Shikimic acid is the promising candidate as a building block for the industrial synthesis of drug Tamiflu used for the treatment of Swine flu. The fermentative production process using microbes present an excellent and even more sustainable alternative to the traditional plants based extraction methods. In the present study, the fermentative production of shikimic acid by Citrobacter freundii GR-21 (KC466031) was optimized by process engineering using a statistical modeling approach and a maximum amount of 16.78 g L-1 was achieved. The process was also scaled up to 14 L bioreactor to validate the production of shikimic acid. Further, the potential of anti-enzymatic nature of purified shikimic acid was evaluated for different lipases wherein, shikimic acid inhibited the hydrolysis of triglycerides by 55-60%. Shikimic acid also profoundly inhibited pancreatic lipase activity by 66%, thus providing another valuable therapeutic aspect for treating diet induced obesity in humans. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.