Quadria Capital invests in Strand Lifesciences; to boost growth in coming years

Quadria Capital, Asia's leading healthcare focused private equity investor on Thursday announced its strategic investment into Strand Life Sciences, a global bioinformatics company and India's integrated and specialized diagnostic company.

Strand Life Sciences in its new form is a business combination of Strand and Triesta, which brings together strong, global bioinformatics and clinical research capabilities with a pan-India presence in specialised and routine diagnostics services.

The company has received co-funding from India-based Healthquad Fund and Singapore-based Heritas Venture Fund.

The investment in Strand Life Sciences will allow Quadria to support the expansion of the company into Asia's leading, integrated, specialised diagnostic company, and a leading provider of bioinformatics and research services worldwide.

With the merger with Triesta Sciences, Strand Life will be able to provide almost 3,500 tests, which will bring a huge number of oncologists who work already within the HCG hospital.

"We see a huge potential in this area. Quadria is very excited to partner with Strand in this unique diagnostic platform that provides a potent combination of world class bio-informatics genomics research and integrated specialised diagnostics," said Quadria Capital Managing Partner and co-founder Dr. Amit Varma.

The specialised diagnostics market is one of the fastest growing segments within the Indian diagnostic industry and is expected to be over USD 700 million by 2020.

"In an era of data-driven healthcare, Strand's exceptional team of computer and life scientists with access to a well annotated clinical substrate, provides a unique opportunity to create exceptional value," said HCG Chairman and CEO, Dr B.S. Ajai Kumar.

"Given their deep operating knowledge and experience of building healthcare businesses in Asia, the partnership with Quadria and HCG will help launch Strand into its next phase of growth and into an era where data analytics and molecular measurements together change diagnosis and treatment paradigms," said Strand Life Sciences CEO Dr. Ramesh Hariharan.

This marks Quadria's second consecutive investment in the diagnostic sector, after having announced its partnership with Malaysia's leading diagnostic company- Lablink, last month.