Eagle Genomics expands AI-driven microbiome research in India, plans for global reach

06 May 2021 --- UK-based microbiome technology scale-up company Eagle Genomics is expanding its operation in India, following a 300 percent boom in revenue and growing consumer interest. 

The move, which will see the company forge partnerships with leading scientific establishments in India, has drawn praise from the UK prime minister. 

Eagle Genomics’ flagship AI-driven knowledge discovery platform, e[datascientist], is used by companies such as Cargill and Unilever and allows them to organize and synthesize research and insights on microbiome data. 

Speaking to NutritionInsight, Eagle Genomics CEO Anthony Finbow says the move is a major step in driving understanding of the microbiome and connecting scientific communities.

“They will enable faster development of the platform to meet the innovation demands of our customers across the food, personal care and AgBio industries and will support the fast-evolving pharmabiotics opportunity.” 

“Furthermore, it means we will have richer and diverse microbiome data available on the platform, which delivers more reliable insight generation for our customers.”

Eagle Genomics will be entering a new funding round later this year.Laxmi Cyber City 
Eagle Genomics’ small team of 20 engineers in Hyderabad, India, will be expanded with its own brand new office space in the Laxmi Cyber City innovation hub – near the Genome Valley, a high-technology business district. 

Finbow asserts that both the business and consumer environments in India are a key factor driving the development. 

“India has a highly diverse population with diverse microbiomes – humans, animals and soil. Understanding diversity in microbial species and conservation of function (in metabolism) across species is a key frontier in developing understanding in the space and therefore India is very important.”

The buildout of both the engineering and science teams in Hyderabad has already had a significant impact on Eagle Genomics’ growth, he says. 

“We have been able to hire highly-skilled, talented engineers in quantities and at a speed that we would not have been able to achieve had we sought to hire in the UK alone.” 

“This increased capacity, which will also lead to more hires in the UK to serve the vast Indian opportunity, is already positively impacting the cadence of our platform development, which opens up additional customer verticals and directly leads to growth in terms of customers and the access to our most proximate addressable markets.”

India microbiome 
Finbow says the Indian branch will begin networking and adding resources to the Eagle Genomics platform.

“Our software platform design and innovation are handled in Europe and the build-in Hyderabad, so the team in India is primarily focused on building the next instantiations of the e[datascientist] platform.”Anthony Finbow, CEO of Eagle Genomics.

“Increasingly we will be adding scientists and bioinformatics specialists also to connect us to the Life Sciences research initiatives in India’s Genomics Valley.” 

The Hyderabad team will enable faster development of the platform to meet the innovation demands of Eagle Genomics customers across the food, personal care and AgBio industries and will support the fast-evolving pharmabiotics opportunity, he says. 

“It means we will have richer and diverse microbiome data available on the platform, which delivers more reliable insight generation for our customers.”

India’s interest in the microbiome is rising quickly, notes the company. Notable organizations include the Indian Council of Agricultural Research; The International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics; The Indian Council of Medical Research; Bangalore Life Science Cluster; and The Department of Biotechnology.

All these organizations are increasing their research into the role of the microbiome on crop growth, population health, environmental sustainability, among other targets.

Global ambitions 
Finbow asserts this is a step in the company’s plans to achieve global reach. 

“We are also expanding aggressively in America to meet strong demand, and we have recently won our first customers in the Asia-Pacific region.”

“I’m delighted that Eagle Genomics is expanding into India to make the most of the opportunities for UK businesses in one of the world’s biggest economies. Our exporters are brilliant ambassadors for Britain, and I hope today’s announcement is just the start of what you can do for India and the UK,” says UK prime minister Boris Johnson. 

By Louis Gore-Langton