HealthTech Startup Accelerator Philips HealthWorks Reveals 4 Startups From Its Second Cohort

Philips HealthWorks, the accelerator programme by Dutch technology company Philips, recently held its first Breakthrough Day at the Philips Innovation Campus in Bengaluru. As part of the event, top four healthtech startups were shortlisted, out of a pool of 600 startups and were given the opportunity to showcase their solutions before a group of healthcare professionals, senior executives of Philips, entrepreneurs and venture capitalists.

Among the shortlisted startups were Bengaluru-based NIRAMAI, Parentlane, healthtech company Touchkin and Theranosis who are now part of Philips HealthWorks.

The 12-week-long accelerator programme is designed to help startups build, test, de-risk and scale their ideas and technologies. Philips HealthWorks will give access to an extensive network of experts, investors and healthcare partners. Apart from mentoring, the programme provides technical and business expertise as well as access to coworking spaces and innovation labs.

Commenting on the development, Srinivas Prasad, CEO of Philips Innovation Campus, Bengaluru, added, “Philips HealthWorks startup programme is unique. It is customized according to the need of each startup. We are making a dedicated effort to help startups in strengthening their value proposition and becoming successful sustainable businesses. We are committed to build a supportive environment for start-ups across the world.”

Let’s Take A Look At The Startups That Were Shortlisted For The Accelerator Programme!

For its second cohort of Philips HealthWorks, top four India-based healthtech startups were given the opportunity showcase their ideas and products to an audience of healthcare professionals and industry stalwarts. These startups include:

NIRAMAI: Bengaluru-based Non Invasive Risk Assessment with Machine Learning (NIRAMAI) is a deep-tech startup that focusses on developing analytics software to detect breast cancer at an earlier stage than conventional methods or self-examination. Founded in 2016 by Dr Geetha Manjunath and Nidhi Mathur, the startup is building low-cost, automated and portable solutions of cancer screening with the help of advanced technologies such as machine learning, thermal imaging and artificial intelligence.

The company’s patented AI and analytics software relies on machines learning algorithms and thermal image analysis for accurate cancer screening. In April this year, the healthtech company raised an undisclosed amount of Seed funding in a round led by pi Ventures, Ankur Capital, Axilor Ventures, 500 Startups and Flipkart cofounder Binny Bansal. Around the same time, NIRAMAI also got selected to be a part of Axilor’s accelerator programme for the Summer 2017 batch.

Parentlane: Established in December 2015 by Vijay Anand and Neeraj Kumar Gupta, Parentlane is a social networking mobile app for baby-care and a parenting platform that offers personalised guidance and advice on the development of children from the time they are born till the age of eight. Incubated at Accel Partners’ Startup Pad, the company leverages data science to create solutions for mapping a child’s holistic development and delivering personalised recommendation to the community that engages on the platform.

In May 2016, the healthtech startup raised an undisclosed amount of funding in a round led by Sujeet Kumar, former president (operations) of Flipkart. A clutch of angel investors also participated in the round. A few months later in September, it secured funding from Capier Investments, the personal investment firm of Rohit MA, co-founder of Cloudnine Hospitals.

On being a part of Philips HealthWorks’ Breakthrough Day, Neeraj Gupta, co-founder and CTO of Parentlane said, “Philips HealthWorks program helped us understand the big picture, identify our customers, and understand their pain-points. I especially liked the experimental designs which was an effective way to get the responses from the customers.”

Touchkin: Bengaluru-based Touchkin is an AI-based predictive health care provider for elders that uses mobile-based social sensing to offer proactive personalised care. Touchkin’s proprietary prediction engine relies on machine learning to discern patterns in behaviour that may mean mental or physical ill-health. The platform also connects users with direct support to ensure early identification of symptoms in case of mental illness or age-related disorders.

Touchkin was started by Jo Aggarwal and Ramakant Vempati in 2015. Apart from Wysa, Touchkin’s portfolio of products also includes the StayClose app, which allows users to remotely monitor family’s well-being. The app is programmed to trigger alerts if their activity patterns indicate something is wrong.

In March 2016, the company reportedly raised $400K from a few angel investors including InMobi founder Amit Gupta, Livspace CEO Anuj Srivastava, CEO of Aspiring Minds Himanshu Aggarwal, TaxiForSure co-founder Raghunandan G and Puneet Agarwal, co-founder of Moneyview. Later in August 2017,  the healthtech startup secured $1.3 Mn in Seed funding round led by Kae Capital.

Theranosis: Headquartered in Hyderabad, Theranosis Life Sciences Pvt Ltd was founded in 2016 by Dr. Shibichakravarthy Kannan, MBBS, PhD. It is a personalised heathtech startup that develops in-vitro diagnostics for cancer. The R&D startup harnesses the power of Asia’s largest biobank of patient-derived tumor tissues and India’s BioIT S/W Skills to create & deliver theranostic products for the global market and clinical diagnostic services to the Indian market.

The solutions developed by the company are based on micro-fluidics principles that help oncologists identify circulating tumor cells in blood for more efficient cancer treatment and monitoring. In February 2016, Theranosis was one of the four startups that raised Seed funding of $29,000 (INR 20 Lakh) as part of a SmashUp event organized by The Indus Entrepreneurs (TiE) Hyderabad.

Talking about their experience at the recent event organised by Philips HealthWorks, Theranosis founder and CEO Shibichakravarthy Kannan stated, “There is something special about Philips HealthWorks program. Most of the Startup programs are focused on IT sector, very few of them on Healthcare sector and within that very few are focusing on technology. Philips HealthWorks addresses it via attention to both the business side and technology side of Healthcare solutions.”

An Overview Of Healthtech Startup Accelerator, Philips HealthWorks

Philips HealthWorks is an accelerator programme by Dutch tech company, Philips, which aims to tackle some of the biggest and most complex challenges in healthcare. It offers aspiring entrepreneurs access to healthcare partners, global innovation hubs and technology platforms that, in turn, help startups, de-risk and accelerate time-to-revenue.

Philips HealthWorks also invests in, partners with and empowers entrepreneurs and ventures that are working to transform personal health and professional healthcare. The objective, according to Padro, is to improve the lives of billions of people around the world through predictive and preventative care, faster and more accurate diagnoses, personalized treatment, improved outcomes, and lower healthcare costs.

The first cohort of the accelerator programme was recently held in Boston, North America. For its second cohort, Philips HealthWorks has come to the Philips Innovation Campus in Bangalore, India.

Startup Programme And The Breakthrough Day

The startup programme of Philips HealthWorks is meant chiefly for entrepreneurs and companies that are striving to develop groundbreaking hardware, software products and service in health and personal care. The programme connects startups with the expertise they require to make an impact in the healthtech world. Some important features of the accelerator programme include customised modules, cohorts, hands-on mentoring, immersion and training sessions and lastly, breakthrough sessions.

According to a report by IBEF, the Indian healthcare market will rise to $280 Bn by 2020, from the current $100 Bn. According to Inc42 DataLabs report, the country’s healthtech industry secured $197 Mn funding in H1 2017. Despite the sector’s phenomenal growth in the last two years, a major section of the population continues to live without proper access to affordable healthcare. The Philips HealthWorks accelerator programme looks to bridge this void by facilitating the growth of promising new healthtech startups like Parentlane, NIRAMAI, Touchkin and Theranosis.

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