On March 5, 2024, Virtue Diagnostics (Virtue DX) announced the opening of its R&D operations in West Java, Indonesia, according to the Jakarta Post. The move formally introduces Virtue DX's global strategy to the Southeast Asian market.
As a start-up company founded more than four years ago, Virtue DX has been expanding its business at a swift pace. In the previous three years, Virtue DX has completed two rounds of financing, built three industrialization bases and R&D bases, covered multiple disease areas such as oncology, maternal and child health, chronic diseases, etc., and laid out multiple innovative technology platforms such as clinical mass spectrometry, panoramic pathology, molecular diagnostics, etc., as well as expanding its business from the domestic market to the emerging markets such as Brazil, Indonesia, and other overseas markets.
In January 2022, Sequoia China led the Series B financing of Virtue DX.
On September 1, 2022, Virtue DX announced the formal completion of the acquisition of Labtest, a Brazilian in vitro diagnostic company, and set up a production and operation base in Indonesia in the same year, expanding its business to overseas emerging markets through the active layout of diagnostic platforms such as biochemistry, chemiluminescence, and molecular technology.
Mr. Budi Gunadi Sadikin, Minister of Health of Indonesia, attended the opening ceremony of the R&D and operation base and delivered a speech at the ceremony. Mr. Budi Gunadi Sadikin, the Minister of Health of Indonesia, gave a speech at the opening ceremony. The local Bekasi district head, the Director General of Public Health, the Director General of Health Services, and the Director General of Pharmaceuticals and Medical Devices of Indonesia were also present at the opening ceremony. There were also 70 guests and partners from various organizations such as the Ministry of Health, National Purchasing and Supply Management Agency (BPKM), PDS Patklin, Gakeslab, Hospitals, and Clinical Laboratories to attend the event.
Located in Cikarang, Indonesia, with a site area of 12,200 square meters and a building area of 8,900 square meters, Virtue DX Indonesia is the largest in vitro diagnostic products operation and R&D base in Southeast Asia.
Currently, Cikarang Indonesia has over 60 experienced professionals supporting the R&D and manufacturing of in vitro diagnostic products. The production capacity of the site can reach more than 1,000 instruments per year and more than 6,000 liters of reagents per day. Of course, this production capacity can be continuously increased based on local demand to meet the demand for quality and affordable in vitro diagnostic products in Indonesia and the entire Southeast Asian market.
According to Zhang Sheng, CEO and founder of Virtue DX, Indonesia is one of the company's important overseas markets. The reason for choosing Indonesia is that, in addition to the huge volume of Indonesia's market, the more crucial thing is that Indonesia has been vigorously promoting the localization of biopharmaceuticals in recent years. "Taking the bidding of public hospital products as an example, if a product already has three or five localized enterprises, then imported products can almost no longer participate. If it hasn't reached that many, there will be a bonus indicator for localization in the bidding."