SUMMARY
Trusted Insights led the funding round
Accel Partners, Chiratae Ventures, Pi Ventures and Binny Bansal also participated in the round
SigTuple was one of 42 innovative startups in Inc42’s 42Next list
Bengaluru-based healthtech startup SigTuple has raised $16 Mn in its Series C funding round led by Trusted Insights, with participation from Accel Partners, Chiratae Ventures, Pi Ventures, Binny Bansal, and Trifecta Capital.
As part of the deal, Binny Bansal will join the board of the company.
SigTuple was founded in 2015 by Tathagato Rai Dastidar, Rohit Kumar Pandey, and Apurv Anand. The company develops medical solutions for high-volume screening tests that require manual analysis of visual medical data. It is also into the development of cloud-based lab operating system to run the operations of a diagnostic lab.
Rohit Kumar Pandey, cofounder and CEO said, “It is important to look at healthcare holistically to make it affordable, accessible and accurate. Therefore we are looking to pioneer a new fabric for diagnostics. This fabric will not only enable us to provide a better customer experience but will also power our vision to improve the healthcare services through data driven intelligence.”
Plans For 2019: Smart Devices, New Version Of A101
SigTuple with its group of companies — Mirable Health and Truelyser BioSystems — enables a multifold approach towards diagnostic fabric for India and other countries. The diagnostic fabric includes medical devices, software used in diagnostics/diagnostic setups and infrastructure for providing diagnostic services.
For this, the company has Mirable Health which began in 2018. This includes a lab chain, Humain Diagnostics, which it claims has state-of-art physical infrastructure for diagnostic tests. At present, the company has nine labs in Bengaluru and is in the process of setting up over 50 labs in eight cities including Hyderabad, Chennai and New Delhi by the end of this year.
The company also operates Medyog, which enables home pickup for lab tests. Medyog is currently operational in Bengaluru, Hyderabad and Chennai and will be expanding in 12 more cities by the end of this year.
At the same time, Truelyser BioSystems which was started in 2019 is into the assembly and distribution of medical devices and software. Truelyser assembles and distributes the devices developed by SigTuple and a few other companies.
New Product Lines
The company has commercialised over 30 A100 devices which enables blood analysis. Going forward, it will enable urine and semen analysis on these devices by the end of the quarter.
At the same time, the company’s solution for retinal scan analysis is in beta stage and will be integrated with fundus camera manufacturers.
Also, the company will be launching a new version of its device, AI101 by end of this year. It is also working on a smart device to enable these tests in clinics.
The company has received two patents with more are in the pipeline. Some of the granted patents may impact portfolios of players having collaborative digital pathology initiatives – both startups and incumbent players.
Investor Support
Prior to this round, the company had raised $25.5 Mn from investors such as Accel Partners, IDG Venture and pi Venture. In May 2017, SigTuple was among the six startups selected by Google for the fourth edition of its Launchpad accelerator programme.
Binny Bansal, cofounder of Flipkart and XTo10X Technologies, said that Sig Tuple transcends the space of tech-enabled healthcare. “It is actually creating the technology ground up for making healthcare affordable and accessible and I am very excited to be partnering with them on this journey.”
Healthtech In India
In the AI-based healthtech space, we also have players like Punit Soni’s Suki, Visit, Innovaccer, Zoctr, Lybrate, and Tricog, among others.
In May 2018, AI enabled healthtech startup Suki (formerly called Robin), founded by ex-CPO of Flipkart, Punit Soni raised $20 Mn led by Venrock, First Round, Social Capital, as well as individual Googlers and other angels including Nat Turner of Flatiron Health, and Marc Benioff (CEO of Salesforce).
Recently in January, San Francisco-based Microsoft’s corporate venture fund M12, marked its India entry with its first investment in healthcare data analytics startup Innovaccer. The company has invested an additional $10 Mn in Innovaccer’s ongoing Series B round, leading the total investment to $35 Mn.
According to IBEF, healthcare has become one of India’s largest sectors both in terms of revenue and employment. The total industry size is expected to touch $280 Bn by 2020.
Inc42 in its Annual Tech Indian Startup Funding Report 2018 highlighted that Indian healthtech startups raised $504 Mn in 69 funding deals, which was a 45.06% increase in the total investment for the year.
SigTuple was part of the 2018 edition of the most coveted list of India’s most innovative startups — 42Next by Inc42.
