Aanika Bioscience Raises Fresh Capital to Scale Its Microbial “Tags” Technology Platform

The COVID-19 pandemic revealed the fragility of our supply chains. Companies are re-evaluating their now supply chains, which creates a perfect opportunity for new companies to innovate. 

Current methods of tracking products cannot trace individual items throughout the supply chain, which is crucial for detecting the origins of contaminated food, detecting bottlenecks, and identifying tampering.

A new synthetic biology company is aiming to revolutionize the way we trace, track, and authenticate products. Founded in 2018, the start-up Aanika Biosciences has developed “living barcodes” by creating customizable edible microbes that can be applied directly to individual products.

“Foodborne illness impacts over 50 million people and costs the U.S. tens of billions of dollars a year. Our technology can help minimize the impact and we are developing solutions that may prevent it from happening in the first place,” said co-founder and CEO of Aanika, Vishaal Bhuyan, in a press release.

To advance their technology platform, they raised more than $10 million in fresh capital.

Innovating the supply chain

Originally founded under the name Carverr, and rebranded in 2020, Aanika’s microbial “tags” offer significant advantages over current methods to track products.

• They can be applied directly to individual products, both solid and liquid, without alerting current processing procedures.
• They are resistant to extreme temperatures.
• They are safe to eat and do not affect the products since they are colorless, odorless, and have no taste.

Furthermore, due to the almost limitless number of combinations of biomolecules in the microbes, each shipment gets a unique identifier, which protects against counterfeiting, contains the point of origin, and allows for better product tracking.

“Innovation in food safety is long overdue, and there couldn’t be a more important time to bring a technology like this to the market,” said Dr. Ellen Jorgensen, Chief Science Officer for Aanika. “The pandemic has truly exposed the fragility of our supply chain. Being able to expand and build out our capability will give farmers, insurers, food companies and consumers an added layer of transparency and security, as well as minimize the economic and environmental impact of food recalls.”

Aanika has shown their technology improves traceability throughout the leafy greens supply chain. The technology allowed the producer to trace every head of lettuce individually. With this information, it would be easier to identify the source of contamination in case of a recall. 

Additionally, in 2020, they announced a collaboration with De Beers Groups to determine if their microbial tags can improve the traceability of diamonds. 

Raising capital to expand their microbial platform

The Brooklyn-based company announced they raised $12 million in their Series A financing round. The series was led by Jon Cholak of Adit Ventures along with existing investors Draper Associates and SOSV. The money will be used to scale their microbial “tag” platform, fund research, and expand their manufacturing facility.

 “We believe Aanika could transform the food system as their traceability technology can integrate with the blockchain and ensure high quality data from end-to-end,” said Tim Draper, Founder and Managing Partner of Draper Associates.

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Author

Daniel Ojeda