Peptris Powers Ahead in Drug Discovery After Major Funding Win
Bengaluru-headquartered Peptris has raised ₹70 crore (approximately $7.7 million) in a Series A funding round as it prepares to scale its drug discovery efforts. The round was co-led by IAN Alpha Fund and Speciale Invest and included participation from Tenacity Ventures, BYT Ventures, and other backers.
This investment reflects growing investor confidence in AI-driven drug-discovery startups in India. The funding also signals a strong interest in technology-enabled platforms to improve the efficiency of early-stage research and development.
Founded in 2019 with an AI-Driven Drug Discovery Vision
The company, co-founded in 2019 by Narayanan Venkatasubramanian, Shridhar Narayanan, Anand Budni, and Amit Mahajan, is developing AI-powered tools to streamline early-stage drug discovery research. Developing new medicines is widely recognized as a long, expensive, and uncertain process, with many candidates failing before they reach human trials. Peptris is attempting to reduce that uncertainty in the drug discovery cycle by using computational models to design molecules and anticipate potential challenges early in development.
By combining scientific expertise with advanced computational approaches, the company aims to make early research more structured and data-oriented. This approach can help reduce trial-and-error efforts that are common in traditional drug discovery workflows.
Smarter Compound Identification
Peptris focuses on identifying promising compounds while simultaneously evaluating key parameters that influence a drug’s success in the drug discovery and development pipeline. By doing so, it aims to help research teams make faster, data-driven decisions and avoid investing in candidates who may not progress further. The company says its work has already produced Novel Chemical Entities (NCEs) and created opportunities to repurpose or revive drug candidates that were previously set aside in broader drug discovery programs.
Such an integrated evaluation at an early stage can potentially save both time and research costs. It also allows teams to prioritize candidates that show stronger overall profiles across multiple development parameters.
Utilization of Funds and Expansion Plans
The capital raised will be used over the next two years to advance its existing drug discovery programs toward clinical testing and to widen its pipeline. Peptris also plans to strengthen its internal capabilities by expanding teams across scientific and technology functions, including biology, chemistry, data science, and AI, to further reinforce its drug development platform.
B2B Model and Therapeutic Focus Areas
With the notion to initiate several NCE programs, the company is taking a different move rather than going on a purely in-house development route. Peptris partners with pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies through a B2B model, licensing assets from FMCG and collaborating on research programs tied to drug discovery initiatives. Its current areas of focus include rare diseases, inflammatory conditions, cancer, and women’s health segments, where unmet medical needs continue to drive innovation in drug development.
With this funding, Peptris moves into its next phase of growth, aiming to translate its AI-driven drug-discovery research into therapies that ultimately reach patients.
The coming years will be important as the company advances its programs toward clinical validation. Continued progress could strengthen its position within the evolving AI-led drug discovery landscape.
