CrisprBits on Monday announced that it has raised 250,000 USD in Pre-seed funding from US-based VJ Group. The funding will be used towards product development, team expansion and for research and development.
Founded by Dr. Vijay Chandru, Sunil Arora, Dr. Rajeev Kohli, Bharat Jobanputra, and Aditya Sarda in 2020, CrisprBits was started with a vision of developing high-quality healthcare solutions in diagnostics and gene editing that all Indians can afford. The company plans to extend its CRISPR-based diagnostics platform to point-of-care detection of pathogens and antimicrobial resistance genes associated with hospital-acquired infections. CRISPR is used by bacteria to protect themselves from invading viruses and in the past few years, scientists have harnessed the power of CRISPR to develop therapeutics as well as other biotechnological products in the domains of human, plant & microbial bio-engineering.
“CrisprBits was founded with an aim to address critical healthcare needs through the use of a breakthrough technology like CRISPR. The team’s prior experience in developing diagnostics, precision medicine and clinical-research solutions that are used by clinicians, pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies in India and around the world, has enabled us to come out with products that have significant public health and social impact. We are thrilled to welcome the VJ Group as our strategic investors.The new investment will accelerate our next phase of growth and allow us develop many more high-quality healthcare solutions in diagnostics and gene editing,” Sunil Arora, Co-Founder and CEO, CrisprBits, said in a statement.
Very recently, the company developed OmiCrisp, a CRISPR- based test to detect SARS-CoV2 and to determine whether it is an Omicron or non-omicron variant. The test was developed with support and collaboration from the C-CAMP-InDx (Indigenisation of Diagnostics Program), an initiative supported by the Department of Biotechnology, Govt of India.
“The potential of CRISPR technology is truly incredible, and we are excited to support CrisprBits harnessing this technology to develop high quality yet affordable and accessible solutions to improve human health. Our team is thrilled to embark upon this journey with a high caliber leadership and scientific team at CrisprBits to leverage an innovative and groundbreaking CRISPR technology for human well-being. We look forward to working together to commercialize the products that are in the pipeline as well as develop new products. We strongly believe that this collaboration will lead to synergistic outcomes,” Vijay Alreja, Founder and CEO, VJ Group, said in a statement.
