Company Watch

BioImagene becomes Burrill & Co's first investment in India

Viveka Roychowdhury - Mumbai

BioImagene, a leading provider of affordable digital pathology solutions for cancer diagnosis and preclinical research, based out of Cupertino, California and with an IT development centre in Pune, recently received $26 million in venture financing from investors led by Burrill & Company, Ascension Health Ventures, and National Healthcare Services. Existing investors Artiman Ventures and ICCP Ventures also joined the round with strong support.

Digital pathology involves the conversion of entire glass microscope slides into high-resolution, whole-slide digital images that can be viewed, managed and analysed with a computer instead of a microscope-along with digital pathology management systems that help interpret the information generated from this digitised slide. The scope of digital pathology applications utilising digital slides is increasing as it enables pathologists to access slide specimens and related data from any location in the world, fostering more efficient laboratory workflow, physician communication, education and research at a reasonable cost.

According to Mohan Uttarwar, CEO, BioImagene, "The money will primarily be used for sales and marketing expansion for the US, Europe and Asia markets as well as commercialisation and product development." Speaking about the India Development Center (IDC) operations, Uttarwar said that this is a great asset and a key competitive differentiator for us. "Unlike our competitors we believe that digital pathology is an enterprise software problem that needs a strong software development team. At IDC we have over 60 people dedicated to the design, development and deployment of enterprise solutions. We anticipate this number to grow to over 100 people in the next 12 months. Additionally we are looking at establishing a world class global customer care center at IDC in the near future." he revealed.

Having established themselves in the US, the company is now focusing on Europe and Asia/India and hence the IDC is very important to these plans. Expanding on their vision, Uttarwar says that they see digital pathology as a key catalyst for global cancer diagnosis and are in discussions with customers in India. Explaining how BioImagene's molecular imaging software products links pre-clinical discovery, diagnosis and personalised / individualised healthcare, Uttarwar pointed out, "Digital pathology provides a bridge between pre-clinical drug discovery and clinical diagnostics. Having biopharma customers like Genentech and Genzyme gives us an insight into therapeutics. This experience is used to develop better diagnostic tools in our Pathiam product that is used by reference labs like CorePlus, LabCorp, Genzyme Genetics and others."

Listing the reasons for their investment in BioImagene, Dr Tania Fernandez, Director-India, Burrill & Company said, "We believe that innovation exists not just in the infusion of new technologies but also in the creation of new business models. As investors, I believe we should be funding and including in our portfolio, companies that make enabling technologies cheaper, simpler to use and more accessible both to the initiated and the uninitiated. We need to encourage the development of business models that cater to 'across- the-spectrum' segments of the market and that include the bottom of the pyramid opportunities. This will allow companies to expand into various markets and dominate globally. BioImagene has these elements." Post this investment, Steve Burrill, CEO, Burrill & Company was appointed Chairman of the BioImagene Board of Directors. Taras Silecky of Ascension Health Ventures and Dr Ajit Singh, CEO, Image and Knowledge Management Business, Siemens Healthcare joined the Board as well.

viveka.r@expressindia.com