AMILI, a Singapore-based precision gut microbiome company, said Wednesday it has raised$10.5 million in Series A funding to accelerate its business expansion in Southeast Asia and Greater Asia.
The round was led by Vulcan Capital, the investment arm of the late Microsoft Corp co-founder Paul Allen that invests in category-leading technology, internet, and life sciences companies, AMILI said in a statement.
Other new investors include Pruksa Group, TVM Capital Healthcare, Emtek Group, Capital Code, Pureland Group, Blue7 and SEEDS Capital, the investment arm of Enterprise Singapore. GK Goh and other existing investors also participated in the round.
The funds raised will be used to accelerate microbiome research partnerships and discovery, develop AMILI PRIME and deepen AMILI’s presence in Southeast Asia initially and the rest of Asia subsequently.
The round was carefully constructed to bring onboard investors with expertise from the biotechnology, healthcare, food technology sectors, to accelerate AMILI’s expansion in microbiome diagnostics and interventions including both functional foods and clinical therapeutics.
“AMILI is delighted to welcome Vulcan Capital and our other Series A investors as partners on our journey to unlock the potential of the human microbiome. We are incredibly excited by the traction we are seeing across our platform and eager to expand our presence in Southeast Asia and Greater Asia,
“We thank our new and existing investors for placing their trust in us as we continue to develop microbiome-based diagnostics and interventions to enhance human health”, said Dr Jeremy Lim, Chief Executive Officer and Co-Founder of AMILI.
AMILI is a precision gut health company building the world’s largest multi-ethnic Asia-centric microbiome repository of data and samples, including Southeast Asia’s only microbiome bank. It through its proprietary analytics engine, AMILI PRIME, develops diagnostics tests, predictive algorithms and microbiome-modifying interventions.
The company has three core assets which allows it to create and capture value: (i) a multi-ethnic Asia microbiome database, (ii) a microbiome bank with samples stored for metagenomic and metabolomic analysis, and (iii) AMILI PRIME, a set of proprietary analytical tools, informatics pipelines and discovery engines.
“Although gut health research has advanced steadily over the years in other regions, there is still a big gap in research that is representative of the Asian population. We are excited to journey with AMILI as it advances microbiome research and positively impacts millions of lives.” said Tommy Teo, Managing Director of Vulcan Capital.
Since its inception, AMILI has established more than 20 research studies across a wide range of health indications, with a total grant value exceeding S$60 million ($43.15 million). It is the only FMT provider in Southeast Asia, serving the region’s 680 million people.
The company also recently launched its direct-to-consumer precision gut health brand, BIO & ME, in Singapore and plans to expand into the rest of Southeast Asia and Hong Kong later in 2022. It has several partnerships ranging from large fortune 500 multinational corporations (MNCs) to insurgent brands in the consumer space and continues to break new ground in this area.