Eagle lands in India as UK shows trade claws
Cambridge S & T pioneer Eagle Genomics has formally opened a new operation in India within the innovation hub of Hyderabad’s Laxmi Cyber City – a move praised by UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson.
UK Government Trade Minister Liz Truss reported that UK businesses have secured export deals with India worth more than £446 million – a trend expected to create more than 400 British jobs.
Eagle Genomics – shortlisted in the Business Weekly Awards – is a global trailblazer in applying network science to biology.
The company has been hitting the headlines over the last year with its ground-breaking approach to networking microbiome science via its e[datascientist]™ knowledge discovery platform.
The solution helps address the world’s grand challenges including a secure and sustainable future for our food, water, soil, health and the planet.
The on-the-ground expansion into Hyderabad, the capital of southern India's Telangana state and a major centre for the technology and biotechnology industries, marks the latest milestone in Eagle Genomics’ customer-driven expansion.
The scale-up company, whose revenues have soared by 300 per cent over the last year, sees India as a critical base as part of its continued international expansion.
The company, which will soon launch a major new funding round, already has a hub in New York’s Genome Center and further bases in Paris and Berlin.
Eagle Genomics already had a team of around 20 engineers working in Hyderabad but the team will now be very significantly expanded with its own brand new office space in the prestigious Laxmi Cyber City innovation hub.
Prime Minister Boris Johnson said: “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 this announcement is just the start of what they can do for India and the UK.”
Anthony Finbow, Eagle Genomics’ CEO, added: “The buildout of both the engineering and science teams in Hyderabad has already had a significant impact on Eagle Genomics’ growth.
“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 won and the access to our most proximate addressable markets.”
Eagle Genomics is also forging strategic relationships with some of the leading scientific establishments in India focused on the microbiome, just as it has done in other markets most notably the UK, where the company has helped shape the Microbiome Strategic Roadmap.
“Eagle Genomics plans to be at the forefront of the Bio Revolution and sees microbiome science as the key to unlocking its potential.”
India’s interest in the microbiome is rising quickly. To date, organisations including ICAR: the Indian Council of Agricultural Research; ICRISAT: The International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics; ICMR: The Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR); Bangalore Life Science Cluster (BLiSC); and DBT: The Department of Biotechnology are increasing their research into the role of the microbiome on crop growth, population health, environmental sustainability, and more.
Eagle Genomics, which turned its focus to the microbiome in 2018, will drive further expansion with a new round of funding planned for the second half of this year.
Current Investors include Environmental Technologies Fund (ETF) and a consortium of investors from across science, AI and analytics fields led by Granpool Innovative Investments. Global revenues have grown by 300 per cent year on year over the most recent 12-month period.
Eagle Genomics’ impressive track record is down to the company’s unique microbiome network science, which it is putting in the hands of commercial R & D teams with its e[datascientist] platform.
Its global customers include the likes of Unilever and Cargill, brands which have understood the substantial role of microbes in maintaining health and wellbeing and promoting renewal of the natural environment.
