When Reliance Industries upended India’s telecom market in 2016, the disruption was swift and brutal. Prices dropped. Usage exploded. Incumbents scrambled or disappeared. What was once a premium service became a basic utility.
Now, Reliance is setting its sights on another sector long defined by scarcity, high prices and specialist gatekeeping: genomic diagnostics.
Genomic diagnostics is the use of DNA analysis to diagnose disease, assess health risks, and guide medical treatment by identifying genetic changes that influence how illnesses develop and respond to therapy. Unlike routine lab tests that measure current symptoms, genomic diagnostics looks at the underlying biological code, sequencing genes or entire genomes and interpreting them clinically, to help doctors detect cancers, diagnose rare inherited disorders, screen pregnancies, and choose the most effective drugs.
Through its majority-owned subsidiary Strand Life Sciences, Reliance is pushing into genetic and genomic testing, offering early cancer detection tools, population-scale sequencing ambitions and, most controversially, talk of genome tests priced low enough to reach India’s middle class. Inside the industry, the question is no longer if genomics will be disrupted, but how far the analogy with telecom really goes.
The answer, it turns out, is complicated.
From rare science to mass screening
Genomic testing in India is a niche business. Tests were ordered largely by oncologists, fertility specialists or rare-disease clinicians. Whole exome or genome sequencing could cost tens of thousands of rupees, placing it out of reach for most households. Even when prices fell, access remained limited by geography, clinical awareness and a shortage of genetic counsellors.
Reliance’s entry threatens to change that calculus.
By acquiring Strand Life Sciences in 2021, a Bengaluru-based genomics and bioinformatics firm with deep sequencing expertise, Reliance secured not just lab capacity, but intellectual property, data pipelines and scientific credibility.
Since then, Strand has rolled out new products, including a blood-based multi-cancer early detection test that aims to identify cancer-linked DNA methylation patterns before symptoms appear.
More important than any single test, however, is scale. Reliance can do what most genomics startups cannot: distribute nationally, subsidise aggressively, and bundle testing into a broader digital health ecosystem spanning pharmacies, diagnostics, apps and cloud infrastructure.
That alone has begun to reset expectations across the industry.
Reliance’s genomic gambit is a price punch, one that would have been inconceivable a few years ago.
Currently in India, routine genetic diagnostics such as BRCA cancer-risk panels or prenatal screens typically cost in the Rs 5,000 – Rs 20,000 range, with more advanced sequencing often running much higher. Whole exome sequencing, once priced near Rs 25,000, now increasingly sits around Rs 18,000, while whole-genome tests, still rare, hover closer to Rs 60,000 or above.
The coming market split
What is more likely is a two-tier genomic market. At the base will be low-cost, high-volume screening and wellness tests, risk assessments, ancestry insights, and broad panels marketed through digital and retail channels. This is where Reliance’s muscle matters most, and where incumbents will feel the sharpest price pressure.
Above it will remain a more insulated clinical tier: oncology genomics guiding therapy decisions, rare-disease diagnostics, prenatal testing requiring counselling and confirmatory workflows. Here, accreditation, physician trust and interpretive depth matter more than price alone.
India already has a small but established cluster of genomic diagnostics companies that have spent years building clinical credibility in a difficult market. MedGenome, one of the country’s largest genomics firms, has deep ties with hospitals and oncologists and a broad test menu spanning oncology, rare diseases and reproductive health. Mapmygenome has carved out an early lead in preventive and wellness genomics, while specialists such as 4baseCare and Positive Bioscience focus on precision cancer diagnostics.
Large diagnostic chains, including Dr Lal PathLabs and Metropolis Healthcare, have also been steadily adding genetic panels to their offerings, leveraging their national lab networks and physician relationships. These players are unlikely to win a price war with Reliance, but they occupy segments where trust, interpretation and clinical integration matter more than scale alone, making the competitive landscape less a clean disruption than a reshaping of roles.
Data, power and uncomfortable questions
Then there is the issue no one likes to discuss openly: genomic data concentration.
Large-scale sequencing generates population-level insights valuable for drug discovery, insurance modelling and public health planning. A single corporate group controlling vast swathes of Indian genomic data raises uncomfortable questions about ownership, consent and secondary use, especially in a country without a mature genomic data protection regime, said a healthcare founder, wishing to remain anonymous.
The scale is precisely what India needs: larger reference datasets tuned to genetics from the Indian subcontinent could improve accuracy and reduce bias imported from Western databases.
This tension will only grow as testing volumes rise.
Reliance is almost certainly going to change genomic diagnostics in India. Prices will fall. Access will widen. Awareness will rise. In that sense, the company will succeed where policymakers and startups have struggled, said a senior healthcare executive.
The real disruption, then, may be subtler and more consequential: genomics moving from the margins of Indian healthcare to its mainstream, forcing regulators, clinicians and consumers to grapple with what it means to know one’s genetic future, and what to do with that knowledge.
Reliance may have opened the door. What comes through it will define Indian healthcare for the next decade.
Edited by Jyoti Narayan
Original Article
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