Mumbai
India/UK-based agri-genomics start-up Piatrika Biosystems has raised $1.2mn in a seed round led by Ankur Capital. The company is bringing sustainable seeds and agri chemicals to market faster and cheaper. The investment will be used to build a strong product development team, for more profound research, and to accelerate the production and commercialization of MVP.
To sustain an estimated 9bn global population by 2050, global food production needs to increase by about 50 to 70 per cent. This growing global population along with the element of climate change will lead to unprecedented agricultural challenges in the coming decades if it is not addressed now. As the world is currently experiencing unprecedented issues around the global food supply, caused by an imbalance in the supply chain where there is excess production of some crops while there are nutritional deficiencies on the other hand.
The issue goes beyond just the need for social and economic sustainability and into biotic/abiotic stress resilience, over/under-production of required nutrition, and exploring better alternatives like bioethanol, squalene, etc from local crops. In this reality, the need for sustainable agriculture, coupled with an aggressive growth strategy, has necessitated a change in process management.
Founded in 2019 by Vasudev Kumanduri and Phani Yarlagadda, Piatrika Biosystems is also building a new innovative cloud-based enterprise Platform-As-A-Service (PAAS) for agri-genomic discoveries and plant breeding decision support, program designing, and monitoring. The seed discovery platform is supported by novel technologies in computational biology and data science, integrating this with autonomous phenotypic, temporal, and spatial data capture for more accurate analysis helps enhance the discovery process. The company aims to bridge the gap between scientific research and commercial enterprise solutions.
Vasudev Kumanduri, Co-Founder & CEO, Piatrika Biosystems, said, “There remains a significant disconnect between state-of-the-art research and its practical implementation. This means that while there has been ground-breaking research in recent years in computational biology/genomics, data science, cloud and instrumentation, this important knowledge has not been applied in a timely practical manner in agriculture. There is an urgent need to translate these research advances into practical benefit for the agriculturist, the consumer and ultimately the planet through modern, sustainable and ethical food production.”
Phani Yarlagadda, Co-Founder & COO at Piatrika Biosystems, said, “Weather, war and viruses have disrupted global food systems. This has put immense pressure to produce more food using less resources. Seed companies and agri-research institutes are looking for affordable enterprise-grade plug-in solutions that can leverage the recent advancements in technology to optimize the processes involved in taking a seed from (the) lab to (the) farmer.”
Ritu Verma, Partner, Ankur Capital, said, “We are excited to partner with Piatrika on their journey to enable and create new seeds through computational biology. With the challenges that agriculture faces both from climate and increased food demand, innovation in the seed sector is critical. With advances in computational biology, we see this as a critical tool to bring new seeds to market quickly.”