SigTuple, an AI-driven medical technology startup, has today announced that it has secured a massive $5.8 million (approx Rs 38.6 crores) in its Series A round of funding. The investment was led by existing investor Accel Partners, with participation from VC funds including Pi Ventures, VH Capital, Axilor Ventures, IDG Ventures and Endiya Partners.
Apart from the cohort of aforementioned investment firms, the company also bagged funds from other high networth individuals including Amit Singhal, Senior VP of Engineering at Uber; Kris Gopalakrishnan and SD Shibulal at Axilor Ventures. Previously, SigTuple had secured about $740,000 in seed funding from Accel and Flipkart founders — Sachin and Binny Bansal. They’ve also participated in this fundraising round.
Commenting on their investment, Barath Shankar Subramanian, principal, Accel Partners says,
Whichever healthcare market you look at, diagnostics and especially pathology is a large unfulfilled medical need and is a multi-billion dollar opportunity. With complexities and personalisation only increasing, taking away the subjective element of human intervention is a key aspect in addressing these issues.
SigTuple’s solution is a powerful tool that has the potential to make the aspect of diagnostics significantly more efficient, accurate and quicker.
Founded by former AmEx Big Data Labs executives Tathagato Rai Dastidar, Rohit Kumar Pandey and Apurv Anand in 2015, SigTuple aims to build affordable medical solutions for automating disease diagnosis. It plans to make the procedures more efficient and fast by analysing blood samples with the help of technology. It will be immensely helpful in a country like India, where individuals are sometimes required to travel miles to receive necessary treatment.
The Bengaluru-based company has developed two tech solutions, one being hardware — Shonit and the other software — Manthana. These robust platforms will supplement the pathologist and aim to remove any inefficiencies in a given sample. Shonit is a low-cost machine that digitizes pathology — scanning blood, urine and semen samples. It works with an automated (or not) microscope to produce test reports in under eight minutes.
Manthana, on the other hand, is a continuous learning medical platform that uses machine learning and AI to provide robust API platforms and real-time reporting of results. It takes in visual medical data, like blood sample images and classify objects of interest (like disease cells) using the image. It then provides metrics, which are supported by visual evidence and don’t require the pathologist to sit next to you.
With the fresh capital infusion, the company plans to invest in team expansion, development of its AI-driven technology product. The said funding round will enable them to take the product from labs to the user-adoption stage, which will soon be followed by commercialisation. A chunk of funds will also be employed to obtain necessary regulatory clearances for their expansion efforts into international markets.
Talking about the investment, SigTuple CEO Rohit Kumar Pandey says,
Our goal is to develop intelligent, scalable and affordable disease screening solutions which can empower the medical experts and facilitate quality healthcare delivery. Our initial focus is on the solutions for the screening tests so that we can positively impact a larger population not only in India but globally.
SigTuple is currently working with nearly fifteen labs and hospitals in Bengaluru to obtain pathology reports and build their technology. The company aims to make their offerings commercial in the coming years, with tier 3 and 4 cities in their crosshairs — not requiring even some medical examiner to collect samples. It also plans to start bringing in revenue this year by launching its product to consumers, working with pathologies and doctors to make it more efficient.
