Biotechnology startup CrisprBits, which is a growing powerhouse in the genetic engineering and molecular diagnostics industry, has been able to close a major pre-Series A funding round, raising $3 million. This funding round is a significant milestone in the journey of the Bengaluru-based company as it shifts to the commercialisation of its innovative platforms and expansion of its operations both in the domestic and global markets. The investment was led by Spectrum Impact, an investor dedicated to bringing positive societal transformation through capital, and the powerful family office of Rajendra Gogri, who is the Chairman and Managing Director of Aarti Industries.

Strategic usage of capital

The pre-Series A round was a strategic and diverse round of financing, showing that the company can attract a wide range of investors, including financial, corporate, and scientific investors. Besides the lead investors, the promoter family of HBL Engineering also committed in the round to further diversify the corporate support of the startup. C-CAMP, the Centre of Cellular and Molecular Platforms, was also involved, which is also a good indication that the institution promotes the creation of life sciences and innovations.

CrisprBits had continuity and ensured unswerving loyalty among its current investor base. By contributing to the round, the Vijay Alreja Family Office, which is the representative of the VJ Technologies Group, reinstated its faith in the direction of the company. The founders of CrisprBits, Vijay Chandru, Sunil Arora, Rajeev Kohli, Bharat Jobanputra and Aditya Sarda also contributed to the capital raise. Such a combination of founders, current supporters, institutional supporters and new strategic family office funding offers a strong mix of financial stability and industry legitimacy for the next step of expansion and product launch of the startup.

The new capital will be used in two main strategic areas, which aim at consolidating the market presence of CrisprBits and its technological uses. The short-term use would be commercialising the flagship diagnostic tool of the company, the PathCrisp molecular diagnostics platform. A significant part of the funding is devoted to increasing the number of production units of a variety of high-impact tests that are essential in social health and industry. These diagnostic solutions are being expanded to meet the demands in a number of essential industries.

The increased production will focus on critical sectors in food safety and animal health, where dependable and quick molecular diagnostics are required in order to support standards and eliminate outbreaks.

The increased ability will emphasise much on the diagnostics of human health, with a particular target being on widespread and sometimes difficult diseases. The business intends to expand the number of high-impact tests in which conditions like sickle cell disease, typhoid, and antimicrobial resistance are to be tested. This emphasis underscores the intention of CrisprBits to address the challenging health problems affecting the world with the help of convenient diagnostic technology. This growth of the PathCrisp platform will ultimately make the firm an important supplier of the necessary diagnostic solutions in India and globally.

Deployment and core mission

The second focus area to invest in capital would be to shift towards the challenge of industrial sustainability, with the background knowledge of gene editing in this company. Part of the financing will be placed in the creation of an advanced CRISPR-based strain engineering platform. The main goal of this superior platform is to streamline the usually complicated process of biofuel manufacturing. With the accuracy of CRISPR technology, CrisprBits intends to develop extremely efficient strains of microbes that will be able to profoundly increase the output and efficacy of biofuel production.

This application is specifically aimed at meeting the unmet sustainability requirements of the industries by offering a more efficient, cost-effective, and environmentally friendly way of producing renewable energy resources. The project is also boosted by the fact that the company intends to develop a proprietary strain engineering platform that uses AI. This combination of Artificial Intelligence and CRISPR technology will make the process of discovery and optimisation faster and place CrisprBit at the crossroads of synthetic biology and high-end machine learning to develop absolutely essential solutions to sustainability, such as improvements to biofuel production processes.

CrisprBits, headquartered in Bengaluru and founded in 2020 by a group of engineers who graduated from BITS Pilani, has a stated mission, namely, to create quality and affordable solutions based on the potent mechanics of CRISPR-based diagnostics and gene editing. The company was named after the CRISPR, or repetitive short sequences of DNA, that occur naturally in some bacteria and archaea (prokaryotes) and are used as a central component of their immune system against viruses. It is a basic biological process on which Crisprbits has built sophisticated devices.

The firm has carefully developed three smart molecular platforms that characterise its products. PathCrisp is the diagnostic branch offering solutions to molecular tests. EdiCrisp has sophisticated gene editing abilities, which are the basis of its therapeutic and engineering uses. CurieCrisp is a disease modelling platform which helps to understand disease mechanisms and preclinical testing of possible interventions. The combination of these three platforms is a unified and integrated way of applying biotechnology in the fields of diagnostics, therapeutics and research.

Conclusion

CrisprBits has had a successful pre-Series A funding is a timely witness to the rampant expansion that the biotech industry in India is currently experiencing. The biotech ventures in the country have taken a dramatic rise in the last decade since there were only 50 startups; there are almost 11,000 startups, which has been discussed by junior science and technology minister Jitendra Singh during a July press briefer. The minister highlighted how the government is committed to the sector and has a strategic intention of having a formidable $300 Bn bioeconomy by 2030.