How a Small BioTech Firm is Using Agentic AI to Take on Industry Giants

As CEO of a small startup in an increasingly crowded biotech market, Veenu Aishwarya knows something about rising above the noise.

Over the last 10 years, Philadelphia-based AUM BioTech has provided its gene silencing platform to biomedical researchers and scientists in 38 countries across five continents. This has led to over 100 publications of independent studies in reputed peer-reviewed scientific journals in a short span of time.

The company's technology allows scientists to suppress gene expression and understand their function, allowing researchers to isolate and identify the causes of diseases or block the harmful effects of genetic mutations. Gene silencing has a wide range of translational and clinical applications, from treating cancers and modulating cholesterol levels to improving the quality of agriculture.

With a current staff of just a few people, Aishwarya knew if he wanted to compete with industry giants, he needed an edge - and he found it in Agentforce.

Too many leads, too few resources

Small biotech companies can't grow their business by buying ads on Google, LinkedIn, YouTube, or TikTok, Aishwarya explained. When you're selling a highly specialized, deeply technical product, establishing scientific credibility and making personal connections are key.

"This is not like selling a $5 coffee mug," Aishwarya said. "Most customers aren't going to visit our website and buy premium, high-value products without proper communication. We need to be face to face with scientists, identify their problems, understand their challenges, and provide them highly customized solutions based on their specific research needs. These interactions happen over multiple conversations, sometimes over a period of several months, before they make a purchase."

This is not like selling a $5 coffee mug.

For AUM BioTech, this process starts by exhibiting at international scientific conferences organized by organizations like the American Association for Cancer Research and the Society for Neuroscience, meeting with scientists and researchers, and collecting their information to follow up later. ‌This enables the AUM BioTech team to engage in a productive dialogue with the biomedical research community, understand their problems, and showcase the appropriate solutions.

Cracking the code

Soon after, Aishwarya began his agentic journey with Salesforce. At first, learning how to vibe-code an AI agent was significantly outside the cancer researcher's comfort zone.

"You can't just take AI and start messing around with it," he said. "You have to understand how it interacts, and you need to do multiple iterations over an extended period because you're going to make mistakes. I am still learning every day and improving."

Despite a lack of coding experience, he had a curious mind. After several months Aishwarya learned to build the entire AUM Biotech website, including lead generation web forms that collected information from users visiting the AUM BioTech website, and an intelligent chatbot for helping customers troubleshoot technical issues.

Now, he's putting the finishing touches on a Sales Development Representative (SDR) agent, which will allow the company to instantly respond to thousands of leads, score each one, and identify the best candidates for more extensive outreach. The agent will be able to communicate in multiple languages, book meetings on request, and be available 24/7 in any time zone.

Higher-priority leads will be handed off directly to human sales reps. Meanwhile, Marketing Cloud campaigns will nurture prospective leads by crafting customized messages using information collected from trade shows. Ultimately, that one-on-one conversation might turn a cold lead into a warm one.

"In the past, you might have needed 10 people to reach out to a thousand potential customers, or a hundred people to reach out to 100,000," he said. "Now one agent, or a team of agents, can do that, and it can make those emails extremely customized. The more personalized we can make that email, the more we can differentiate ourselves from our competitors."

The agentic advantage

Aishwarya has been careful to build guardrails into agents to restrict their access to sensitive data.

"A lot of the things humans do today can be done easily by agents, as long as the data is grounded in your organization's knowledge base and you have the right governance in place," he said. "Biotech companies work with very confidential and sensitive data, so maintaining control of the data and having good governance is extremely critical."

A lot of the things humans do today can be done easily by agents, as long as the data is grounded in your organization's knowledge base and you have the right governance in place.

Aishwarya sees a future where companies like his can scale rapidly with the help of AI, where human employees work side by side with intelligent agents. He says the technology has already helped level the playing field for his company, and the future looks bright.

"With proper governance, knowledge, and guardrails in place, agentic AI will enable organizations to accomplish far more than before and in less time. This is just the beginning. I see a future when humans and agents will work together and achieve greater things," he said. "As a very small company with ambitious dreams to serve the global biomedical research community and help find cures for diseases, AUM BioTech benefits immensely from Agentforce and how Salesforce is giving small businesses a fighting chance to compete in this fast-paced, competitive environment."

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