An Office of One's Own

We are on the map now (quite literally)

We have been quiet for quite some time. That’s because we have been up to some cool stuff.

At BioCompute, we now have a lab of our own.

A fully-equipped (almost) 2000 square foot molecular biology lab in the heart of Bangalore.

The first DNA data storage lab in Asia, outside of an academic setting.

Image Description: Day 1 at the new office + lab. It’s interesting that the office was passed on to us from a publishing house, so much so that the space has an old world literary charm to it.

I was literally jumping around in excitement the first time Akanksha put us on Google Maps, and when I booked a Namma Yatri (my go-to ride sharing app in Bangalore) auto to our office without having to find other landmarks.

We are now all set to move ahead in full steam, scale up our tech and get to early adopters. Moving out of incubators (and home labs) gives us the flexibility to design our experiments better; build and test our hardware at a significantly faster pace.

Video Description: A sneak peak into our bio lab

This is what our Friday evenings look like. Here Naveen is teaching the rest of us what exactly happens on a silicon nitride chip when we attempt to make a pore

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Apart from setting up the lab, and reaching out to a lot of likely early adopters, the last few weeks have been eventful (quite literally)

1. I was at SusCrunch 2025, India’s largest and most intimate gathering for folks who are passionate about building in the climate space. I shared how the Big Pi grant that we won last year has helped accelerate our work, reconnected with a lot of entrepreneurs I look up to, made some new friends (and also won a free trip to Dancing Frog Habitat in a lucky draw hosted by Mycelium during the event).

   

2. I spoke at TEDx Bangalore about our novel approach to encoding data in DNA
   Super grateful to Sartaj, Raunak and Daniya for the opportunity, and for prepping me up for a multi-sensory talk (as Akash Kulgod describes it). I can’t wait to share the recording with you all when it is released.

   

   Image Description: If the stage looks similar to the photo above, it’s because both the events were at the Bangalore Creative Circus
   

3. My team was at the Bio Builder Meetup last weekend, where they met and interacted with a lot of folks in the biotech space and learnt a lot.

   

4. All In Capital featured us on their Elevator Pitch Season 2. A lot of folks have reached out after watching that, our team is in the process of getting back to each of you, thanks for being super patient.
   
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After my last Substack post, a lot of interesting people have reached out to us expressing interest to work with us on niche problem statements. We have been figuring out how to make that work and we are onboarding our first part-time engineer this week to work on some computational aspects of BioCompute. Let’s see how that goes.

We are so blown away by the talent and enthusiasm, do keep that coming. If you are a scientist/engineer/generalist looking to build something world changing, reach out to us with proof of work. You are the best fit for us if you thrive in ambiguity, and are open to doing a lot of hard work.

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I will be in Hyderabad on 8th and 9th August. I am already in touch with IIIT Hyderabad, T-Hub, and CCMB folks. If there is anyone else that you think I should meet do send their contacts my way.

I will be in Mumbai from 14-16th August. Help me decide where I should be and who I should meet.