From Fungi to the Global Stage: Mohamad Arekha Bentangan’s Journey in Mycelium Innovation

Long before becoming an Australia Awards scholar, Mohamad Arekha Bentangan was experimenting with fungi in his own kitchen.

In 2012, without access to a modern, well-equipped laboratory, Arekha and his team began exploring the potential of fungi using whatever equipment they could find. Years later, those early experiments would lead to the establishment of Mycotech Lab (MYCL), an Indonesian biotechnology company developing innovative materials from fungi, particularly mycelium.

Now, through an Australia Awards Scholarship, Arekha is pursuing doctoral studies at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT University), building on the research and innovation he began with MYCL more than a decade ago.

His journey reflects a belief that curiosity, persistence and collaboration can transform unconventional ideas into solutions with global potential.

From Tempeh to the National Gallery of Victoria

Arekha and his partners began with a simple ambition: to create something that could benefit society.

Fresh graduates at the time, they started exploring fungi and brainstorming ways to encourage children to learn more about food and where it comes from.

Their first product, Growbox, was an interactive kit that allowed people to grow edible mushrooms at home. Designed as an educational tool, it helped children understand the journey of food from cultivation to harvest.

The product received a positive market response and was eventually exported to several countries, including Singapore.

But Arekha and his team wanted to explore fungi beyond food. Their curiosity led them to investigate the potential of mycelium—the thread-like structure of fungi—as a renewable material.

Inspired by tempeh, a traditional Indonesian food made through fermentation, the team applied a similar process to develop mycelium-based materials. Instead of using soybeans, they experimented with agricultural waste as a growing medium.

With limited resources, the team relied on whatever equipment was available, including a borrowed oven and pressure cooker to sterilise agricultural waste.

‘I even got scolded back then. Where's the pressure cooker? It was gone and dirty because we used it to sterilise agricultural waste, so it got dirty,’ Arekha recalled.

For about a year, many of their experiments failed. Limited equipment made the process even more challenging, but the setbacks also pushed the team to think creatively and keep refining their approach. Eventually, they developed their prototype.

In 2015, MYCL was established, with innovations centred on bio-based building materials and mycelium-based alternatives to leather. Since then, Arekha and his team have registered their materials and secured more than three patents in the field.

Fungi have the potential to transform underused resources into valuable materials. Arekha sees particular opportunities in Indonesia, where large volumes of agricultural waste are generated each year but much of it remains underutilised.

As MYCL grew, Arekha had opportunities to present the company’s innovations internationally, including at Melbourne Fashion Week in November 2023. Encounters with researchers and innovators from universities around the world encouraged him to deepen his knowledge and pursue further research.

That ambition brought him to RMIT University in 2025 through the Australia Awards Scholarship.

At RMIT, he joined a multidisciplinary team developing the Mycelium Wildfire Jacket, a protective jacket incorporating fungi-based materials as a more environmentally sustainable alternative to conventional protective gear. The project responds to the recurring wildfires that have affected parts of Indonesia and Victoria, Australia, in recent years.

The innovation will be showcased as part of the ‘Plant Life: The Nature of Design’ exhibition at the National Gallery of Victoria, which runs from 28 August 2026 to 7 February 2027.

Innovation Through Interdisciplinary Collaboration

For Arekha, developing the Mycelium Wildfire Jacket also reinforces an important lesson: innovation does not happen in isolation.

The project brings together researchers and designers from different disciplines, combining sustainable materials research with practical design. This multidisciplinary approach is familiar to Arekha, who has worked with people from diverse professional backgrounds since the early days of his start-up.

‘I believe scientific discoveries may not attract much interest without appealing design and clear applications. And even if they are presented well, we may still struggle to commercialise them without our business colleagues,’ Arekha said.

For him, collaboration is not simply about bringing together different areas of expertise. It is about understanding how different perspectives can help transform research into practical solutions.

This became even clearer during his studies at RMIT University, where he found an academic environment that encouraged researchers to collaborate across disciplines and actively seek opportunities to connect ideas.

After years of working in industry and running his own start-up, Arekha had to adapt when he returned to academic research. He had to strengthen his research writing skills while balancing the demands of doctoral study with managing his company remotely.

‘There are still a lot of things I don’t know, so I feel like I’m a beginner again, which is a good thing. I believe that if we feel like we know everything and stop learning about a particular field, that’s when we eventually stop becoming better,’ Arekha said.

Growing With Communities, Creating Shared Benefits

While research collaboration is important to him, he believes that innovation can only create lasting value when it is connected to communities.

From Bandung to Aceh Tamiang, Arekha has worked with local communities to transform agricultural waste into value-added products while building a more sustainable and inclusive supply chain.

‘For us, collaboration with the community is something that cannot be separated from the supply chain system,’ he said.

The program faced an unexpected challenge when flooding affected Aceh at the end of 2025, delaying activities for several months. Arekha and his team sent people to assess the situation on the ground and continued supporting post-disaster recovery efforts.

Witnessing the resilience of the local communities strengthened his determination to restart the program and continue working with them to create shared benefits.

The Potential of Fungi and a Vision for Indonesia

Arekha believes mycelium-based materials have significant potential as more sustainable alternatives to conventional materials. However, he also recognises that it will take time before these innovations become widely adopted.

He hopes Indonesia can continue strengthening its research and innovation ecosystem while creating more opportunities to translate scientific discoveries into technologies with practical and commercial applications.

In the future, Arekha plans to explore new sources of materials and expand his work with local communities beyond Aceh, Bali and Kalimantan.

Arekha also hopes that Indonesia’s future economy will increasingly move beyond the export of finite raw commodities and towards the development of knowledge, technology and intellectual property.

‘I aspire to see Indonesia become a powerhouse in intellectual property, allowing us to sell and license our technologies to other countries. So, I plan to develop various technologies in the field of sustainable materials, so that we can make these technologies available and beneficial to others,’ he said.

From his early experiments in a kitchen to his research at RMIT, Arekha continues to pursue his vision of developing sustainable technologies that can benefit Indonesia and beyond.