Brazil's S do bem raises R$10M in grants to scale Chinese-plant skincare
What's the deal? S Cosméticos do BemDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom →, a Campinas-based biotech startup, has raised more than R$10 million ($1.93 million) in non-repayable innovation grants. The backers include Brazil's research foundation FAPESPDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom → — through three PIPE projects — plus EmbrapiiDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom → and SENAIDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom →.
How big is the round? For a grant round in Brazil's wellness beauty sector, the sum ranks in the 95th percentile of 814 comparable rounds all-time. That is unusually large for an early-stage company still in pre-traction.
What does it do? Founded by researcher Soraya El KhatibDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom →, 55, the startup develops cosmetics from bioactives in Artemisia annua , a plant used in traditional Chinese medicine and adapted to Brazilian soil over 20 years of research at Unicamp. The species holds more than 3,000 bioactive compounds, extracted using a clean supercritical CO₂ process based on German technology.
The numbers: The company entered the market with its full portfolio in 2025, booking R$90,000 in revenue. It projects tenfold growth in 2026. El Khatib started with R$10,000 of her own money, began research in 2012, and formalised the business in 2015 inside Unicamp's technology incubator.
Why now? Between 2020 and 2023 the startup crossed the "valley of death," when sales failed to cover the high costs of a biotech firm. A private investor turned things around; the company now runs five products and is chasing payback while building traction at home.
The product: Its newest launch, an insect-repellent moisturiser released in April 2026, took eight years to develop and came from a FAPESP call targeting arboviruses. It offers six hours of protection, is not absorbed by the skin thanks to nanoencapsulation, and uses 10 times less icaridin than conventional rivals.
What's the endgame? The flagship rejuvenating serum, first sold in 2020, sold more than 300 units in its opening week and holds a 45% repurchase rate. The company controls its full supply chain, from organic cultivation to laboratory quality control, and outsources final manufacturing to audited partners.
"When I started with the idea inside the university, people told me: 'What you want is impossible.' But I believed," El Khatib said (translated from Portuguese). International uptake has come quickly: the startup earned an ApexBrasil export certification, joined trade missions to Paraguay and Ecuador, and showed its technology at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.
The signal: Non-dilutive public grants remain a lifeline for Brazilian deep-tech founders bridging long research cycles to market. S do bem shows how state innovation funding can carry a biotech idea from lab bench to e-commerce shelf — and, potentially, to export markets.
Image credit: Generated with Gemini
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