Ex-ISRO Scientists' Orbitt Space Secures $1 Mn to Revolutionize Ultra-Low Orbit Propulsion

Orbitt Space, an Ahmedabad-based space-tech startup founded by former ISRO scientists, has recently secured $1 million in pre-seed funding led by pi Ventures, with support from IIMA Ventures, said a report by The Economic Times. The 2-months old start-up company is pioneering air-breathing electric propulsion for satellites operating in Ultra Low Earth Orbit (ULEO)-below 250 km altitude.

Orbitt Space was founded in March 2025 by Christopher Parmar and Anupam Kumar, both former ISRO scientists. The company specializes in air-breathing electric propulsion for Ultra Low Earth Orbit (ULEO) satellites, aiming to revolutionize fuel-free, sustainable satellite operations.

Christopher described ULEO as a "blue ocean” opportunity, highlighting how traditional LEO operations face increasing collision risks due to over 40,000 tracked objects and millions of debris fragments. Orbitt’s propulsion system aims to unlock sustainable, fuel-free satellite operations, positioning India at the forefront of next-gen space infrastructure.

This breakthrough propulsion system uses residual atmospheric gases instead of onboard fuel, enabling longer satellite missions while reducing orbital pollution.

The funding will accelerate prototype testing, team expansion, and in-orbit demonstrations, positioning India at the forefront of sustainable space.

The air-breathing electric propulsion system is designed for Ultra Low Earth Orbit (ULEO) satellites—a largely untapped region below 250 km altitude.

Key Funding Details:

• Technology Focus: Air-breathing propulsion using residual atmospheric gases instead of onboard fuel, enabling longer satellite missions and reducing orbital pollution.
• Strategic Impact: Addresses congestion in Low Earth Orbit (LEO), offering sharper imaging, lower signal latency, and radiation protection.
• Next Steps: Funds will support prototype testing, team expansion, and in-orbit demonstrations, paving the way for commercial rollout.
• Industry Context: Comes amid India's broader push to enhance satellite-based intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) capabilities.

India's First 3D Reconstruction Platform Preimage Gets $1.7 Mn From Pi Ventures

• Preimage is a fast and scalable 3D reconstruction platform that processes photos to generate high-quality 3D digital clones of real-world environments and assets.
• The startup had earlier raised $355k in a pre-seed round led by Better Capital.
• The investment will be used in scaling hiring across businesses and building the go-to-market motion in the drone-based mapping and surveying market as a first use case.

Cloud-based 3D reconstruction application - Preimage - has announced that it has raised USD 1.7M in a seed round from pi Ventures, Better Capital, Java Capital, and other prominent angels. Preimage’s AI-first solution generates photorealistic 3D digital clones of environments and assets using photos as input.

The company will use the fresh funds to double down on their product build, scale its team across business functions, and build a robust go-to-market motion in the drone-based mapping and surveying use case.

Founding Team - Ugam Kamat and Siddharth Jha

3D digital clones are useful for geometric measurements, visual inspections, 3D graphics, architectural modelling, archaeological preservation, and scientific simulations. Preimage’s solution provides a seamless process for the generation of 3D digital clones by providing a fast and automated processing workflow that can scale to tens of thousands of images. Founded by IIT alumni - Ugam Kamat and Siddharth Jha, Preimage aims to enhance the way digital reality is recreated from the real world.

Commenting on the announcement, Ugam Kamat, Co-Founder & CEO said, “The market for the creation of 3D digital clones of real-world environments is gaining momentum across several businesses in different verticals. We are one of the first companies in the world to rethink this market and empower users with the advances of AI to handle the scale of visual data for the current decade. We are thrilled to have partnered with Better Capital and pi Ventures at the earliest part of our journey and are humbled by the trust instilled in us.”

Earlier this year, Preimage released a beta version of their product that engaged more than 200 business customers ranging from small businesses to large enterprises across US, India, Asia Pacific, and Europe. Their open-to-all 3D reconstruction platform will be released later this year.

“The demand for 3D content is increasing. However, the traditional tools for 3D reconstruction plagued with long processing time, inadequate accuracy and a lack of generalizability are unable to fulfill the market demand,” says Roopan Aulakh, Managing Director, pi Ventures. “Preimage solves this problem using deep learning AI models & distributed computing to build a horizontal platform that can cater to multiple industries while being fast and accurate. We are excited to partner with Ugam and Siddharth on their journey to disrupt this space.”

