Startup Deep Dive : Strand Life Sciences — profitable in FY23, back in the red for two years running

Strand Life Sciences booked a net profit of ₹13.68 crore in FY23 (year ended 31 March 2023). Two audited years later, the same company reported a net loss of ₹8.74 crore in FY25 — and both numbers come from financial statements filed by the same owner, Reliance Industries, for a company it now controls.

The swing sits inside a stranger fact. The 2021 transaction that gave Reliance’s strategic investment arm control of Strand also stripped out the one business line — clinical diagnostics — that generated most of its India revenue, handing it to a different company entirely. Four computer-science professors built Strand in 2000 as a bet that genomics would need better algorithms before it needed better labs. Twenty-five years, one failed American subsidiary, one asset sale to a Biocon unit and one ownership round-trip on diagnostics later, Strand is a Reliance-controlled genomics company still working out what kind of business it is.

Quick facts

What they do

Strand Life Sciences runs two connected businesses out of Bengaluru. The larger one, by revenue, is bioinformatics and technical-support services: software, data-analysis platforms and contract research work sold mostly to pharmaceutical companies, hospitals, medical-device makers and life-sciences research labs outside India. The smaller but faster-growing one is clinical diagnostics — genetic and cancer tests run in Strand’s own wet lab and sold to Indian clinicians and patients through hospitals and collection centres, with Strand recognising revenue only when a test report is actually generated, as per the company’s FY25 audited financial statements.

The origin

Strand began in October 2000 as Strand Genomics, founded by four professors from the computer-science department of the Indian Institute of Science: Vijay Chandru, Ramesh Hariharan, Swaminathan Manohar and V Vinay. As per Forbes India, it became India’s first academic spin-off company, with IISc retaining a small equity stake through its commercialisation arm, the Society for Innovation and Development — a stake later reflected in Strand’s own shareholding records, which show the Society holding shares until it exited in FY22, per the company’s FY23 audited financial statements. Hariharan has said the founders did not set out with a product: “It was not a business,” he told Forbes India, describing a bet that genomics would eventually demand new algorithms and multidisciplinary methods rather than any specific commercial application available at the time. That bet took years to pay for itself: Strand reported its first break-even year only in 2008, eight years after incorporation, as per Forbes India.

The struggle years

Two setbacks mark Strand’s next decade, both with dates on the record. In April 2016, the board of Strand’s wholly owned US subsidiary, Strand Genomics Inc (formerly Strand Scientific Intelligence Inc), voted to shut it down; a Delaware court appointed a receiver on 5 July 2016 to wind it up. The liquidation dragged on for five years, closing only on 28 April 2021, and the equity, loans and interest Strand had put into the subsidiary sat as provisioned, unrecoverable assets on its books until the Reserve Bank of India finally approved writing them off in FY25 — nine years after the shutdown, as per Strand’s FY25 audited financial statements.

The same year, Strand sold off a chunk of its original identity. On 21 September 2016, it sold its systems-biology and pharma-bioinformatics business — the target-dossier unit, its NGS data-analytics and Sarchitect platforms, the Heptox toxicology tool and rights to its Virtual Liver model — to Syngene International, Biocon’s contract-research arm, for an undisclosed sum, as per Business Standard/PTI and Syngene’s own announcement. Chandru described the sale at the time as freeing Strand “to focus its energies on personalised medicine through clinical applications of all its genomics technologies,” a strategic narrowing that set up the diagnostics push that followed. Underneath both events sat a company that had never converted two decades of operation into durable profit at scale: by 31 March 2025, Strand’s accumulated retained-earnings deficit stood at ₹117.79 crore, as per its FY25 audited financial statements.

The turning point

The clearest single turning point is the September 2021 restructuring that brought Reliance in and took Strand’s diagnostics business out, in the same set of transactions. Reliance Strategic Business Ventures Limited (RSBVL), a wholly owned Reliance Industries subsidiary, paid ₹393 crore for 2,28,42,654 equity shares of Strand, then added a further ₹160 crore by March 2023, taking its stake to 80.3% on a fully diluted basis — a combined ₹553 crore (~$57.6 million at $1≈₹96.0, 18 September 2026, Trading Economics), as per Business Standard/PTI, September 2021.

Simultaneously, HealthCare Global Enterprises (HCG), which had merged its Triesta Sciences oncology-diagnostics unit into Strand via a business-transfer agreement dated 2 January 2018, sold its roughly 38.5% shareholding in Strand to the Reliance side for about ₹157 crore and took the diagnostics, biomarker and clinical-trials business back out of Strand for ₹80.8 crore, net of a ₹7 crore receivables set-off — a slump sale approved at Strand’s extraordinary general meeting on 24 August 2021 and completed on 3 September 2021, as per Strand’s FY22–23 audited financial statements (note 41) and Microbioz India’s contemporaneous reporting. The sale booked Strand a one-off accounting gain of ₹54.49 crore that year, which is why FY22’s reported profit of ₹59.64 crore looks so much larger than the years around it. On the other side of that same transaction, Strand’s India revenue — overwhelmingly tied to the diagnostics unit it had just given up — collapsed from ₹31.75 crore in FY22 to ₹8.96 crore in FY23, as per the FY23 audited financial statements. Reliance had bought control of a genomics company and simultaneously watched its most India-facing business walk out the door with the seller.

