The Singapore-based startup will use the funding to ramp up the production of chemical-resistant nanofilters and run pilots with potential customers across multiple industries

SEPPURE, the Singapore-based separation-tech startup, announces that it has closed a US$2.55 million (SG$3.54 million) seed round led by SOSV, a US-based hardware investor. Other participating investors include Entrepreneur First (EF), 500 Startups, SGInnovate, Koh Boon Hwee (Chairman of Nanyang Technological University (NTU) Board of Trustees, Credence Partners, Yeo Hiap Seng, and Far East Orchard), Rekanext, Belmond Capital, and several other prominent investors.

The company said that it will use the seed funding to increase the production of chemical-resistant nanofilters. It will also run industrial-scale pilots with potential customers across multiple industries.

SEPPURE creates sustainable nanofiltration solutions to separate chemical mixtures at a molecular level with minimal energy use. Most of the current separation technologies such as evaporation and distillation, use heat for chemical separation.

These thermal processes use up to 15 per cent of the world’s energy, and. SEPPURE’s technology eliminates the need for heat, curbing the reliance on one of the most energy-intensive and polluting processes on the planet.

SEPPURE was founded in 2018, inspired by Dr. Mohammad Farahani’s Ph.D. program at the National University of Singapore (NUS) four years ago. With the help of a grant from the National Research Foundation of Singapore (NRF), Dr. Farahani and Professor Neal Tai-Shung Chung, who is now the acting technical advisor of SEPPURE and Provost’s Chair Professor at NUS, developed the core technology to separate chemicals sustainably.

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SEPPURE’s technology can be utilised across multiple markets including food, pharmaceuticals, petrochemicals, and oil & gas.

Duncan Turner, General Partner at SOSV and Managing Director at HAX program in Shenzhen, who led the round, said: “With SOSV focussing on early-stage deep-tech investments for the industrial and healthcare space as well as software-based investments across Southeast Asia, SEPPURE becomes a revolutionary portfolio in an often overlooked area, promises incredible impact in energy-saving through hardware-enabled material science.”

Alice Bentinck, co-founder, and CPO of Entrepreneur First, also commented on the investment: “Farahani and Amir are not only two exceptionally talented individuals but with their combined technical and academic experience in the area, we believe that there is simply no other team in the world more qualified to build a nanofiltration company like SEPPURE.”

The startup has previously won the President’s Innovation Challenge Award 2019 held at Tsinghua University by X-LAB.
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