Hear Out from the Founder of an IIT-born Startup that Uses AI to Transform Biotech!

Pharma Now – We are very excited to welcome Dr. Pramod Wangikar to our show today. The agenda of this podcast is to understand the startup he is leading, which is leaving quite an impression on the industry. Their product presentations and tech integrations using AI and ML are quite fascinating, especially in a DeepSeek and OpenAI-driven world. The use cases they are targeting are real and critical, and the solution lies in science.

So, let’s get started. First of all, I’ve always had a deep fascination for IIT Bombay, situated right beside the beautiful Powai Lake. It’s such a scenic and prestigious institution. So, Dr. Wangikar, please tell us about your journey.

Dr. Pramod Wangikar – I have been a professor at IIT Bombay for the past 27 years in the Department of Chemical Engineering. I teach chemical engineering students, but my research area is biotechnology and, more specifically, metabolic engineering.

In our company, we engineer bacteria for producing certain valuable products, and also we make the process better. To do that, we use very detailed models of metabolism of the organism and simulate it on a computer to understand what is happening in the organism, and to get guidelines for either engineering the organism or the process. So, that’s the overall theme of our work.

Pharma Now – That’s very interesting. As a professor, you’ve done so much work in the metabolism space. My question might sound a bit naive, but it’s something that I personally wonder about. When we talk about metabolism, people usually think of gut health. Is that the same metabolism you’re referring to?

Dr. Pramod – Metabolism is metabolism—whether it is in bacteria, humans, or plants. Any living system. It is the chemical reactions that convert small molecules from one to another. So yes, if you ask what metabolism is, it is what you do in your gut, but the same thing happens in bacteria.

If I were to write down the entire metabolic model, I would need the whole wall to write it on, and I’d still have to write it in very small handwriting. There are that many reactions going on inside a single cell.

Pharma Now – That’s a great explanation. Now coming back to your startup journey. You’ve been a professor for 27 years. How did you turn into an entrepreneur?

Dr. Pramod – So, my research in metabolic engineering uses a tool called metabolomics. Metabolomics is about studying small molecules. We realized very early on that this tool has many applications, and there is no one in India who is using it the way it should be used, even though it has great utility.

Metabolomics is just like genomics or proteomics, but it is not widely used yet. So we thought, okay, let’s start offering metabolomics as a service, and let’s add a few things to it, which will make it even more useful for the Indian biotech and biopharma sector. That was the beginning of our company, Clarity BioSystems.

Pharma Now – And how did you come up with the name Clarity?

Dr. Pramod – We named it Clarity because we want to give clarity about metabolic systems. For example, if you are a biotech company and you want to improve a process, you can do trial-and-error experiments. But trial and error will only take you to a local optimum. To go to the global optimum, you have to understand the system. You need clarity of the system. So that’s what we provide.

Pharma Now – That’s a very thoughtful name. So let’s talk about your product now. What exactly is the product, and what problem is it solving?

Dr. Pramod – So the customers we have—mostly biopharma companies—they want to reduce the cost of production. Take monoclonal antibodies, for example. These are very expensive to make, and the patient ends up bearing the cost. So our objective is to reduce that cost—maybe by 5x or 10x.

To do that, we have to optimize the process. We use a model-based approach. We create a very detailed model of the organism and combine it with data from the actual process. A model alone doesn’t help, and data alone doesn’t help. But when you combine the two, then you can simulate and solve the process to get to a global optimum.

If the cost of production is on the y-axis, we try to bring it down to the global minimum—not just a local dip, but the lowest possible point.

Pharma Now – That’s quite powerful. Is the product already implemented in companies?

Dr. Pramod – Yes. But our product is not a software product that we sell. We offer it as a service. So, a customer has a product and a process, and we help them optimize that process. In some cases, we’ve achieved 5x to 10x improvement.

Pharma Now – Do you have a case study or an example where this worked well?

Dr. Pramod – Yes. Most of our customers are advanced biopharma companies. For example, in one case, the company was producing monoclonal antibodies. Their process was already very good. Still, we could improve it by 30%. In other cases, where the process is not optimized, we’ve seen 5 to 10 times improvement.

Pharma Now – A lot of AI-based tools are extremely costly. How do you tackle that problem?

Dr. Pramod – We are a startup. We have a young team, and our operating costs are low compared to large companies doing AI. Also, we don’t use AI in the sense of language models like ChatGPT. Our AI is very specific to our tasks.

We break down expert tasks into smaller pieces, and for each piece, we build a small AI model. That way, we automate what experts do manually. The expert still has to validate the result, but the bulk of the work is done by AI.

Pharma Now – What is the vision of Clarity BioSystems?

Dr. Pramod – In the short term, we want to help biotherapeutic companies reduce the cost of production—by 2x or 3x—in the next two years. In the long term, we want to go global and work on cell and gene therapy, which is extremely expensive right now.

If we can reduce the cost of manufacturing and testing, we can make these therapies more accessible. Right now, every batch needs to be tested thoroughly. But with AI and modelling, we can reduce the number of tests while maintaining accuracy.

Pharma Now – That will be a huge advantage. What’s your opinion on how the Indian biopharma industry is growing?

Dr. Pramod – The Indian biopharma industry is currently focused on monoclonal antibodies and hormones. The future is in cell and gene therapy. Yes, it’s expensive, but it’s also life-saving. The need is there, and I believe that space will grow. Even monoclonal antibodies will continue to grow.

Pharma Now – Are Indian researchers adopting these technologies?

Dr. Pramod – A lot of basic work is being done in academia and research institutions in India. But commercialization has to come from companies. Startups are now playing a big role. IIT Bombay has supported several biotech startups.

For example, my colleague Dr. Rahul Purwar started a company called ImmunoACT. They have a cell and gene therapy product for cancer that costs one-tenth of similar products elsewhere. And it’s already curing patients. That’s a big success.

Pharma Now – You’ve been a professor for 27 years. What would you tell aspiring entrepreneurs who want to start a biotech company? This isn’t like e-commerce where feedback is instant. How should one prepare?

Dr. Pramod – Deep-tech startups need co-founder-level scientists—not just employees. Also, you need a lot of investment. It’s not just software. You need a lab, chemicals, cultures, tests, and clinical studies. That takes time.

Biotech needs patience. Both founders and investors must understand this. If they do, biotech will go very far.

Pharma Now – Dr. Pramod, thank you so much for being with us today. Congratulations on building such an incredible company and for making such a positive impact in the space. We hope that Clarity BioSystems reaches global markets and continues to make life-saving therapies affordable.

Dr. Pramod – Thank you. It was a pleasure being here.