Mumbai, Oct. 30 -- In the mid-2010s, a scientist and a software engineer met through their children, frequently running into each other outside birthday parties and school events. Conversations fixated on what was new in their professional worlds: drug discovery for Shridhar Narayanan, former head of research and development (R&D) at AstraZeneca's Bengaluru lab, and machine learning for software engineer Venkatasubramanian Narayanan, known better as just Venkat.

These casual interactions eventually evolved into serious discussions on how technology and artificial intelligence (AI) could intersect with drug discovery, culminating in the establishment of an AI-driven drug discovery platform. The goal was to leverage AI to accelerate discov...