Preimage had raised a pre-seed round of $355k last year led by Better Capital, which also saw participation from Arka Ventures and iSeed Ventures.

Space Tech Startup Agnikul Raises ₹ 23.4 Cr in Funding led by pi Ventures

Where, now, the universe is a stage, this Indian space tech company has literally put rocket science into practise, by engineering out small satellite launch vehicles, based out of Chennai. Agnikul, pioneering 3D printed single-piece rocket engines, has grabbed INR 23.4cr in a pre-series A round led by pi Ventures with participation from Hari Kumar (LionRock Capital), Artha Ventures, LetsVenture, Globevestor, CIIE and existing investor Speciale Invest. Agnikul plans to use these funds for ground testing, fabrication and team expansion.

Agnikul, operating out of National Centre for Combustion Research at IIT Chennai, is developing a satellite launch vehicle for payload capacity of up to 100 kgs. The vehicle is configurable and can support payload range of 30-100 kgs without impacting the economics. Since the engine is fully 3D printed, the manufacturing complexity associated with traditional rocket engines is moved to the design in their case, making it an easier and cheaper fabrication process that will be able to deliver launch vehicles within a few weeks, pretty much on demand. Agnikul is the only company in the world to design a rocket engine which can be printed in a single piece using 3D printing technology.

Agnikul's diverse team of rocket scientists, engineers and investors are working on the horse-blinded vision of making space both accessible and affordable.

According to reports, space industry across the globe has grown significantly into a $350 billion market with many private players entering the sector. It is predicted that in 2022, 2500+ small satellites will be launched compared to less than 500 today.

[caption id="attachment_142984" align="alignleft" width="235"] (L-R) Srinath Ravichandran and Moin SPM[/caption]

Srinath Ravichandran, Co founder & CEO, Agnikul, said, “We started Agnikul with the dream of bringing space within everyone’s reach. We are doing this by building nimble, reliable and modular rockets that can put small satellites in space on-demand. This round of investment from pi Ventures, Speciale Invest and others is a meaningful velocity boost to our journey and will directly help us get much closer to orbit.”

Manish Singhal, Founding Partner, pi Ventures, added, “I have always believed that India has the potential and the talent to create world-beating IPs and products, not just in the digital domain but also beyond. If done right, there is no doubt in my mind that India can be a leader in innovation on a global platform. We are proud to partner with Srinath and Moin on this journey and believe that Agnikul can be a great example of world-class innovation coming from India”

pi Ventures is a deep tech focused early stage venture fund with investments in Applied Artificial Intelligence, IoT and Blockchain. Agnikul is their first investment in what they call ‘Beyond Digital space’ which includes technology innovations that bring 10x differentiated business value but need not be digital.

AI Mental Health Startup Wysa Raises ₹ 15 Crores in Funding led by pi Ventures

Wysa, an AI conversational agent that has been shown to help improve mental health, announced that it has raised about $2m (Rs 15 crore) in a pre-Series A round of funding led by pi Ventures, with participation from Kae Capital and other investors. Wysa has raised an earlier round of $1.3 million in seed funding from Kae Capital and angel investors in 2017. The company plans to use this funding to further strengthen their technology and for expansion.

Founded by Jo Aggarwal and Ramakant Vempati three years ago, Wysa is an AI-based ‘emotionally intelligent’ bot, a virtual coach that combines empathetic listening with evidence-based therapeutic techniques like CBT, meditation and motivational interviewing, to make mental health accessible at scale.

Wysa has helped over 1.2 million people from 30+ countries, making it one of the global leaders in AI for mental health. It is recommended by the National Health Service (NHS) in the UK, and its efficacy has been validated through a peer reviewed study.

Jo Aggarwal, Co-Founder, Wysa, said, “Wysa has been co-designed by therapists, users, and designers over hundreds of iterations and 80 million conversations. What people want most is to feel heard, without judgement. Anonymity is key – people are scared to be seen or judged for what they are going through. We combine the free AI with unlimited support from a qualified therapist, still anonymously, over chat to make it easy to get help. We are delighted that our investors are partnering with us in this journey to make mental health accessible for everyone."

