Seattle and Bangalore-based, Unitus Seed Fund, has culminated its third edition of StartHealth Competition that was held in partnership with Philips and FORGE Accelerator.
It announced Pune-based Module Innovations, a startup that develops low-cost point of care diagnostic devices, as the winner. The startup received a cash prize of $15K (INR 10 lakh) and an opportunity to pitch for Unitus’ StartHealth investment Program that includes up to $75K (INR 50 lakhs) of non-dilutive capital and a seed investment of upto $150K (INR 2 Cr) from Unitus Seed Fund, and go-to-market support from StartHealth partners Narayana Health, Manipal Hospitals, PATH, and Pfizer.
Padma Chandrasekaran, member of Investment committee at Unitus Seed fund who was also the StartHealth jury member, said, “Module Innovations is a startup with a well-balanced team, supported by an advisory board of industry experts and a product of a leading incubator. Given their deep understanding of challenges and opportunities for point of care, rapid diagnostics for infectious diseases, they are on the right track to create innovative low-cost solutions for the masses.”
Besides, the VC firm announced two runners-up viz Theranosis LifeSciences Pvt Ltd., a diagnostic and therapy platform and Ray iCare, a startup that develops IoT-enabled device for monitoring respiratory patterns.
Let Us Have A Look At The Winners & Runner-Up
Module Innovations
Founder(s): Usman Khan, Sachhin Dubey
Founded In: 2014
Pune-based Module Innovations is a low-cost portable point-of-care diagnostic device for microbial infections like Urinary Tract Infections (UTI). It leverages the strength of nano & bio, to create innovative products in healthcare.
Theranosis Life Sciences
Founder(s): Mike Raghavan, Shibichakravarthy Kannan, Madhavi Muranjan
Founded in: 2016
Hyderabad-based Theranosis Life Sciences is a personalised medicine startup developing in-vitro diagnostics for cancer. The iotech R&D startup harnesses the power of Asia’s largest biobank of patient-derived tumor tissues and India’s BioIT S/W Skills to develop & deliver novel theranostic products for the Global Market & Clinical Diagnostic Services to the Indian market.
Ray iCare – Ray Healthcare
Founder(s): Sanchi Poovaya, Ranjana Nair
Founded In: 2015
Ray healthcare is developing an IoT enabled non-intrusive device capable of monitoring respiratory patterns and sleep quality among patients suffering from epilepsy.
According to Unitus, its third edition of StartHealth Competition received highest number of applications. It received applications from over 43 cities and 4 countries across 9 healthcare sectors. The VC firm also noticed that about 38% of the companies are innovating in the domains of medical devices innovations, tech-enabled service delivery and home-health services. Unitus scrutinised 170 competition applications, of which 10 finalists were selected for the two-month long StartHealth competition.
Let us have a look at the other finalists that were selected for StartHealth Competition-3:
LabP53: SaaS-based genomics platform for personalised and evidence-based cancer therapy.
Disease Diagnostic Group: A portable low-cost device for diagnosis of Malaria, TB, HIV, and Sepsis using magneto-optical properties of the parasites’ hemozoins.
BendFlex Research and Development Pvt Ltd: Micro-gripper device coupled with ultra-sensitive force sensor for cellular-level applications such as IVF and single-cell diagnostics.
Docturnal: Low-cost intelligent algorithm-based detection mechanism for TB using sound of patients’ cough.
Yostra Labs Pvt Ltd: Portable sensor-based device for accurate and early diagnosis of Diabetic Peripheral Neuropathy.
Oxys Technologies Pvt Ltd: Low-cost strip-based glucose monitoring mechanism that uses HbA1c parameter.
Turnaround Health Prediction Solutions: Image-processing device for anthropometric assessment of school students in rural areas.
