Meet the Eggsperts

Founded as a company in 2013, In Ovo was created with one goal in mind: preventing the killing of day-old chicks. In order to achieve this goal, we have become experts and innovation leaders in the poultry sector. This experience has expanded our vision to encompass the development of a range of technologies that improve animal welfare without impacting production efficiency.

The In Ovo team loves poultry and loves biotech. Our people have backgrounds in biology, biomedical sciences, microbiology and biotechnology. We consider sustainability, efficiency and animal welfare increasingly important focus points in our society, which are very much applicable to the poultry industry. Our multidisciplinary team has a wide range of competences and will soon be expanded with engineering, metabolomics and biochemical screening expertise. If you believe you have the right skills and experience to further strengthen our team? Don't hesitate to contact us with an open application!

The In Ovo story began in 2011, when co-founders Wouter Bruins and Wil Stutterheim met at Leiden University. Having enrolled on the science based business MSc course, they were tasked with leveraging the university's scientific and technical expertise to develop a project with a strong business case. At this point, the project had no name, and the founders had no knowledge on the poultry industry. Discussions with key stakeholders in egg production identified the killing of male day-old chicks as a problem lacking a solution.

Wil and Wouter saw not only an ethical problem that surely must have a solution, but a viable business case. Their scientific endeavours soon led to a technically feasible solution, and through this proof of principle they were able to secure a series of small funding streams to help a student project transition into a genuine business.

2013 saw Wil and Wouter spin out from Leiden University, becoming In Ovo B.V. Continuing in collaboration with the university they were able to develop a process meeting the high-throughput and low costs requirements for sexing the thousands of eggs per minute required at large hatchery scale.

Since 2013, In Ovo has been steadily growing in many ways. The team has increased in size and projects have expanded beyond gender screening. We have won several prizes for our efforts in bettering animal welfare, had our first successful product launch (SmartStart™) and we have established ourselves as true innovators in the poultry sector.

With full proof of concept for gender screening and a wealth of innovations in the pipeline, In Ovo closed a Series A funding round in summer 2018. This will enable us to scale our process to a fully functional device in a hatchery and make the poultry industry more efficient and animal friendly

Photo: Wouter Bruins pitches for the National Icon election - Ministry of Economic Affairs