A few years ago, the world was going through a deadly pandemic; WHO (World Health Organisation) pressers, travel restrictions, and vaccination QR codes had become a part of our daily routine. Amid the chaos, N-95 masks and mandatory quarantines, three young biotechnology undergraduates in Hyderabad, India, Sai Kumar Veldanda, along with his two friends, Lakshman Rupanagunta and Syed Shahed Imam, disagreed with the existing drug development mechanisms, especially when it comes to the expected amount of time it might take for a vaccine to be fully developed and accessible, particularly in their home country, India, and the developing world. They did apply for a government grant back home in India to test their idea and begin with the research phase, but they couldn’t due to limited funding and time constraints.
The idea was to revolutionise the future of drug development; as ambitious as it sounds, they couldn’t operationalise it until Lakshman made it to the Master of Science in Biomedical Engineering program in Groningen. In his first year, Lakshman had already participated in two VentureLab weekends and decided to join the VentureLab North accelerator program (group 17). As we see with alot of other participants, the idea started to operationalise, and Lakshman could move ahead with preliminary financing, business model canvas, pitching the idea to investors, and most importantly, building a team.
In March 2023, Lakshman participated in his third VentureLab weekend, which made everything fall into place; not only did he win the weekend, he was able to finalise an international team under a new name, Formula Y, inspired by the Y-shaped structure of an antibody. For any business idea to flourish, one needs crucial elements; in Lakshman’s case, he and his friends specialise in biotechnology research and bioinformatics but needed more artificial intelligence, finance, sales and marketing personnel. Immediately after the weekend, we saw Harshith Gavi, Guillermo Llopis and Roshan Kondapalli taking charge of the team’s artificial intelligence and machine learning areas and Andrés Lorenzo catering to business development.
“The industry needs AI because saving time means saving money.”
In the last six months, we’ve seen Formula Y winning the VentureLab weekend, taking the stage at the Rabobank X Anner Award 2023 in front of an esteemed panel of investors, business experts, coaches and founders, coming up with a solid mission and vision statement and establishing a substantial online presence within the northern startup ecosystem and securing the MIT Haalbaarheid 2023 subsidy, which paves a way forward to test their idea, procure equipment and incur day-to-day business expenses.
We can’t wait to see Team Formula Y take over existing drug development mechanisms using artificial intelligence techniques, and we wish them all the best in their bid to speed up the drug discovery process and leave a lasting impact on the global health ecosystem.
