Mumbai, Oct. 29 -- In 2009, three graduate students shared a flat in London while studying at King's College. While Poulami Chaudhuri and Anirudh Nishtala pursued master's degrees in molecular sciences, Rohini Kalvakuntla studied international management. Over a decade later, the three came together to set up a biotech startup in their hometown, Hyderabad, with a clear and ambitious vision-to unlock the kidney cell for therapy and make it affordable for India.

Getting the right drug into a kidney cell at the right dose without causing toxicity is a massive medical challenge. Helex Inc. is developing first-in-class genetic medicines to target the kidney.

"The motivation was to have top-class medicine and science, but it has to be accessi...