Manish Singhal, Founding Partner, pi Ventures, added, “Mental health could very well be the next big epidemic to hit the human race. Training more human therapists will not bridge the massive supply and demand gap. This is where Wysa powered by an AI engine comes in. It is scalable and is available for anyone to chat at any time in total privacy. We do believe that Wysa can create a zero-stigma pathway to support people who are struggling, and has a real chance of solving depression and mental health challenges at scale. We wish them all the very best and are grateful to be working with them."

pi Ventures' investment in Wysa comes within a few days after it led a $1 Mn seed funding of SwitchOn, an Edge-AI enabled Industrial IoT startup.

According to the WHO, one in four people in the world will be affected by mental health issues at some point in their lives. Around 450 million people currently suffer from such conditions, placing these among the leading causes of ill-health and disability worldwide. Waitlists in UK and Canada for therapy are over a year long. India has a 90% treatment gap. Innovations such as Wysa are critical to scale support. Already, over a million breakthroughs have happened on Wysa , an impact equivalent to about 3 million hours of in-person therapy.

pi Ventures is India’s first Applied Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, IoT and Blockchain focused early stage venture fund. pi is a $33 Million fund based in Bangalore, India,. pi Ventures focuses on healthcare, logistics, retail, fin-tech and enterprise sectors. Backed by some of the leading entrepreneurs globally, pi Ventures brings hands-on product and entrepreneurial experience to the India venture investing ecosystem.

Industrial IoT Startup SwitchOn Raises $1 Mn in Seed Funding from pi Ventures, Axilor and Others

SwitchOn, an Edge-AI enabled Industrial IoT company, today announced that it has raised $1 mn in seed round of funding led by pi Ventures, India’s first Applied Artificial Intelligence, IoT and Blockchain focused early stage venture fund. Along with pi, Axilor and eminent angels from The Chennai Angels have also participated in the round.

Founded by Aniruddha Banerjee and Avra Banerjee in 2017, SwitchOn is an Industrial tech company that helps manufacturing industries identify plant-level bottlenecks and improve equipment efficiency. Industries can create digital twins of their heavy assets, monitor and predict availability and performance bottlenecks in advance, thus ensuring better Efficiency for the Equipment as well as the Plant.

The Company graduated from the Axilor Accelerator Program in 2018. The Automotive and FMCG Discrete Manufacturing are the key industries that SwitchOn has seen significant traction in both India and APAC markets. The fresh funds will be used for strengthening the edge-compute architecture, expanding the team and market adoption in India and other countries in the EU and APAC region.

Aniruddha Banerjee, Co-Founder, SwitchOn said, “SwitchOn is leveraging deep expertise in hardware and software design to create state-of-the-art edge solutions for increasing transparency, reducing turn-around, and improving quality on the shop-floor of manufacturing industries to ultimately achieve operational excellence. We are very excited about the new investment and the deep expertise of our investors in scaling IP-led hardware-software businesses. We believe that our customers will benefit heavily from our expanded global footprint and deep technology differentiators."

SwitchOn has a proprietary set of algorithms which combines vibration data, electrical data and other signals to give accurate and relevant Digital Twin of the machine. This leads to a variety of outcomes for their clients across the globe - from transparency of the operations to increasing the availability of the machine to predictive maintenance. SwitchOn has their own hardware which attaches on top of the machine (non-intrusive) along with the ability to carry out complex number crunching. The implementation of their technology reduces the need to transfer gigabytes of data to the cloud thus saving valuable dollars and achieve a faster turnaround on the insights. The solution is implemented very simply - it almost attaches itself like fitbit and does not need a deep integration.

[caption id="attachment_131236" align="alignright" width="259"] Manish Singhal, Founding Partner at pi Ventures[/caption]

Manish Singhal, Founding Partner, pi Ventures, added, “What attracted us to invest in them was their clear understanding of the technology and customer needs. Another winning point was their minimally intrusive solution, the need of the hour in the Industrial IoT space. We are happy to partner with a brilliant team working hard at addressing a crucial need."

SwitchOn with their solution are well poised to be a dominant player in the Industrial IoT space which is expected to be >$200B by 2023. Industrial operations for a large part are still highly manual with only 8% of the pre-existing sensors in the machines are connected to the internet. With ample opportunity and need to automate various aspects of a machine to achieve a reduction in downtime, improve operational efficiency and maximize asset utilization, the industrial IoT market is set to advance rapidly.

Last week, an another Industrial IoT startup Sparkyo Technology Pvt. Ltd., which owns and operates Syook, a real-time location intelligence System, had raised an undisclosed amount in funding from Inflection Point Ventures (IPV), an early stage investing platform and a sub-initiative of CXO Genie.

