As a rising star in intelligent biomanufacturing, VEMINSYN, an innovative platform for novel bioactive materials, has recently announced the completion of its Series A financing round of nearly RMB 100 million.
VEMINSYN is a biotechnology company dedicated to the innovative R&D and manufacturing of bioactive materials for the beauty industry. The company focuses on discovering high-value bioactive ingredients and leverages next-generation biosynthetic technologies to enable low-carbon production of bioactive materials, providing downstream customers with high-quality, safe, effective and sustainable raw materials. VEMINSYN has already become an upstream raw material supplier to many well-known brands, including ZUBI, Helius, Bloomage Biotech, Fujian, Clorisen, Biohyalux, Anokhos, and KATO.
Dr. Yaran Zhao, Founder of VEMINSYN, stated: “With advances in biotechnology, the world is undergoing a transformation from traditional chemical manufacturing to low-carbon biomanufacturing. We are committed to innovation in bioactive materials with a focus on beauty and personal care, and aim to expand into a more diverse range of downstream products and the broader global market, ultimately becoming a globally leading supplier of innovative bioactive materials. CITIC Catalyst Capital boasts extensive investment experience and downstream industrial resources in the beauty and consumer sectors. With its capital injection and industrial chain empowerment, we believe VEMINSYN will embrace tremendous growth opportunities and work with our customers to create a more enjoyable and better future life.”
Lei Zhao, Senior Managing Director of CITIC Catalyst Capital, noted: "As an emerging leader in synthetic biology, VEMINSYN possesses a robust in-house R&D platform, comprehensive manufacturing capabilities, a rich product portfolio, and professional commercialization expertise. We are delighted to partner with VEMINSYN's dynamic and accomplished management team. Leveraging our extensive portfolio resources in beauty and consumer sectors, we will continue to add value to the company's development and support the growth of China’s synthetic biology enterprises."
Chinese beauty consumer market is now the largest in the world and continues to grow rapidly. According to Goldman Sachs research, it boasts a compound annual growth rate of 11%, doubling approximately every six years, and is projected to reach $145 billion by 2025. Driven by the "new consumption" boom and digital marketing models in recent years, domestic beauty brands have continuously strengthened their "soft power", with rising brand influence and market share. However, more than 90% of raw materials for domestic products still rely on imports or domestic imitation, creating an urgent need to strengthen the "hard power" of upstream raw material innovation. Traditional beauty raw material development is largely based on chemical synthesis, resulting in a rigid innovation paradigm, high technical barriers, and a saturated product landscape. This makes it difficult for domestic brands to achieve breakthrough innovation at the source, leading to severe product homogeneity.
The development of novel bioactive materials through flexible, efficient, and low-carbon biosynthesis has become a trend in future beauty ingredient innovation. Bioactive materials such as bioactive peptides and proteins have been rapidly adopted in the beauty industry. This new innovation paradigm provides a historic opportunity for China's beauty sector to lead in source innovation and build "genuine domestic brands" with stronger global competitiveness and higher premium pricing power. It is against this backdrop that VEMINSYN was founded.
Leveraging its self-developed Vemin Platform, VEMINSYN has pioneered the establishment of a full innovation chain for bio-intelligent manufacturing in the field of beauty ingredients: Discovery – Construction – Manufacture. Supported by the platform's unique high-throughput screening technology for bioactive ingredients and a 10-billion-level bioactive molecule database, the company achieves new active molecule discovery efficiency 100 times higher than traditional methods. It also possesses strong engineering capabilities to rapidly design and implement efficient production solutions. VEMINSYN has successfully realized the mass production and commercialization of a series of new bioactive materials and plans to complete its own GMP facility within this year. Its source innovation capabilities effectively fill the "hard power" gap in personalized and diversified raw material innovation for downstream beauty and personal care brands.
Among its commercially available products is Time-COL17™, which retains the activity of type XVII collagen while enabling absorption through topical skincare application, greatly expanding application scenarios and product forms for downstream skincare brands.
VEMINSYN has established Vemin Lab to build an open innovation ecosystem integrating industry, academia, and research. Through in-depth collaboration with top research institutions in biomanufacturing, including Peking University, Tsinghua University, Zhejiang University, China Agricultural University, and South China University of Technology, the company accelerates the translation and commercialization of cutting-edge achievements in novel bioactive material development, while ensuring a steady supply of high-end R&D talents.
