New Delhi and Bengaluru-based CrisprBits has raised $0.25 million in a pre-seed funding round led by the United States (US) based VJ Group. 

The company will utilise the fund for product development and will hire skilled staff to expand its team. Additionally, the company will strengthen its research and development facilities. 

Founded in 2020 by Vijay Chandru, Sunil Arora, Rajeev Kohli, Bharat Jobanputra and Aditya Sarda, the company claims to develop diagnostics healthcare solutions at an affordable price for Indians. 

The company has claimed in a statement that it is planning to extend the CRISPR-based diagnostics platform to point-of-care detection of pathogens. For the past few years, scientists have been using CRISPR to make therapeutics and other biotechnological products across multiple domains. 

Addressing the latest development, Arora said, “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, and 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 to develop many more high-quality healthcare solutions in diagnostics and gene editing,” he also added. 

The company recently developed OmniCrisp–a platform based on CRISPR to detect SAARS-COV2 viruses. It also determines the variant ( Omicron or non-Omicron). 

Addressing the investment, Vilay Areja, the founder and CEO of VJ Group, said, “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.”