Before that, Pune-based Altizon Inc, which is also an Industrial IoT platform addressing the manufacturing industries, had closed its series A+ funding round of $7 million led by TVS Motor Company (Singapore) Pte. Limited, the Singapore based Subsidiary of TVS Motor.

pi Ventures is India’s first Applied Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, IoT and Blockchain focused early stage venture fund. pi is a $33 Million fund based in Bangalore, India, and invests around $1 million per startup. pi Ventures focuses on healthcare, logistics, retail, fin-tech and enterprise sectors. Backed by some of the leading entrepreneurs globally, pi Ventures brings hands-on product and entrepreneurial experience to the India venture investing ecosystem.

In April, pi Ventures had invested in Bengaluru-based ten3T Healthcare, a health technology startup that has commercialized patented technology for the early detection and prevention of medical episodes to patients in hospitals, during transport, and at home. Prior to that, pi led the $4.2 million seed round of FrontdeskAI, a developer of artificial intelligence assistants for small businesses.

Medical Wearable Device Startup ten3T Raises Funding from ITI Growth Opportunities Fund, pi Ventures

ten3T Healthcare, a health technology startup based in Bengaluru announced that it has raised undisclosed amount in a pre Series A round of funding led by the ITI Growth Opportunities Fund, an early stage venture capital fund of the Investment Trust of India group, with participation from earlier investors pi Ventures and previous angel investors.

The funds will be used to expand the usage of their revolutionary product, Cicer, to home care scenarios, ambulance monitoring, and pharmacovigilance studies. More than 10,000 patient hours of monitoring at hospitals and at home have already been completed using Cicer, covering more than 750 hospital beds.

Prominent angel investors who participated include Bhupen Shah (valley based angel, co-founder of Sling Media), Raghu Tarra (valley based angel, founding member of Sling Media), Krishna Prasad Chitrapura and Raghavendra Prasad (co-founders of QikWell), Dr. Vijay Chandru (co-founder of Strand Life Sciences), Deepinder Singh Dhingra (serial angel investor, chief product officer at Noodle.ai and advisor for AI/ML), Ikuto Higashi (serial angel investor in healthcare startups in the US, Japan, and India), and Rama Voruganti (a senior technologist). pi Ventures had led the company’s first round of investment in December 2016.

ten3T has commercialized patented technology for the early detection and prevention of medical episodes to patients in hospitals, during transport, and at home. Every day, more than 6000 patients experience preventable medical episodes in India. Early warning signs for these episodes show up in patient’s vitals data, hours and days before time. A majority of these patients are not monitored due to the limitations of existing monitoring platforms. ten3T’s Cicer solves this problem using clinical grade wearables, proprietary IoT technology, and predictive analytics that alert physicians and patient’s families of impending events before they happen. ten3T was recently chosen by Google to be among the top machine learning startups in India.

At the core of ten3T’s revolutionary technology is the Cicer patch, a palm sized sticker that continuously measures a patient’s vitals and presents the data to physician smartphones in as low as 4 seconds, on any smart device, anywhere in the world. The patch measures 6 leads of ECG, heart rate, respiration, patient posture and falls. The Cicer system also captures blood oxygen saturation and blood pressure. The real-time data is fed into machine learning algorithms that identify patterns in the patient’s vital signs and send timely lifesaving alerts.

ten3T was founded by Rahul Shingrani, a biomedical engineering graduate of Mumbai and Marquette University with significant experience in medical innovations at the leading medical technology firms such as Siemens, Philips, J&J, and Medtronic; Prasad Bhat, a biomedical engineer with industry leading expertise in regulatory and quality systems for medical devices, and Dr. Sudhir Borgonha, a physician and an entrepreneur (graduate of St. John’s Medical College, Bangalore and the Sloan School of Management, MIT).

Rahul Shingrani, co-founder and CEO, ten3T, said, “Patient care continues to be reactionary and episodic, with the health system’s focus on managing episodes such as heart attacks after the traumatic event. This places a large medical and financial burden on the patient, their family, and the overall system. This needs to change. Technology allows us to monitor patients anywhere and everywhere, and advances in AI enables us to pick up subtle patterns in the patient’s vitals data. For every prevented episode, we can minimise the lifelong consequences to a patient and their family."

