Advanced material startup Krosslinker raises about US$1.3m in seed funding

SINGAPORE-BASED advanced material startup Krosslinker has bagged about US$1.3 million in seed funding, it announced on Monday.

The seed funding round was led by 500 Startups' South-east Asia-focused 500 Durians fund, Enterprise Singapore investment arm SEEDS Capital, Entrepreneur First, as well as angel investors, Krosslinker said in a press statement.

Krosslinker, which was founded in 2019 by a team of three scientists, develops a class of advanced lightweight nano materials called aerogels. Krosslinker said that the aerogel is "a space-age material, as light as air and impervious to heat and cold", adding that it has immense value as a thermally insulating material.

"This advanced material once considered expensive to commercialise can now be feasibly produced at a competitive cost with our disruptive manufacturing technology," said Gayathri Natarajan, chief executive officer and co-founder of Krosslinker.

The company said its technology has addressed several challenges that have thwarted traditional aerogels from broader adoption, such as brittleness, dustiness, high cost and limited production scalability. According to Krosslinker, aerogels can now be produced three times faster than current traditional methods, with lowest energy consumption" and reduced carbon footprint.

Krosslinker said the seed funding will provide it with the necessary resources to develop its patented technology to manufacture aerogels and validate it by running pilot trials with customers.

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It plans to first introduce the aerogels in cold-chain biopharmaceutical packaging and subsequently in construction, reefer container, industrial and automotive insulation applications.

The company said that millions of biopharmaceutical products such as blood, vaccines, patient samples and drugs must be maintained at specific cold temperatures to preserve their efficacy during shipping, making their packaging of "foremost importance".

Vishal Harnal, partner at 500 Startups, said: "Krosslinker's aerogel innovation is solving an important challenge of protecting precious pharma products against temperature breaches during shipping.

"We believe this packaging innovation comes at an opportune time when the stakes and costs of temperature-sensitive commercial and clinical drugs, including potential Covid-19 vaccines, are undergoing a dramatic increase."