IIT-B startup HaystackAnalytics plans to take genome testing to EU, US

A 75-year-old man from Kerala was suffering from months of persistent body pain and fatigue. Despite taking numerous conventional diagnostic tests, no conclusive diagnosis was made. Christian Medical College (CMC), Vellore, then validated to infexn – a next-generation sequencing (NGS)-based assay developed by IIT-Mumbai-incubated startup HaystackAnalytics. Within 24-hours of sample collection, the infexn test could accurately identify the pathogen (a rare infection transmitted by fleas known as Murine Typhus, and caused by an intracellular bacteria, Rickettsia typhi). The diagnosis helped the medical team to administer the appropriate antibiotic, leading to the patient’s rapid recovery.

 

NGS is the way forward for infectious diseases testing, says Gaurav Srivastava, cofounder and chief operating officer (COO), HaystackAnalytics. “When we look at the entire infectious world, we are looking at a pathogen base ranging from 3,000-30,000 different agents that can cause an infection to any of us,” he says, adding that the number of agents is continuously increasing.

 

“The current set of available technologies – culture, for example – can commercially be used to test around a hundred pathogens across bacterial and fungal infections, and we cannot even culture viruses now. The commercially available RT-PCR kit can test for single pathogens and is designed to answer a yes-or-no question, like for example, is it Sars-CoV-2 virus or not,” Srivastava claims. There are some extrapolations of PCR where one uses multiplexing for testing 10-20 pathogens, depending on how many can be combined in a single kit.

 

Typically, when someone falls sick with, let’s say, fever, one has to take a flurry of tests — Covid-19, typhoid, dengue, malaria, etc. — from a laundry list. “We should be able to send the sample for testing and determine what exact infection the patient is suffering from,” he says.

 

Infexn test took around two-years to develop. HaystackAnalytics started work around 2021, and has raised around ₹100 crore in the last three-and-a-half years. It got investments from Thyrocare founder A Velumani initially and thereafter from Sun Pharmaceutical Industries (9.6 per cent) and Alkem Laboratories (9.6 per cent) in 2024.

 

Srivastava says that in the next five years they need to invest another $40-50 million or so to build the business, and there are plans to take the infexn test to the US and Europe as well.

 

“There are two parts of the company — the R&D arm, and the commercial arm. We have just started investing in our commercial arm. I think to commercially break-even, we will need to bring in at least $40-50 million over the next five years,” he added. He also said that the investors in HaystackAnalytics are all domain experts and not mere financial investors who would look for a short-time-bound exit.

 

The company had started with a TB test, which was launched in 2021. Eventually, the scope of the test was expanded. “We are screening for all bacteria and all fungi, and, along with that, all major respiratory viruses,” he said. “People send us sputum, blood, and cerebro-spinal fluids from the spinal cord,” he added.

 

As for pricing, Haystack’s technology-based test costs anything between ₹10,000 and ₹15,000. If one has to take a multiple pathogen PCR test, then the cost goes up to ₹20,000-40,000 or so, Srivastava claimed.

 

Over 100 hospitals send samples to Haystack’s labs to identify the right infectious agent and understand the antibiotic resistance profile before starting therapy. They have labs in Mumbai, Delhi, and Bangalore. One application of the testing, respiratory infection detection has picked up well in Delhi where clinicians are increasingly using this test to determine whether a patient actually needs antibiotics.

 

The firm is working on another product based on pharmacogenomics where one will be able to determine which medicines will work on a patient and which medicines will not work at all, and which ones will have adverse reactions.

 

“I think the natural progression for the company is to continue adding clinical applications. Oncology is obviously one of the possible applications. We have not specifically explored oncology yet. We are still figuring out whether we want to partner with some of the leading developers in oncology or create a solution of our own,” Srivastava said.