Mohit Gulati, Founding Partner,ITI, said, “Coming from a medtech background, we as a team see greater advancements in Indian healthcare in the decade up ahead. We thereby look to invest in companies in disruptive spaces and ten3T’s device, Cicer will make traditional methods of post ICU care more easy, accessible and smart. We believe in a country like India, adoption and usage of any medical device increases with ease of use of the device and its affordability. ten3T has ticked all boxes and we hope to soon see it in every hospital and patient’s homes."

Manish Singhal, Founding Partner, pi Ventures, added, “ten3T brings together the best of the IoT technology and AI algorithms to create a world class product, Cicer for continuous monitoring. This is an emerging space and we believe that a product like Cicer can open up several interesting applications in Drug Trials, Up/ Down ICUs, home monitoring, monitoring on the move like in ambulances, etc. We wish them all the very best. “

ten3T delivers data driven clinical insights using its patented platform of intelligent, medical grade wearables for continuous vitals monitoring and proprietary health analytics to enable predictive, proactive, and effective clinical decisions. Towards this, ten3T has commercialised its AI driven, real time monitoring platform that is in use at multiple hospitals across India.

Launched in November 2018, the Investment Trust of India group started an early stage venture capital fund — ITI Growth Opportunities Fund, with a target corpus of USD 21 Mn (INR 150 Cr) for the fund. As an early-stage enabler, the fund is sector agnostic, with preference to be the first institutional investor backing entrepreneurs building sustainable disruptive businesses.

AI-Powered Virtual Assistant Maker FrontdeskAI Raises $2 Mn from pi Ventures

FrontdeskAI, the leading developer of artificial intelligence (AI) assistants for small businesses, and the fastest adopted AI assistant in the wellness market, today announced it has closed an additional $2 million in funding, bringing its total seed funding to $4.2 million.

This pre-series A round of funding was led by pi Ventures, India’s first Applied Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, IoT and Blockchain focused early stage venture fund. The funds will help FrontdeskAI accelerate product development, increase customer acquisition and investigate new vertical markets.

Previous seed rounds include $1.1 million in June 2018, led by Blue Pointe Capital and $1.1 million in November 2018, led by Speciale Invest. pi Ventures’ partner, Abishek Surendran, will join the FrontdeskAI board that already includes BluePointe Ventures managing partner, Sandeep Sardana, and Speciale Invest managing partner, Vishesh Rajaram.

FrontdeskAI creates AI
assistants specifically for small businesses that rely
on appointment-based products and
services for their revenue. The company’s current AI assistant portfolio serves
the wellness market including the spa, salon and fitness industries. The
wellness market is globally valued at $4.2 trillion and is growing twice as
fast as global economic growth. FrontdeskAI customer
acquisition is currently growing 17% month on month, subscription revenue is
growing 25% month on month, and churn is amongst the lowest in the industry at
less than 3% per month.

FrontdeskAI
assistants help manage appointments, class scheduling, rescheduling, all forms
of customer and service specific enquiries, and can execute highly targeted and
intelligent marketing campaigns. They are powered by a set of proprietary
algorithms, a proprietary database of B2C natural language interactions, and
knowledge graphs. Over time, they build a rich source of information about
customer requirements, preferences and usage patterns. By tapping into the
FrontdeskAI knowledge graph, the AI assistants are expert and up and running
immediately on deployment. To create human empathy, FrontdeskAI provides a
second layer of intelligence comprising human trainers to groom the AI
assistant to speak in the style and tone of the customer brand. The AI
assistant becomes independent over time building knowledge and experience from
all its interactions.

Srivatsan
Laxman, CEO, FrontdeskAI, said “We are laser focused on developing affordable
and easy-to- use AI assistants for small businesses. The market
traction we have already achieved is exciting. Our customers report a 30% increase
in revenue, 20% increase in new client registrations, and a significant
reduction in class drop-outs. With the additional funding and the
partnership with pi Ventures we are now in a position to
deepen our IP and competitive barriers to market entry.”

Abishek Surendran, Partner, pi Ventures, said, “We are excited about partnering with FrontdeskAI
which has developed a world class AI assistant for the small and medium
enterprise market. Their deep learning-based AI engine
means that companies can provide superior customer experiences at very low
costs. We look forward to supporting Srivatsan and the FrontdeskAI leadership
team to accelerate and expand upon the market advantage they have created.”

