By Diagnostics World Staff
July 24, 2015 | MedGenome of Bengaluru, India announced a $20
million Series B investment from Sequoia Capital. The investment will support
MedGenome in accelerating the expansion of its portfolio of genetic tests,
enhancement of sequencing facilities in India and the US, and expanding its
collaborative network with specialty hospitals, clinics, and genomic research
institutions in India.
The company’s Series A funding round was led by Emerge
Ventures. With the conclusion of Series B funding, Abhay Pandey from Sequoia
Capital will join the board of directors joining Sam Santhosh, Mahesh
Pratapneni from Emerge Ventures and Dhiraj Rajaram of Mu Sigma.
MedGenome offers over 100 genetic tests in India across
multiple disease areas such as cancer, eye and neurological disorders,
metabolic disease and other rare cancers. It is an exclusive commercial partner
for Natera’s Panorama non-invasive prenatal test (NIPT) with a pan-India
collection network.
“India suffers the largest burden of inherited diseases with
about 5-6% of the children born affected. Further, the adoption of Western
lifestyles has largely increased the occurrence of diabetes, cancer and
cardiovascular disease”, said Sam Santhosh, CEO, MedGenome.
“The influx of next generation sequencing and
high-throughput data is changing the landscape of computational biology. This
has resulted in the need for more robust infrastructure, tools, and techniques
for genomic analysis. MedGenome has firmly established itself as a global
market leader in genomics-based diagnostics”, said Abhay Pandey, managing
director of Sequoia Capital.
The company’s next generation sequencing (NGS) lab in
Bengaluru offers genomics-based end-to-end diagnostics solutions in India.