Terratis, the startup that wanted to nip the tiger in the bud
Founded in 2024 and supported by the academic incubator Initium, Terratis is embarking on the mass production of sterilized mosquitoes. In 2026, the startup will build a pilot bioreactor facility and deploy its technology in two communities and a campground. Eventually, it will establish an even larger industrial site to increase its production capacity by 2028.
Anyone who has endured the nightmare of swarms of tiger mosquitoes can’t help but envy these pioneers… In 2025, residents of two communities and a campground will benefit from Terratis’s technology to eradicate Aedes albopictus. The method: releasing armies of sterilized males to produce generations of equally infertile offspring. A promising outcome for this young startup, after several years of development within the University Innovation Hub (PUI) at the University of Montpellier.
A 60% drop in the birth rate
Terratis originated from a doctoral thesis conducted from 2009 to 2012 on behalf ofthe IRD on the island of Réunion. It was Clelia Oliva’s thesis, in which she applied the sterile insect technique (SIT) to the tiger mosquito for the very first time. “My thesis involved developing part of this process: controlling an insect’s reproduction, producing millions of them per week, sterilizing them with X-rays, and releasing them, ” explains the startup’s founder. In 2021, the IRD set out to conduct a proof-of-concept trial on about twenty hectares, and the results proved very encouraging, with Aedes albopictus birth rates dropping by nearly 60% in just a few weeks in the test area. For her part, Clelia Oliva decided to “step out of the lab and get things done.” “I knew it was a great tool and that it worked very well. We needed to scale it up. At first, I thought about launching through an existing company, but I ultimately launched the project myself.”
With the help of the Initium academic incubator, she quickly got the project off the ground. “When I told them about it, they gave me a boost. They paved the way for me and told me they had all the tools to help me,” recalls Clelia Oliva. Shortly thereafter, she joined the Jump’in creation program at the BIC (Business & Innovation Center) in the Montpellier metropolitan area and learned about every aspect of starting a business, from accounting to human resources management. “When you come from a research background, you have to retrain your brain to think differently,” she explains. This initial step allowed her to be pre-incubated at the BIC and to secure the Start’Oc Projet grant, a €10,000 funding award provided at the time by the Occitanie region.
A crucial grant from BPI France
In 2023, while still in the pre-launch phase, the project also received a €120,000 BFT Lab grant, followed shortly thereafter by a second €90,000 grant dedicated to deep tech startups, both awarded by BPI France. In 2024, the IRD granted the company a technology transfer through Satt AxLr (a technology transfer acceleration company), a major player in the University of Montpellier’s PUI. For the seed phase, Satt provided access to a maturation program worth nearly 830,000 euros. “This investment allowed us to hire three people and purchase all the equipment. It’s a 15-month program that will help us launch next year, ” adds Clelia.
Throughout the process—covering technical aspects, market research, and communications—the BFT Lab grant received through Satt AxLR proved to be a significant source of support. “This funding allowed me to work with my future business partner, Dorian Barrère, who initially served as a consultant on ‘communication’ and ‘customer acquisition’ thanks to this grant. And then he got really into it, ” adds Clelia Oliva, who officially launched Terratis in April 2024.
3,000 insects per hectare per week
Under the MedVallée label, Terratis is currently moving into a facility of nearly 200 square meters in the Parc 2000 business park. “This pilot plant will enable us to develop automated mosquito breeding, with a production capacity of 1 to 1.5 million mosquitoes per week, and to begin sales.” In the short term, Terratis is expected to begin its commercial rollout with a coverage capacity of 300 hectares, initially spread across two neighborhoods in two different local jurisdictions and a campground. It could also treat airports—sensitive areas should viruses such as Zika or chikungunya spread via female tiger mosquitoes…
“In total, starting in 2025, we will be able to release about 3,000 insects per hectare per week from April through November,” predicts the president of Terratis. But starting in 2026, the company will move to the industrial scale with an even larger bioreactor project. “Starting in 2028, we plan to produce up to 100 million males per week. This will allow us to protect nearly 40,000 hectares of land… The strength of this mosquito lies in its high reproductive capacity. The female can lay hundreds of eggs, but she reproduces only once. We want to exploit this weakness.”
In the near future, Terratis could also apply this technique to agricultural pests such as the Mediterranean fruit fly, the codling moth, and Drosophila suzukii. The goal is to offer an alternative to pesticides and chemicals.