What gaps did you identify within India’s biotech landscape that led you to create Biofoundry Technologies (Biofoundry)?

Biofoundry is a biomanufacturer of recombinant proteins and user-friendly kits. Focusing on specialty proteins used in biopharma, particularly enzymes, our expertise lies in protein engineering, assay design, and recombinant manufacturing technology. We identified three gaps in life sciences in India that informed our business model. First, we saw a lack of timely availability of critical specialty reagents domestically. Companies typically order specialty enzymes or proteins from an MNC, and these are often imported with long lead times. When you are developing a product, this can compound delays in arriving at answers. For example, if I have to wait a month to receive new raw materials to run experiments each time I order them while in the R&D phase, my three-month product sprint can turn into a year-long endeavor. Second, we saw the need for more lot-to-lot consistency of key raw materials, particularly those derived from animals and plants for which the source can vary dramatically. This is critical for GMP manufacturers of course, but even for researchers in academia, consistency is key for demonstrating reproducibility in experiments. Third is the need for cold chain, meaning a low temperature-controlled supply chain network that ensures products maintain their quality and safety. Particularly when it comes to tier-II and tier-III cities where many companies have manufacturing plants, secondary delivery partners often struggle with maintaining proper temperatures.

Biofoundry tackles these three issues through the product design itself, and in doing so, is a significant enabler of biotech growth in India. Given the need for affordable molecular tools to accelerate research here, we identify strong demand within the domestic biotech sector, and we hope to leverage our capacity in India to eventually bring our robust and user-friendly products to users around the globe.

How startup friendly is India’s financing ecosystem?

India’s startup culture is having a moment, and this has translated over to biotech. MNCs historically have had the largest footprint, alongside a few large indigenous players, but now more than ever there are big opportunities for startups that can provide customized solutions to the Indian market. Nonetheless, R&D budgets in Asia are conservative, and it is important for companies to tackle product development with this in mind. Unlike in Silicon Valley, where biotech funding can happen on hope, funding in India is more conservative as investors want to see customer commitment before pouring money into an emerging company. This can be a bottleneck for companies with good capabilities and products but limited market access. However, this also forces good business discipline. To overcome this, companies need to be creative in mitigating investor risk towards funding the growth of the sector.

In what way does the nature of life sciences innovation differ in India from in the US?

In the US a lot of funding and innovation goes into developing breakthrough products, and the scale of this funding environment unlocks a rapid pace of R&D development. In India, my observation is that a lot of innovation happens around business models. Here, innovation is more methodical and sustainable, as companies need to validate their ability to produce a product at a certain cost for a specific customer before building out capacity. Biofoundry developed pilot products that were validated at or above MNC benchmark performance before moving forward with our launch and GMP facility.

What are your goals for Biofoundry for the coming year?

In 2022, we privately launched our portfolio to a select group of users, underwent market validation, and inaugurated our GMP manufacturing line. By the end of 2022, we will go public with our first full phase portfolio of products. One product we are working to patent. Over the next year, we also hope to close a large commercial partnership that will make our products accessible to all.