Seattle and Bangalore-based Unitus Seed Fund has announced the results of its second edition of StartHealth Competition India.
Mumbai-based medical device startup, MedPrime Technologies, emerged as the winner of the competition followed by Bangalore-based telehealth technology startup, Neurosynaptic Communications Pvt. Ltd.
The selected finalists pitched to a jury panel that included Dr. Ashwin Naik of Vaatsalya healthcare, Siraj Dhanani of InnAccel, Payal Shah of Axilor, Dr. Vivek Ahuja of PATH, Hema Hattangady of Conssul Energy, LR Narayanan of Masterkey Holdings and Dave Richards of Unitus Seed Fund.
With this, MedPrime Technologies will receive a cash prize of $15K (INR 10 lakh) and pitch in Unitus’ StartHealth investment Program that includes about $78600 (INR 50 lakhs) of additional non-dilutive funding, an investment of about $ 305K (INR 2 Cr) from Unitus Seed Fund and go-to-market support from StartHealth partners like Narayana Health, Manipal Hospitals, PATH, Pfizer and Unitus Seed Fund.
Dr. Ashwin Naik, Venture Advisor at Unitus Seed Fund and a StartHealth Competition jury member said, “MedPrime is a great example of a medtech enterprise at an early stage, which is currently incubated at a leading academic institution, and shows tremendous potential. They have an excellent team with strong understanding of the on-ground challenges and have used their understanding to focus on solving a very specific problem.”
MedPrime is a medical device company that develops customer-centric affordable healthcare solutions, with a focus on patient monitoring, assistive and diagnostic devices, for the healthcare needs.
Another jury member, Hema Hattangady, also an investor in Unitus Seed Fund, said that Neurosynaptics has strong experience in building indigenous technology in taking healthcare to the masses. “Given the lack of reliable diagnostic service provision in semi-urban and rural geographies, their point-of-care mobile device promises to disrupt the healthcare delivery in these areas. Through the medium of the StartHealth program, teams like Neurosynaptics can find the required support to bring about the next big transformation in the Indian healthcare ecosystem”
Neurosynaptic Communications Pvt. Ltd
Neurosynaptic offers proven e-health and m-health technology solutions that bring together products, partners and processes in the healthcare delivery ecosystem. It develops a point-of-care diagnostic device capable of performing dry chemistry tests including biochemistry tests, electrolyte tests, HBA1c, etc.
The winners were selected out of 10 finalists who were assessed based on various parameters including impact on the masses, leadership & team, innovation, business model and presentation quality.
Let us have a look at the other eight finalists that were selected for StartHealth Competition:
Advenio Tecnosys is a multidisciplinary R&D organization. It develops a handheld portable device capable of diagnosing retinal disorders in patients without the need for dilatation of eyes.
5C network is like an Uber-like service for radiology, aggregating radiologists in the urban healthcare facilities and making their services available in tier II and III geographies.
Care and grow
Care and Grow develops web-based kiosk solution for non-invasive diagnosis and monitoring of physiological and behavioral health among rural school children.
Coeo Labs is an medical technology startup that develops innovative medical devices which focuses on emergency, trauma and critical Care.
Technocratz develops cloud-based tele-radiology platform which is used to transmit, report and store images directly from the medical devices.
ProHealth Care is a community-based health care system that offers a full range of services, from fitness and wellness services to primary care and specialty care, hospital care, rehabilitation care, home and hospice care.
Leowin innovates, manufactures and markets eco-friendly products. It has made an electrical device that can attract, trap and kill mosquitoes thereby reducing the incidence of fatal vector borne infections like malaria, dengue and filaria.
Monitra Healthcare
Monitra creates a connected wearable device which is capable of real time monitoring and transmitting heart rate among patients suffering from cardiac rhythmic disorders.
This competition saw a higher percentage of startups in the medical device space (~24%). For the second edition of the competition, Unitus conducted a boot camp for the shortlisted semi-finalists with FORGE Accelerator.
During the two-day workshop in Bangalore, the companies were mentored and coached on various aspects of the value chain (suppliers, customers, competition, etc.), innovation models and unit economics.
The seed stage India venture fund had announced the entry open for the second edition of StartHealth Competition for healthtech startups in India in September this year. The nationwide challenge was started to identify promising early-stage health-tech startups focused on serving India’s 20 crore families living on or under INR 25,000 per month.
Unitus Seed Fund is a $23 Mn seed stage India venture fund that invests in startups innovating for the masses in India. Prior to this, Unitus had organised first edition of StartHealth competition, where Bangalore-based startup OmiX Labs stood winner.
