The Moosa Genetics team
Moosa Genetics, an animal genomics and biotechnology startup based in Indonesia, has raised an undisclosed investment in funding led by East Ventures, with participation from unnamed angel investors.
This funding will be allocated to build a laboratory, team, marketing, and Wagyu (one of the most expensive meats in the world) partnership to fulfil the demand for its customers.
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Indonesia’s cattle industry is highly fragmented, and roughly 80 per cent is dominated by smallholder farmers, concentrated mostly on the island of Java; East Java province alone accounts for 30 per cent of the country’s cattle population. Smallholder farmers often raise cattle for their savings rather than for the commercial market, which significantly impedes the potential of the domestic meat supply.
Most cattle breeders are also low-skilled farmers with low-input, low-output production systems and face fundamental challenges in expanding their cattle businesses. This includes limited access to finance and capital, the lack of collateral, and a local financial sector that is cautious in providing loans due to the inherent risks.
As a result, domestic production can only satisfy about 40 per cent of Indonesian demand for beef, which leads to the dependency on importing beef, especially from Australia.
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Founded in 2016, Moosa Genetics leverages embryo transfer technology and innovative gene selection techniques like CRISPR (a technology to modify DNA selectively) to improve cattle breeding and beef production. By doing so, Moosa Genetics improves meat yield and quality and, at the same time, also reduces the costs.
“Through our modern animal reproductive and molecular technologies, we enable lower cost and better meat yield and quality, eventually bringing substantial benefits to the industry and consumers,” said Dr Ivan R Sini, Chairman and Co-Founder of Moosa Genetics.
However, Moosa Genetics recognises the complexity of breeding and acknowledges that a single matrix of genetic improvement can not determine the ideal version of local cattle for Indonesia. The widespread expectation of traits such as disease resilience and superior meat marbling must be empirically proven for their economic value.
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“To tackle that challenge, Moosa Genetics emphasises the importance of collaboration between industry stakeholders, the platform provider, and dedicated researchers to comprehensively assess and measure the magnitude of improvement over the current cattle breeding standards,” added Ivan.
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