The synthetic biology company Shanghai Cataya Biotech Inc. (柯泰亚生物) has recently announced the completion of a RMB 250 million B round of financing.
Cataya is an advanced engineering biology platform and biomanufacturing-driven product company that combines synthetic biology, automation, and data science to utilize low-cost, renewable raw materials for biomanufacturing.
According to the official website of Cotea, after nearly two years of development, Cataya has "DBTL" ("Design-Build-Test-Learn") platform capabilities, covering the core aspects of data science, strain engineering, in vivo enzyme engineering, fermentation engineering, separation and purification, amplification and production, and so on. and mass production. Cataya aims to build a state-of-the-art manufacturing facility to rapidly scale up its products in China, with three diversified product lines in personal care, food and nutrition, and pharmaceutical ingredients.
The global synthetic biology market size was estimated at USD 13.4 billion in 2022 and is expected to hit around USD 116.04 billion by 2032, poised to grow at a CAGR of 28.3% between 2023 and 2032. Certain factors are driving market growth, including increased government and private sector support, increased R&D funding in drug discovery, and the decreasing cost and development of DNA sequencing and synthesizing.
Cataya is one of the few synthetic biology companies in the world with both R&D and production delivery capabilities. Taking full advantage of the team's global vision and resources, the company has been deeply promoted with a number of overseas companies to cooperate with partners and customers in Asia, Europe and the U.S. As early as January this year, Cataya has announced the signing of a memorandum of strategic cooperation with Evonik Industries AG, a German specialty chemicals company. Dr. Lishan Zhao (赵立山) , Founder of Cataya, said that the company's goal from the time of its inception was to build Cataya into a company with both top-notch R&D and large-scale manufacturing capabilities.
With the rapid development of biotechnology and the needs of macro environment, the research and industrial development of synthetic biology has advanced rapidly, attracting many companies to enter the market. The representative ones in China include Cathay (凯赛生物), Huaheng Biotechnology (华恒生物), Giant Biogene (巨子生物) and so on. Internationally, there are leading R&D technology companies such as Amyris, Ginkgo and Zymergen.
This round of financing was jointly led by Hengxu Capital (恒旭资本) and Eight Roads (斯道资本), followed by Henan Huirong (河南汇融) and Bits x Bites (食芯资本), with Yuanqi Capital (元启资本) as the exclusive financial advisor. This financing is also the fourth round of financing completed within nearly 2 years of the establishment of Cataya, with a cumulative capital reserve of nearly RMB 500 million. The financing will help Cataya to further enhance the advantages of its R&D platform, and at the same time focus on improving the scale-up production capacity and accelerating the commercialization of its products.