Biotech firm Elucidata, backed by the likes of IvyCap Ventures and Hyperlane Venture, on Tuesday said it has raised $16 million in a series A round led by global investment firm, Eight Roads Ventures.
The round also saw participation from F-Prime Capital, along with existing investors IvyCap Ventures and Hyperplane Venture Capital.
Founded in 2015, by Abhishek Jha, Swetabh Pathak and Richard Kibbey, Elucidata is a biotech platform focusing on life sciences research and development (R&D) through its machine learning (ML) platform, Polly. It offers pharmaceutical and diagnostic companies access to biomolecular data that can be used to further their artificial intelligence (AI) initiatives in healthcare.
The firm plans to use the funds to deepen product capabilities in translational drug research and allied markets, scale go-to-market initiatives and accelerate global expansion of operations, it said in a statement.
“Organizations often underestimate the importance of data quality, and as a result, a lot of AI/ML initiatives are compromised. We de-risk such initiatives in life sciences R&D by empowering them with high-quality biomedical data at every stage of the R&D process,” said Jha, co-founder and chief executive officer, Elucidata.
The startup provides access to curated biomedical data that can be further analysed over a graphical user interface (GUI) or programmatically.
According to a statement by the company, more than 30 life science companies, including Genentech, Pfizer, Janssen as well as research institutes like Stanford and Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation are using Polly to shorten their drug discovery cycles.
“This technology has been used by leading life sciences companies on over 2.5 million biomolecular datasets,” the company said.
Bio-pharmaceutical companies are increasingly relying on biomedical data to look for new solutions or therapies in biology and medicine.
“Deciphering insights from biomedical data is at the heart of addressing the world’s most important breakthroughs in biopharmaceuticals,” said Ashish Venkataramani, Partner, Eight Roads Ventures.
“Elucidata’s technology platform seeks to democratise access to curated biomedical data at scale, allowing biopharmaceutical companies to accelerate the discovery and development of novel therapies,” he added.
