The company is planning to develop a test kit that can detect the coronavirus in a saliva sample as well as optimizing their test kits to be compatible with every PCR machine available in the country.

“By using saliva, diagnosing COVID-19 will be more efficient, less painful for the end-user and safer for medical practitioners. Saliva will also make infectious and less-infectious detection possible,” said Nusantics CTO Revata Utama in a statement on Thursday.

He went on to say that Nusantics had developed two generations of COVID-19 polymerase chain reaction (PCR) test kits that have a high sensitivity and specificity rate, which can detect multiple mutations of coronavirus in Indonesia, including the recent United Kingdom strain.

The new round of funding is led by East Ventures, which also backed the company on its seed-funding round in March last year.

Around the same time as the seed investment, Nusantics was appointed by the Agency for the Assessment and Application of Technology (BPPT) to develop the first generation test kits. As many as 100,000 test kits were distributed to 19 provinces across Indonesia as part of Indonesia Pasti Bisa, a crowdfunding initiative to produce and distribute the kits.

Nusantics, in partnership with state-owned pharmaceutical holding company PT Bio Farma, also developed the second generation of the kits, which has a diagnostic process three times faster than the previous generation. Bio Farma has mass-produced and commercialized both generations of the kits with a production capacity of 1.5 million test kits per month with a potential to produce up to 3 million test kits per month.

The company’s CEO, Sharlini Eriza Putri, said the start-up’s short-term focus was to help fight the pandemic, while its medium-term focus was to deliver a fundamental understanding of microbiome diversity and health.

“Our ultimate conviction is to contribute to solving the Anthropocene impact by using a microbiome-related biodiversity index. Maneuvering between an economic recession, a pandemic and Indonesia’s large biodiversity potential is a challenging yet exciting, long journey,” she added.

The company also welcomed Triawan Munaf as a member of its board of commissioners. Triawan is the president commissioner of national flag carrier Garuda Indonesia and a venture advisor at East Ventures.

“Indonesia's rich biodiversity makes it the ‘world's pharmacy’. We must protect the future of our children and the generations to come by preserving this biodiverse wealth and preventing exploitation for other interests that do not benefit us as a nation,” he said in the statement. “This underlines the urgency to support the growth of start-ups like Nusantics, who possess expertise in this preservation. I'm very happy to be a part of this significant journey.”

Sharlini told The Jakarta Post in June that Nusantics had pivoted from its main business as a skin microbiome laboratory that diagnoses skin microbiome to developing test-kits to help make COVID-19 tests more accessible. (eyc)