Most of biology still runs on the way it's always been done

We don't
We're a young team paired with domain experts, treating biology as something you engineer, not just discover

Meet the team

Tanay Lohia

Founder / Chief Editing Officer

Tanay Lohia
Tanay Lohia

A curious generalist who went down the rabbit hole of gene editing and proteins, and ended up founding Mandrake to build hypercompact editors from scratch. Beyond work, he's a hardcore sci-fi nerd because who knows, we might actually be living in a black hole.

Dr. Kutubuddin Molla

Chief Scientific Advisor

Dr. Kutubuddin Molla
Dr. Kutubuddin Molla

Plant genome engineer and CRISPR scientist He guides Mandrake’s agricultural applications and wet-lab strategy, helping translate new editor designs into practical tools for crop improvement

Ananaya Jain

Member of Technical Staff

Ananaya Jain
Ananaya Jain

Computational biologist who swims across disciplines (and actual pools) With a biotechnology degree from SNU and research roots at IIT Bombay and IIIT Hyderabad, she blends AI, structural biology and genomic data to build pipelines for functional protein design

Aryan Chandak

Member of Technical Staff

Aryan Chandak
Aryan Chandak

AI/ML researcher working across generative models, structural modelling and protein design He builds computational methods that reason over protein conformations and turn structural detail into better design decisions

Kamalnayan Pathak

Member of Technical Staff

Kamalnayan Pathak
Kamalnayan Pathak

AI engineer building Mandrake’s internal bio-platform and multi-agent systems He works across LLM reasoning, research automation and the infrastructure that helps scientists move from questions to experiments

Karan Janthe

Generalist

Karan Janthe
Karan Janthe

Working across strategy, operations and market intelligence, Karan keeps one eye on the science and the other on where it can matter He connects Mandrake’s research with partnerships and the wider biotech landscape

Dr. Simran K. Kushwaha

Member of Technical Staff

Dr. Simran K. Kushwaha
Dr. Simran K. Kushwaha

Computational metagenomicist with a PhD in CRISPR–Cas systems from BITS Pilani As the creator of Mandrake TerraBase, she mines global microbiomes and maps genomic dark matter to discover the next generation of programmable gene editors

Dr. Surabhi Rathore

Member of Technical Staff

Dr. Surabhi Rathore
Dr. Surabhi Rathore

Computational structural biologist who thinks in 3D She completed her PhD at CSIR–IGIB before pursuing postdoctoral research in Andrej Šali’s lab at UCSF At Mandrake, she translates structural and biophysical insights into AI-driven frameworks for engineering programmable proteins

Tuhin Raut

Member of Technical Staff

Tuhin Raut
Tuhin Raut

A nature nerd specialising in molecular dynamics and allostery, Tuhin completed his bachelor’s at IIT Delhi and previously worked on nanopores and GPCRs At Mandrake, he captures allosteric signals from protein structure and dynamics to guide protein design

Varshit Dusad

MLOps

Varshit Dusad
Varshit Dusad

Data and infrastructure engineer behind Mandrake’s genomic data architecture He builds cloud systems, APIs and scalable pipelines that keep large biological datasets and computational workloads moving

Zeba Islam

Member of Technical Staff

Zeba Islam
Zeba Islam

A chirpy wet lab scientist with experience in developing assays in bacterial, mammalian and plant systems across diagnostics, therapeutics, gene editing & functional genomics An alumna of IIT Bombay and UW Seattle, she develops the foundational wet-lab methods needed to validate our novel protein designs

TARS

AI Structural Biologist

TARS
TARS

Built to never tire of a long paper or a complicated fold, TARS studies how proteins move, interact and change shape. At Mandrake, TARS turns structural data and scientific literature into insights that guide the design of next-generation gene editors.

Being built by a team from

Backed by

DeVCAntlerActivateSpectrum ImpactNVIDIA Inception Program

Angels and advisors

Dr. Vijay Chandru

Paras Chopra

Sanjiv Rangrass

Vatsal Dusad

Let's make life programmable

Backed by