At the Biotech Invest 2003, Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) on Sunday announced the “soft launch” of its next generation bioinformatics software, codenamed “Bio-Suite.” It is a comprehensive portable, modular, scalable software suite that offers more features than any existing commercial product.

The development of Bio-Suite had been supported by CSIR under its NMITLI (New Millennium Indian Technology Leadership Initiative) programme. In the project, TCS was partnered by about 20 Indian academic and R&D institutions, which also received financial support from CSIR. The first version of Bio-Suite would be available by mid-2003.

According to a statement by TCS, widespread availability of Bio-Suite would enable the Indian scientific and educational community to produce well-trained bioinformaticians without paying out astronomical sums for imported software.