Pune Inc: How a small company quietly came to manage bio-specimens for Oxford University, Cambridge and other elite institutions

In Pune, the small team of Krishagni that had created the OpenSpecimen platform realised that they had crossed a milestone — the University of Oxford business had joined a client list of more than 70 top institutions in more than 20 countries. Since then, Krishagni has grown to 85 institutions. “Most of our customers had been acquired by word of mouth and recommendations but, in the last one or two years, we have been winning competitive tenders and Oxford University was one such instance,” says Srikanth Adiga, who started the company in 2009.

Krishagni’s OpenSpecimen software involves the management of bio-banks of human samples, such as tissues, tumours, DNA, RNA, blood, saliva and plasma, among others, which are required by researchers. Among their products is the Biobanking LIMS, which tracks the complete lifecycle of biospecimen inventory, from collection to utilisation; Participant Surveys, which facilitates collection of data from participants of surveys on smart devices rather than the traditional paper, which is tedious and carries a chance of security loopholes such as information leaks; Electronic Data Capture, which lets clinical research centres access data about participants or specimens; and Specimen Catalog to help researchers find biospecimens of interest.

Adiga, a computer science engineer, has built the company with some unusual convictions — it is bootstrapped and the platform is open source. “We have been profitable from the first year since we were constantly adding paying customers,” says Adiga, adding that the company is growing at 50 per cent annually and does not see the need to raise funds.

The decision to have an open source platform has paid off. For instance, Krishagni built a mobile application for a university in Canada that was running a pregnancy study in three African countries. As coordinators went from village to small towns to collect pre-delivery, post-delivery and other data according to a strict schedule, they found that many areas did not have internet connection. “They began to use our mobile app, which works without the internet. After gathering data, they come to the lab and sync their findings with the main server,” says Adiga.

“Academicians and researchers have an affinity for open source because it brings a sense of collaboration and community. If a university in the US and another in Europe are working on the same matter, they want to collaborate. This is the reason we did not build proprietary or closed software. Most of our products are built in collaboration with existing customers, who pay for it. Later, another customer gets to use it for free but they might need other features added to the product, which they pay us to develop, and the first customer can now use these new features for free,” says Adiga. “We have kept the platform easy to configure, without our clients needing programming knowledge. Any software that uses patient data also involves a lot of security issues. In our case, if somebody wants to go to the source code to see if it is built securely, they can do so as we are open and transparent,” he adds.

Now, 50 per cent for Krishagni’s clients come from the US, 25 per cent from Australia, 25 per cent from Europe and two from Asia. The startup is now developing the platform so that users can do more. Their new product, for which they have three clients, revolves around electronic consenting. “When researchers use specimens from patients, they need consent. This can get complicated very fast because consents change over time, we have to revisit the consent of people repeatedly, especially if they were minors earlier and have become adults in the meantimes. Patients can also withdraw consent,” says Adiga.

Krishagni has also kept its team small to “enables us to control quality and train people”. “India is known for its services but Krishagni is showing that a small and little-known company can make products as well,” he adds.