Ingram's Magazine July 2022

by Dennis Boone

In the center of the nation’s food chain, animal health offers uncountable opportunities. So what’s holding back investment?

Where Are the Angels? Entrepreneurs and policymakers say the bistate region has to find a way to reach the minds—and wallets—of a broader venture-capital ecosystem.

If you could put a face on the challenges the Kansas City region confronts in attracting start-up cap ital—especially in the life-sciences realm—it would look a lot like … the muzzle of a cow. That’s an image Shekhar Gupta has been pondering throughout the vi sioning, early-stage funding and com mercialization of MyAnIML, a rather unconventional but entirely innovative approach to identifying and controlling diseases in cattle, even before symp toms have shown up. And a lot is riding on the technology he’s developed. “Various diseases throughout the year costs the bovine industry over

$200 billion annually in treatment cost, revenue loss, and deaths,” he says. When you consider the added cost of treatment for animals in the beef and dairy industry, “that cuts the profit very quickly.” The problem Gupta has run into is that, because he was conducting the research on his own, without the imprimatur of an established universi ty-level research program or a well-fi nanced corporate lab, is that it’s harder to catch the ear of potential investor, even when the prospect of a big exit wafts in from the feedlot. “So I took it on myself, looked at various parts of the animal’s body to

see what part could provide advance notification of sickness,” Gupta says. “The muzzle is unique, like a human fingerprint. No two are the same. And what I found was that muzzle changes before a cow becomes symptomatic.” The average investor in artificial in telligence, he said, “just wasn’t getting it. “I had to go to investors through ag tech, had to deliver proof of concept, then started getting interest in funding.” His is not a one-off example of the barriers facing entrepreneurs, says Maria Flynn. She’s the former CEO of Orbis Bio sciences, a small biotech firm where she was part of the entrepreneurial

15

I n g r a m ’ s

Ingrams.com

July 2022