The money behind it

• 2001–2002: UTI Ventures invested $1.3 million (2001) and WestBridge Capital Partners invested $1.9 million (2002), Strand’s first institutional round, combining to about $4.6 million, as per Forbes India and Business Standard, 20 September 2002
• 2013: Burrill & Company invested $10 million, funding Strand’s shift from pure bioinformatics into direct clinical genetic testing, as per Forbes India (Crunchbase separately lists Burrill & Company among Strand’s investors)
• 2 January 2018: HCG folded its Triesta Sciences oncology-diagnostics unit into Strand by business transfer agreement, the same month Quadria Capital led a $13 million round alongside HealthQuad and Heritas Venture Fund, as per Entrackr and YourStory, both 8 February 2018
• 3 September 2021: Reliance Strategic Business Ventures Limited paid ₹393 crore for an initial stake, adding ₹160 crore by March 2023 for a combined 80.3% fully diluted holding (₹553 crore total), as per Business Standard/PTI; HCG exited its ~38.5% stake for about ₹157 crore in the same round and reacquired the diagnostics business it had contributed in 2018
• FY25: Reliance issued itself 30,00,000 zero-coupon optionally fully convertible debentures worth ₹30 crore to fund Strand, through holding company Reliance Digital Health Limited, alongside continued equity purchases that took RDHL’s stake to 92.96% by 31 March 2025, as per Strand’s FY25 audited financial statements

Across the four disclosed pre-Reliance rounds above, Strand raised at least $26.2 million before Reliance’s 2021 entry — a modest sum for a 21-year runway, reflecting how long the company operated as a founder-and-institution-backed research business before it became part of a conglomerate’s digital-health push.

How it makes money

Strand earns money three ways, and the mix has shifted hard toward the newer, costlier one.

• Bioinformatics and technical-support services: software products, licences and contract data-analysis work billed largely on a time-and-material basis to pharma, hospital and research customers, most of them outside India. This is still Strand’s largest revenue line at ₹73.80 crore in FY25, up just 2.1% on FY24, as per the FY25 audited financial statements
• Diagnostic services: genetic and cancer tests run in Strand’s own lab, revenue recognised per test report generated, with fees to collection centres and channel partners booked as an expense rather than netted off revenue. This line grew 173.3% year-on-year to ₹34.88 crore in FY25 from ₹12.76 crore in FY24, as per the same filing
• Software product sales and government grants: a small licence-sales line (₹1.03 crore in FY25) plus ₹5.65 crore of government-grant income booked as other operating income

On costs, employee expenses are by far the largest line at ₹76.33 crore in FY25 — 58% of total expenses — followed by the cost of diagnostic lab consumables, which rose 69.8% year-on-year to ₹21.66 crore as the testing business scaled. The part outsiders tend to get wrong is treating a widening accounting loss as a sign the business is shrinking: Strand capitalised ₹22.21 crore of platform-development spending into intangible assets in FY25 (up from ₹20.76 crore in FY24), and depreciation and amortisation on that capitalised spend jumped 176% year-on-year to ₹8.02 crore, dragging the reported loss down even as revenue grew 27.2%, as per the FY25 audited financial statements.

The numbers

Figures below are drawn from Strand’s audited standalone financial statements as filed with Reliance Industries’ subsidiary disclosures for FY22–23, FY24 and FY25 (₹ crore, rounded from figures reported in lakh/million).

*FY22’s profit includes a one-off ₹54.49 crore accounting gain from selling the diagnostics/clinical-trials business to HCG; excluding that item, underlying profit before tax and the exceptional gain was ₹4.46 crore that year.

Where the money comes from

• Bioinformatics and technical-support services: ₹73.80 crore, 63.2% of FY25 revenue from operations
• Diagnostic services: ₹34.88 crore, 29.9% of FY25 revenue, up from 14.0% of revenue in FY24
• Government grants: ₹5.65 crore, 4.8% of FY25 revenue
• Software products and licences: ₹1.03 crore, 0.9% of FY25 revenue
• Geography: 66.0% of FY25 revenue (₹77.02 crore) came from outside India, and 34.0% (₹39.65 crore) from India, as per the FY25 audited financial statements

The surprise is the domestic side. Strand’s India revenue is almost entirely tied to diagnostics, the very business it gave up in the 2021 restructuring: India revenue fell to ₹8.96 crore in FY23 right after the HCG hand-back, then climbed back to ₹17.12 crore in FY24 and ₹39.65 crore in FY25 as Strand, under Reliance, rebuilt a diagnostics operation of its own rather than relying on the exported bioinformatics business that has kept the company larger but has grown only 2.1% in its most recent year, per the audited filings for each respective year.

