Daily Briefing: Singapore mulls raising retirement age of uniformed officers in the military; Vegan platform abillionveg raises $2.77m from seed funds

And molecular diagnostics firm Nova Satra merges with INEX.

From Channel News Asia:

A review into the retirement age for uniformed officers will be completed “in the next several months,” the Ministry of Home Affairs told its officers on Monday.

This comes after Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong announced in his National Day Rally speech on Sunday that Singapore will raise the retirement and re-employment age to 65 and 70, respectively, by 2030.

The current retirement age for uniformed officers is 55 years old.

Uniformed officers are exempted from the Retirement and Re-employment Act due to the “stringent demands of uniformed jobs”, MHA said on Tuesday in response to CNA queries.

These demands include a high level of fitness, agility and ability to withstand physical impact in potential life-threatening and unpredictable environments, it added.

Read more here.

From e27:

Singapore-based social impact platform abillionveg today announced a $2.77m (US$2m) seed funding round led by 500 Startups.

The funding round also included the participation of 1/0 Capital, Blue Horizon Group, Calibre Ventures, and family offices across Asia and the US.

Hong Kong-based Founder of Room to Read and prolific author John Wood has also come on board as an investor and advisor to the startup.

The platform itself is a community-driven review platform for plant-based menu items, packaged foods, and cruelty-free consumer products.

In a press statement, abillionveg Founder and CEO Vikas Garg explained the business goal of helping a billion people join the plant-based movement by 2030 and of donating $1.37b (US$1b) to support animal welfare and education causes.

“Our funding will be used to accelerate our efforts in recruitment, technology, and growing our community to achieve this,” Garg said.

Read more here. 

From DealStreetAsia:

Singapore-based molecular diagnostics firms Nova Satra Dx (Nova Satra) and INEX Innovations Exchange (INEX) have merged to create a $99.6m (US$72m) entity that eyes a possible IPO in 2021.

In a statement, INEX Innovate, the entity created from the merger, said it will focus on addressing the unmet need “for faster and more accurate diagnostic testing and precision health care” for Asian women.

“The merger creates a strong portfolio of intellectual property comprising more than 45 key patents and nine trademarks worldwide,” INEX Innovate said.

The pipeline of new technologies the company is developing includes OvaCis, a point of care kit that can distinguish benign from malignant ovarian cysts in 5 minutes, Zena, a blood based test for the early detection of ovarian cancer, and NovoTectTMBC, one of the first epigenetics-based early detection test for breast cancer in Asian women.

INEX Innovate said it plans to commercialize these technologies by 2020 across Asia.

Read more here.