The company has already invested around $1.5 million in the project — a contract from CSIR to develop an end-to-end bio-informatics product for use by Indian academic institutions.

The software engineers working on the project are imparted a nine-month course on life sciences by TCS before they start working.

Talking to ET, TCS executive vice-president M Vidyasagar said TCS will also be looking at hawking the product to Indian and overseas corporates. Talks are reportedly on between TCS and American organisations on possible collaboration in bio-informatics projects.

Bio-informatics is the latest buzzword in the tech world. It involves use of IT in areas like genetics and drug discovery. With the application of bioinformatics tool, the process of drug discovery programme could be speeded by three to four years.

Opportunities for bio-informatics lie in the research sector, maintaining database and in creating software. Bio-informatics is also applicable in the areas of genomics, high throughput screening and in combinatory chemistry. He said software engineers who work on normal software development projects can’t be expected to work on bio-informatics project, since it requires knowledge of both IT and biology.