Elucidata, a biomedical molecular data company, announced today a $5 million pre-Series A funding round led by IvyCap Ventures. The financing round also saw participation from Hyperplane Venture Capital and a few angel investors.
The funding will enable Elucidata to capitalize on its position as a leading provider of structured biomedical molecular data to the life sciences industry. The company plans to use the funding to accelerate product development, expand US operations, bolster marketing efforts, and continue hiring world-class talent in India.
Elucidata was founded in 2015 by University of Chicago and MIT graduate Abhishek Jha, IIT Delhi graduate Swetabh Pathak, and Dr. Richard Kibbey (MD PhD) at Yale School of Medicine. The Delhi- and Cambridge, Massachusetts-based company is focused on developing Polly, a data platform for drug discovery.
The company said that its proprietary cloud platform Polly is the largest repository of biomedical data for scientists trying to discover drugs. With Polly, scientists can get access to curated and analysis-ready data from over 100,000 biomedical datasets, a number that is doubling each quarter, accelerating data-driven discovery efforts.
Commenting on the fundraise Vikram Gupta, Founder & Managing Partner, IvyCap Ventures, said, “In the pharma industry, biomedical data of drug discovery is increasing in diversity and volume at a rapid rate. In this scenario, it gives us immense pleasure to collaborate with a team which is driven by a vision of drug discovery and pharma R&D. Their platform, Polly, helps in making a large range of biological big data accessible and available to the scientists for machine learning.”
“Polly’s SaaS offering is well-timed with the rapidly increasing demand for solutions that extend the reach of publicly available and proprietary biomedical data for the age of data science in drug discovery,” said Abhishek Jha, Co-founder and CEO, Elucidata. “As an industry, we’re just scratching the surface of how powerful molecular data can be when made FAIR. The strong backing from IvyCap Ventures and Hyperplane would amplify our ability to help our partners improve in their data-driven drug discovery.”
Naimish Patel, managing partner at Boston, Massachusetts-based Hyperplane, said “Hyperplane is proud to be partnered with Elucidata in their mission of enhancing the predictability and speed of drug discovery through their collaborative bioinformatics platform. Having already demonstrated clear product-market fit and grown a strong base of top tier pharmaceutical and biotech customers, this new infusion of capital positions the company for accelerated market growth in the years to come.”
Elucidata launched Polly in April 2019 and now has over 30 partners in industry and academia as its customers. In the past seven months, Elucidata has seen increased demand while expanding adoption at enterprise clients such as Genentech, TRV, Alnylam Therapeutics, and Agios.
About Elucidata Corporation
Elucidata was founded in 2015 with a mandate to accelerate drug discovery by applying its AI-enabled platform, Polly, on vast heterogeneous semi-structured biomedical data. With the FAIR data principles as a guideline for data management, Elucidata’s proprietary technology transforms public and proprietary molecular data into a ready-to-use form as data lakes. R&D teams can build, publish, and host workflows to analyze data and make better data-driven decisions to discover therapeutic assets with high odds of success in the clinic. Elucidata has offices in Cambridge (MA), San Francisco, New Delhi and Bangalore.
About IvyCap Ventures Advisors
IvyCap Ventures is one of the leading homegrown venture capital fund management companies in the country managing INR 1,500 crores across three funds. Founded by Vikram Gupta in 2011, the company has been leveraging global alumni ecosystems to build technology-driven innovative companies.
About Hyperplane Venture Capital
Hyperlane is a seed stage investment firm founded by Vivjan Myrto, John Murphy and Brendan Kohler in 2015 and based in Boston, Massachusetts. It invests in startups working on machine intelligence, sensor technology, robotics, virtual reality and augmented reality, and cloud computing technology.
