Home Systems biology Agri-genomics startup Piatrika Biosystems raises $1.2M in seed funding led by Ankur Capital

Systems biology

Agri-genomics startup Piatrika Biosystems raises $1.2M in seed funding led by Ankur Capital

Sonny R. McClure

July 21, 2022

Piatrika Biosystems Raises $1.2M in Seed Funding Led by Ankur Capital to Build Platform for Discovery of New Sustainable Crop Varieties

Piatrika Biosystems, an agri-genomics startup based in India and the UK, raised $1.2 million in a funding round led by Ankur Capital. The company brings sustainable seeds and agrochemicals to market faster and at lower cost. The investment will be used to build a strong product development team, also for further research, and to accelerate the production and commercialization of MVP.

To support an estimated world population of 9 billion by 2050, global food production must increase by around 50% to 70%. This growing world population along with the element of climate change will lead to unprecedented agricultural challenges in the coming decades if 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 of others go. The issue goes beyond the simple need for social and economic sustainability and is about resilience to biotic/abiotic stress, over/under production of required nutrition, and exploring better alternatives like bioethanol, squalene, etc. from local cultures. In this reality, the need for precisely 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 an innovative new cloud-based Platform-As-A-Service (PAAS) for agro-genomics discoveries and plant breeding decision support , program design and monitoring. The seed discovery platform is supported by new technologies in computational biology and data science, the integration of these with the capture of autonomous phenotypic, temporal and spatial data for more accurate analysis helps improve the discovery process. The company aims to bridge the gap between scientific research and commercial enterprise solutions.

Vasudev Kumanduri, co-founder and CEO of Piatrika Biosystems, said: “There remains a significant gap between cutting-edge research and its practical implementation. This means that although there has been groundbreaking research in recent years in computational/genomic biology, data science, cloud and instrumentation, this important knowledge has not been applied in a practical way in a timely manner. in agriculture. There is an urgent need to translate these research advances into practical benefits for the farmer, the consumer and ultimately the planet through modern, sustainable and ethical food production. ”

Phani Yarlagadda, co-founder and COO of Piatrika Biosystems, said, “Weather, war and viruses have disrupted global food systems. This put immense pressure to produce more food using fewer resources. Seed companies and agricultural research institutes are looking for affordable, enterprise-grade plug-in solutions that can take advantage of recent technological advancements to optimize the processes involved in getting a seed from the lab to the farmer”

Ritu Verma, Partner at Ankur Capital, said, “We are thrilled to partner with Piatrika on their journey to activate and create new seeds through computational biology. With the challenges facing agriculture from both climate and increasing food demand, innovation in the seed sector is essential. With advances in computational biology, we see this as an essential tool to bring new seeds to market quickly. »

Piatrika Biosystems is incubated outside NIAB (Cambridge, UK) and ICRISAT (Hyderabad, India) and works with researchers, seed companies and research institutes. In June 2022, Piatrika Biosystems was selected as a case study by Food and Agriculture

(FAO) of the United Nations report and featured.

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