March 22, 2001
Source: The Economic Times
Avestha gets $1.5-m ICICI Venture fund

Plant Biotech Company, Avestha Gengraine Technologies has received $1.5 Million as first round of venture funding from ICICI Venture funds. The Hyderabad-based Global Trust Bank has also come in as a strategic equity investor by contributing Rs 2 crore.

Addressing the press here on Wednesday, Villoo Morawala-Patell founder and CEO Avestha Gengraine Technologies, said that the funds secured from ICICI Ventures would be utilised for sourciing technology, investing in human resources besides being used as Working capital.

Avesthagen's mission is to improve productivity in agriculture and develop agro-technologies that would lead to value addition in food and pharma products, she added . We're working on basamati rice genomics which no one in the world is looking at. We are focusing on quality traits and environmental traits. We have made a library of basamati genes which is the first step of the genomics," she said. According to Ms Villoo Morawala-Patell, the revenue model of the company is based on contract research in the field of life science especially in proteome based analysis and expects to break even by April 2002. The company is also involved in transformation of cereals like rice and millet for in-house technology and development of seed varieties and desirable traits, using diverse gene discovery applications such as RNA differential display, cDNA and EST library and sequencing.

The company plans to promote ecologically viable strategies and alliances that support its core competence. In addition to this, the company also plans to work in the field of genomics and bioinformatics, with wide rang of expertise in marker aided selection, genome sequencing, gene discovery, plant transformation, database management, 3D structure analysis and customised algorithms and annotation tool. The company inaugurated its new laboratory at ITPL, Whitefield. Speaking after inaugurating the lab Karnataka Chief Minister S M Krishna said that the government through the biotech policy is out to help companies with ambitious plans. Karnaataka which already has some of the best biotech companies and research institutions was gearing up to lead the country by utilising the existing training and knowledge base, he added.