to the sensibility of others.
