Seed funding of CHF 1,5 M for Swiss laboratory instrumentation company dedicated to more efficient and sustainable drug development.
1. Who:
Oryl Photonics SA is a Swiss life science laboratory instrumentation company. It is a spin-off from EPFL (Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne) incorporated in 2020, with a current team of 5 headcount.
Founders: Obtained PhD in Photonics working on the technology at EPFL, authors of >15 journal publications. Head of Business Development: has +35 years of Life Science market experience and was involved in 6 start-ups and 4 exits.
2. Why:
It takes on average $1 billion, ~10 years to bring a drug to market. And yet ~40% of drugs released in the market are poorly soluble. Insoluble drugs cannot penetrate the body and are ineffective. Solubility is the fundamental and critical parameter in drug development. Oryl’s proprietary technology removes the problematic steps in solubility measurement and maximizes the cost and time savings in a sustainable way. The worldwide deployment of our instrument can decrease the CO2 emission of the pharmaceutical industry by ~3.5%.
The technology is modular and upgradeable to multiple applications (protein crystallization and aggregation, detection of nano-crystals, water purity and contaminant detection) for the same customers and extends to other industries e.g.: biotech, academic & research institutes, food industry, environmental testing, forensic, etc.
3. What:
EASY (Easy Assessment of SolubilitY) is a laboratory instrument based on an advanced form of light scattering that simplifies the measurement process by avoiding the use of filters or columns. More information here: https://youtu.be/GB1AuhhtrGY
4. Market:
The current gold-standard on the market for solubility measurement are liquid chromatography with mass spectrometry (LC-MS) and nephelometry.
Every Pharmaceutical, biotechnology and CDMO company has a few LC-MS and nephelometry instruments and uses it several times per week.
Liquid Chromatography Market size was valued at CHF 4.4 Billion in 2022 growing at a CAGR of 6.0% from 2022 to 2030.
5. Competition:
Key players: Agilent, Danaher, Bruker, Waters, Shimadzu, PerkinElmer, Thermo Fisher.
6. USP (unique selling proposition):
Oryl’s technology combines the advantages of both nephelometry (price CHF ~50k, simple and cost effective, but not precise) and LC-MS (price CHF 150k to 500k, high sensitivity & reproducibility but slow and destructive. Oryl’s instrument (CHF 250k) is positioned as a high-quality and high-throughput instrument that is as simple as nephelometry and as reliable as LC-MS.
Compared to LC-MS, it saves 80% of time, 95% of costs, 99% of chemicals, 80% of compounds, 99% of electricity and reduces CO2 emissions by 98%. Compared to nephelometry, it provides precise and reproducible measurements. Benchmarking study here: EASY Screener | ORYL Photonics
7. Achievements:
Oryl secured CHF 1.2 Million in non-dilutive funding, managed to sell CHF 350k of prototypes and services and is in stage of producing functional alpha version (prototype v.4) of instrument.
8. Next steps:
Complete 3-5 pre-production instruments for field evaluation at customer sites and revenue generation – first 5 potential customers expressed interest.
Revenue projections for year 3, CHF 4.6 M and year 5, CHF 18.6 M and achieving anticipated company valuation of >CHF 50 M.
9. Funding:
Oryl Photonics SA is soliciting to secure CHF 1,5M of seed funding to complete and place or sell first pre-production instruments. Continue with business development, market & user understanding, partner search, select contract manufacturer, continue with instruments refinement, secure reliable and cost-effective supplier of consumable products.
If you find our offering of interest please do not hesitate to contact us at any time for more information.
Email: otarun@orylphotonics.com and phone: +41786512817