CrisprBits is using CRISPR to build faster tests for drug-resistant infections
The Bengaluru-based company has built three CRISPR platforms covering molecular diagnostics, gene editing and disease modelling, and is commercialising the diagnostics one first.
A patient who picks up an infection in hospital needs the right antibiotic quickly. Working out which drugs the infection still responds to can take days by standard culture testing. Clinicians prescribe broadly while they wait, and that broad prescribing is one of the ways drug resistance spreads. India records high rates of drug-resistant infections.
was founded in 2020 to apply CRISPR, the gene editing technology, to this very problem and others like it. The founding team is Vijay Chandru, Sunil Arora, Rajeev Kohli, Bharat Jobanputra and Aditya Sarda. Chandru, the CEO, was earlier a co-founder of Strand Life Sciences and a professor at the Indian Institute of Science.
CRISPR is best known as a tool for editing genes. It is also precise at finding a specific genetic sequence, which is what makes it useful for diagnostics: a test can be built to look for the exact resistance gene that determines whether a drug will work.
Three platforms, one commercial first
The company runs three platforms. PathCrisp covers molecular diagnostics, EdiCrisp covers gene editing and strain engineering, and CurieCrisp is aimed at pre-clinical work and rare disease modelling. All three use the same underlying technology, but the customers differ, from hospital laboratories to industrial fermentation.
PathCrisp is the one being taken to market. In February 2025, the company said it had developed the platform for early detection of antibiotic resistance in hospital-acquired infections. The wider product line extends to tests for human health, food safety and animal health, and the company describes applications reaching into agriculture and industrial use.
CrisprBits works out of a 7,300 square foot research and prototype development facility in Bengaluru, which opened in January 2025. The company partnered with Molbio Diagnostics, a point-of-care testing company, in 2023. An earlier test it built distinguished between Omicron and non-Omicron variants of SARS-CoV-2.
Its antimicrobial resistance work won AMR-Quest 2023, run by the Bengaluru research and innovation centre C-CAMP. Senior scientist Dr Reety Arora leads research and development at the company.
Three million dollars, and a centre of excellence
CrisprBits raised $3 million in a pre-Series A round announced in November 2025, at a valuation of $12 million. The round was led by Spectrum Impact, the family office of Rajendra Gogri, Chairman and Managing Director of Aarti Industries. The money came from founders, angels and family offices rather than institutional venture funds.
Existing backer Vijay Alreja Family Office, associated with VJ Technologies Group, took part again, and the promoter family of HBL Engineering came in as a new investor. The company had earlier raised $250,000 in a pre-seed round from the US-based VJ Group in 2023, and has had support from C-CAMP. Chandru has said the company set out to attract patient capital rather than fast money.
The company has said the money will go towards commercialising PathCrisp, expanding manufacturing capacity for its tests, and building an AI-augmented strain engineering platform for sustainability applications. In November 2025, it said it planned to take its diagnostic products into markets in Africa and Latin America within six months.
In December 2025, JNCASR in Bengaluru, an autonomous institute under the Department of Science and Technology, signed a Letter of Intent with CrisprBits to jointly establish a Centre of Excellence for CRISPR Innovation and Translation. Chandru has written publicly that India needs the research infrastructure, governance and regulation in place before it can benefit from what CRISPR can do.
(This story has been researched and compiled using publicly available information.)