Benchling: A Cloud-Based Platform for Biotechnology Research and Development

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Biotechnology is leading the most vital scientific revolution worldwide since computing. It's rewriting life, from the crops we grow to the medicines we take, the food we consume, the household goods we use, and the materials we wear daily.

And research and development are critical factors in unleashing biotechnology's potential to transform the world radically. However, not many software solutions have kept up with science. Scientists deserve and are in dire need of advanced technology specifically designed for what they do.

It's when Benchling emerged with a robust, high-performance cloud-based platform to transform biotechnology. Science is changing the world, and Benchling aims to change science. Read on to broaden your knowledge about the company, its founders, founding story, products and solutions, business model, funding, partners, growth, and more.

Benchling – Company Highlights

Benchling – About
Benchling – Industry
Benchling – Founders and Team
Benchling – Startup Story
Benchling – Mission and Vision
Benchling – Business Model
Benchling – Revenue Model
Benchling – Products and Services
Benchling – Challenges Faced
Benchling – Funding and Investors
Benchling – Mergers and Acquisitions
Benchling – Growth
Benchling – Marketing Strategies
Benchling – Partners
Benchling – Awards and Achievements
Benchling – Competitors

Benchling – About

A cloud-based bioinformatics platform, Benchling delivers innovative solutions for biotechnology research and development. The platform is designed to speed up researchers' experiments and make them more collaborative.

It serves big and small biotech leaders and innovators at 900+ biotechnology companies, including AGBIOME, ArsenalBio, bit.bio, IGM Biosciences, Beam Therapeutics, Mammoth Biosciences, Bolt Threads, and Verve Therapeutics, developing new medicines, foods, crops, and materials. Over 200,000 scientists across Fortune 500 companies, academic institutions, and startups trust the company.

Benchling – Industry

Benchling is a part of the software development industry involving designing, developing, and implementing software applications for various industrial uses. The global software development market is forecasted to grow from $260.79 billion in 2022 to $915.96 billion in 2027, at a growth CAGR of 28.6%.

The increasing demand for customized applications in several industries is the primary factor driving the growth of the software development market. Leading industry players include Azure, Google Cloud Platform, GitHub, IBM Corporation, Salesforce, and Oracle Corporation.

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Benchling – Founders and Team

Sajith Wickramasekara, Ashutosh Singhal, and Cory Li are the Co-founders of Benchling.

Sajith Wickramasekara

Sajith Wickramasekara went to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology for Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. He worked as Research Assistant at Duke University Medical Center and Liquidia Technologies. Sajith is the co-founder and CEO of Benchling.

Ashutosh Singhal

Ashutosh Singhal completed his B.S. in Computer Science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He interned as a Software Engineer at Google and worked as an Undergraduate researcher at MIT CSAIL. In addition to Benchling, Ashutosh co-founded Hotspots.io. Moreover, he is an ex-Software Engineer of Twitter and the current President of Benchling.

Cory Li

Cory Li earned a B.S. degree in Computer Science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He interned as a Software Engineer at Venuetastic and co-founded Benchling. Cory held Benchling's co-founder position till 2015. Currently, he is the CEO at Spellbrush.

Benchling is a 900+ person team.

Benchling – Startup Story

Benchling was founded by Sajith Wickramasekara, Ashutosh Singhal, and Cory Li in 2012 at MIT when they realized the need for modern technology and tools to enable their scientific research. At that time, not much software was available to support biological research. As a result, scientists used to record their output in spreadsheets and paper lab notebooks, making collecting and referring back to data difficult.

Therefore, the co-founders created their software, Benchling, while keeping modern science and collaboration in mind. After incorporating the company, Sajith recruited a team with software and biology backgrounds.

Its move into early development was enabled by three innovations in 2021. The company launched the Benchling Validated Cloud solution in January 2021, expanded its Workflow application, and launched structured templates. Benchling made an open-source library of lab instruments and data converters available to the scientific community for free.

Benchling – Mission and Vision

Benchling's mission is to unlock the power of biotechnology by supporting customers in getting their breakthrough products to market and milestones faster.