The risks

• Volatile customer concentration: the share of revenue from Strand’s largest customers has swung sharply year to year — 3 customers made up 46.6% of revenue in FY22, 4 customers made up 76.53% in FY23, 4 customers made up 62.26% in FY24, and 2 customers made up 27.86% in FY25 — meaning the loss or renegotiation of a single large contract can move reported revenue by double digits, as per Strand’s audited financial statements for each year
• Unhedged foreign-currency exposure: with two-thirds of FY25 revenue billed outside India and no hedging disclosed, Strand carried a net unhedged USD/EUR exposure of ₹17.56 crore at 31 March 2025, where the company’s own sensitivity analysis shows a 5% currency swing would move profit by about ₹0.88 crore, as per the FY25 audited financial statements
• Sustained losses funded by parent capital: Strand’s cash losses widened to ₹2.88 crore in FY25 from ₹1.04 crore in FY24 (as disclosed in the statutory auditor’s CARO annexure), and the company funded operations partly through ₹30 crore of optionally convertible debentures issued to holding company Reliance Digital Health Limited in FY25 — a dependence on parent-company capital that leaves Strand’s near-term funding tied to Reliance’s continued appetite to back it, alongside pending income-tax, customs and service-tax disputes totalling ₹46.70 crore in unresolved demands as at 31 March 2025

The takeaway

Strand’s history argues against treating a company’s business lines as fixed just because its brand and technology stay the same. The 2021 deal shows how completely a change of ownership can rearrange what a company actually sells: the same transaction that brought in a deep-pocketed corporate parent also carved out the unit generating most of Strand’s India revenue and handed it to the previous shareholder walking out the door. What looks from outside like continuity — the same lab, the same brand, the same founders still on the board — can conceal a business that has had to rebuild an entire revenue line from near zero under a new owner’s priorities. For founders raising from strategic or conglomerate investors, the lesson generalises: the money that rescues a long-underfunded research company can also come with a restructuring that decides, on terms set elsewhere, which parts of the business survive intact.

Frequently asked questions

Who owns Strand Life Sciences now?

Reliance Digital Health Limited, a subsidiary of Reliance Industries Limited, held 92.96% of Strand Life Sciences Private Limited as of 31 March 2025, up from 90.86% a year earlier, as per the company’s FY25 audited financial statements filed with Reliance’s subsidiary disclosures.

Is Strand Life Sciences profitable?

Not currently. Strand reported a net loss of ₹8.74 crore in FY25 (year ended 31 March 2025) and ₹3.71 crore in FY24, after a net profit of ₹13.68 crore in FY23 that followed a ₹59.64 crore profit in FY22 which was inflated by a one-off ₹54.49 crore gain on selling its diagnostics business, per the company’s audited financial statements.

What does Strand Life Sciences actually sell?

Two things: bioinformatics software and technical-support services sold mostly to pharmaceutical and research customers outside India, which made up 63.2% of FY25 revenue, and clinical genetic and cancer diagnostic tests sold in India, which made up 29.9% of FY25 revenue and have been Strand’s fastest-growing line, per the FY25 audited financial statements.

How much did Reliance pay for Strand Life Sciences?

Reliance Strategic Business Ventures Limited paid ₹393 crore in September 2021 for an initial stake, then added ₹160 crore by March 2023, taking its holding to 80.3% on a fully diluted basis for a combined ₹553 crore (about $57.6 million), as per Business Standard/PTI reporting from September 2021. No official company valuation was disclosed.

Who founded Strand Life Sciences and when?

Strand was founded on 6 October 2000 in Bengaluru by four Indian Institute of Science computer-science professors: Vijay Chandru, Ramesh Hariharan, Swaminathan Manohar and V Vinay, becoming what Forbes India describes as India’s first academic spin-off company, with IISc’s commercialisation arm holding an early equity stake.

Sources

Figures are as of September 2026. Currency converted at $1 ≈ ₹96.0 as of 18 September 2026 (Trading Economics).

• Strand Life Sciences Private Limited, audited standalone Financial Statements 2024-25, filed with Reliance Industries Limited’s subsidiary disclosures, ril.com, July 2025
• Strand Life Sciences Private Limited, audited standalone Financial Statements 2022-23, filed with Reliance Industries Limited’s subsidiary disclosures, ril.com, August 2023
• Business Standard / PTI, “RIL arm buys majority stake in Strand Life Sciences for Rs 393 crore,” September 2021
• Business Standard / PTI, “RIL acquires 22.8 mn shares of Strand Life Sciences for Rs 393 cr,” September 2021 (reporting Strand’s FY19-FY21 turnover as per regulatory filings)
• Microbioz India, “HCG acquires oncology labs and divests stake in Strand Lifesciences to Reliance,” September 2021
• Business Standard / PTI and Syngene International press release, “Syngene International acquires Strand Life Sciences’ assets,” September 2016
• Forbes India, “Strand Life Sciences: Bringing Genetic Tests To The Average Customer,” Hidden Gems series
• Entrackr, “Strand Life Sciences raises $13 Mn from Quadria Capital, Heritas Venture,” February 2018
• YourStory, “Strand Life Sciences raises $13 M funding led by Quadria Capital,” February 2018
• Business Standard, “Westbridge Capital Picks 20% Stake In Strand Genomics,” September 2002
• Wikipedia, “Strand Life Sciences,” accessed September 2026

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