Strand Life Sciences

• In 2000, the gang of four set up Strand Life Sciences (we started as Strand Genomics and morphed into the more general Life Sciences along the way). Strand is one of the first examples of academic entrepreneurship in India; the Indian Institute of Science holds an equity share in Strand.


• The byline Algorithms for Life signified our intent. Essentially, understanding biological systems at a molecular level is becoming an increasingly multidisciplinary task, and we at Strand want to build systems which enable this process. For instance, it is possible to run experiments today for a few thousand dollars that will identify differences in 25,000 genes and 1,000,000 genome locations between cancer and normal tissues. From this data, how does one identify the root cause as well as potentially curative mechanisms for cancer. Strand today builds the leading platform GeneSpring for the analysis and interpretation of this type of data.


• It's been an intense journey with Strand so far and we now have a great team of 100+ engineers and scientists. In addition to all the scientific, technical and business issues, the one big lesson I have learnt: building quality software is not easy!! .