Benchling – Business Model

Previously scientists used tools that took about 24 hours to hunt down information across scattered sources. Benchling brought down that time to 10 seconds. The cloud-based unified platform for scientific data enables customers to design DNA while following the approach in three axes- automation, centralization, and standardization.

With centralized data in one location, standardized data conforming to a pre-defined data shape, and automated data capturing as experiments are performed, Benchling unlocks the ability to answer scientists' new unanswerable questions. Moreover, the platform leverages machine learning to automatically identify bottlenecks in the research and development process and generate scientific analysis.

Benchling – Revenue Model

Benchling offers multiple packages for industry, startups, and academics.

For Industry, the company allows subscribing to 'Starter,' 'Essentials,' 'Performance,' and 'Benchmark' packages. When it comes to Startups, it provides a 'Benchling for Startups' package. And 'Academics' package allows users to join a community of 200,000+ scientists for free.

Benchling – Products and Services

Bechling's product line includes a wide range of offerings:

• The Benchling R&D
• Cloud
• Notebook
• Registry
• Inventory
• Molecular Biology
• Workflows
• Studies
• Validated Cloud
• Benchling for Lab Automation
• Configuration

Furthermore, the company's solutions comprise Biopharmaceutical, Antibodies and Proteins, Industrial Biotech, Agritech, Cell and Gener Therapy, RNA Therapeutics, and Bioprocess and Bioanalytical Development.

Benchling – Challenges Faced

A decade ago, most investors were not excited about biotechnology and, thus, were not scrambling to fund digital notebooks in the cloud, making Benchling's initial days difficult.

Benchling – Funding and Investors

Benchling has undertaken 8 funding rounds and raked $411.9 million. Its latest funding round - Series F Round, was conducted on November 17, 2021, and secured $100 million. 22 investors fund the company, including Lone Pine Capital, Franklin Templeton Investments, Altimeter Capital, Sequoia Capital Global Equities, and Alkeon Capital.

Benchling – Mergers and Acquisitions

Benchling acquired Overwatch Research on February 24, 2022.

Benchling – Growth

In April 2021, Benchling recorded triple-digit annual recurring revenue (ARR) growth for the fourth year. A few months later, in November 2021, the company reportedly grew approximately 400% over the last 4 years. It doubled its headcount from 2020 to 2021 with 500+ employees and its post-money valuation stood at $6.1 billion in 2021.

As of 2022, Benchling is estimated at $100+ million ARR, growing approximately 100% and with 169% net retention. Moreover, its annual revenue in 2022 was around $280.2 million.

Benchling – Marketing Strategies

Now that scientific R&D is incredibly complex, product demos are the best way to familiarize Benchling's market with the idea of using software to simply R&D. Therefore, Benchling developed a Webinar content marketing strategy. The company now runs 3-4 webinars each quarter. The webinars rank among Benchling's top three channels for account engagement in 2022.

Benchling – Partners

Here is the list of Benchling's partners:

• Astrix
• Celito
• DigitalRadius
• ITWorx
• Karechem Consulting
• Sware
• Zifo
• Wega
• Propharma

Benchling – Awards and Achievements

Benchling received many accolades from renowned institutions:

• Best Workplaces 2021 by Inc.
• 2021 Tell Award
• Named among the Best-Led Companies of 2021 by Inc.
• Recognized as one of the Best Midsize Companies to Work for in the Bay Area 2021 by Built In.
• America's Best Startup Employers 2021 by Forbes.

Benchling – Competitors

Some main competitors of Benchling are as follows:

• SciNote, LLC
• LabWare
• LabVantage Solutions
• Labguru

FAQs

What does Benchling do?

A cloud-based bioinformatics platform, Benchling delivers innovative solutions for biotechnology research and development. The platform is designed to speed up researchers' experiments and make them more collaborative.

Who are the founders of Benchling?

Sajith Wickramasekara, Ashutosh Singhal, and Cory Li are the Co-founders of Benchling.

Who are the main competitors of Benchling?

Some main competitors of Benchling are as follows:

• SciNote, LLC
• LabWare
• LabVantage Solutions
• Labguru