India's Molbio secures Temasek backing, becomes unicorn

Motilal Oswal Private Equity also participated via its third growth fund, which closed on INR 23bn (USD 282m) in 2018 with a view to making deployments of up to INR 2b. It follows a INR 2.4bn investment from the same fund in 2020. The new capital will be used in part to support a global expansion.

Molbio’s core offering is a suite of diagnostics products called Truenat that cover COVID-19, tuberculosis, malaria, rabies, dengue, and HIV, among other infectious diseases. It describes the platform as infrastructure-independent, providing complete end-to-end disease testing service.

The company claims that Truenat tests enable same-day reporting and initiation of evidence-based treatment for patients, as well as real-time data transfer for emergency cases. The idea is that early detection at the point of first contact not only aids treatment but prevents the spread of disease. Products are distributed in emerging economies globally.

Operations also include an R&D wing called Bigtech Labs, which has developed portable battery-operated micro-PCR tests (miniaturised, chip-based COVID-19 kits), as well as nucleic acid preparation devices to facilitate sample-to-result molecular diagnostics in resource-limited settings.

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• Topics
• South Asia
• Healthcare
• Technology
• Expansion
• India
• Temasek Holdings
• Motilal Oswal Private Equity
• covid-19
• medical devices
• manufacturing