About
FrontdeskAI Founded in 2017 and
headquartered in Palo Alto, CA, FrontdeskAI creates AI solutions for
the un-sung heroes of the global economy – the small businesses.
FrontdeskAI has democratized the AI market by bringing affordable and tailored
solutions to main street.

The
company is the fastest adopted AI solution for the spa, salon and fitness
industries. Embodied in ‘Sasha’, the most advanced AI powered
assistant for small business, FrontdeskAI solutions deliver high impact
productivity, efficiency, revenue and customer retention advantages within
weeks of deployment.

About FrontdeskAI founders:

Srivatsan Laxman Ph.D., co-founder and CEO, is an expert in
the field of artificial intelligence, information retrieval and data privacy.
Prior to FrontdeskAI, he founded Scibler which developed an iOS mobile AI
assistant to manage appointments directly from email conversations and calendar
updates. He also spent seven years in the Machine Learning & Optimization
group at Microsoft Research.

Supriya Rao Ph.D., co-founder and CTO, has over 15
years’ experience building intelligent systems including developing natural
language processing-based business intelligence solutions at Strand
Life Sciences, and designing surveillance computer vision-based video
products for Honeywell Technology Solutions.

About pi Ventures, it is India’s first Applied Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, IoT and Blockchain focused early stage venture fund. pi is a $33 Million fund based in Bangalore, India, and invests around $1 million per startup. pi Ventures focuses on healthcare, logistics, retail, fin-tech and enterprise sectors.

Last November, NIRAMAI Health Analytix, a deep tech powered health technology startup, had raised about ₹50 crore in funding from Pi Ventures and others.

Backed by some of the leading entrepreneurs globally as well as IFC of World Bank group, pi Ventures brings hands-on product and entrepreneurial experience to the India venture investing ecosystem.

Health Tech Startup Niramai Raises $7 Mn from Pi Ventures, Axilor, Binny Bansal & Others

Bangalore-based NIRAMAI Health Analytix, a deep tech powered health technology startup, has raised about US$6-7 million (~ ₹50 crore) in a fresh round of funding from its existing investors Pi Ventures, Axilor, Ankur Capital and Flipkart co-founder Binny Bansal, reported Economic Times.

The startup, which was part of AXilors summer'17 accelerator batch, had last raised $50,000 in November of last year when it was selected by Google for its Launchpad accelerator programme, a Google's flagship 6-month programme that includes an intensive two-week boot camp in San Francisco. Prior to this, the startup had raised an undisclosed amount in seed funding from Pi Ventures, Binny Bansal, Axilor Ventures, Ankur Capital, and 500 Startups, in in April 2017.

The startup has raised a total of $6.1M in funding over 3 rounds including this one. NIRAMAI has reportedly saw revenues of Rs 43 lakh in FY17-18.

Founded in 2016 by Geetha Manjunath and Nidhi Mathur, NIRAMAI has developed a novel breast cancer screening solution that uses a new cancer screening software powered by machine intelligence called 'Thermalytix' over traditional thermography images, which can detect cancer at a much earlier stage than traditional diagnostic methods and can therefore improve survival rates.

NIRAMAI's portable technology, which is low cost and affordable for mass screening of rural population, has screened more than 3,000 women and had earlier shared plans of looking to expand across the country through healthcare partners, as well as in a couple of Asian markets by 2019. The company at present has deployments in diagnostic centres/hospitals across three states -- Karnataka, Tamil Nadu and Telangana.

In India, NIRAMAI competes with Healthi, Qure.AI, and Predible Health, which too have envisaged AI for their solution. Globally, the company competes with Volpara Solutions, Enlitic, Inc., and SemanticMD.

pi Ventures, India’s first applied AI and IoT focused early stage venture fund, has recently got US$6 million from CDC Group plc, a UK Government's development finance institution. It was founded by Manish Singhal (Co-founder & Ex-CEO, LetsVenture and prominent angel investor) and Umakant Soni (Ex Director India, Science Inc & Co-founder AI BOT company).

AI-focussed VC Fund pi Ventures Gets $6 Mn from UK Govt.'s CDC Group

The UK Government's development finance institution CDC Group plc has invested USD 6 Mn in pi Ventures, India’s first Applied Artificial Intelligence and IoT focused early stage venture fund. The amount will be used to invest in startups with deep tech capabilities that have the potential to disrupt sectors and facilitate a lasting change in businesses and lives.

CDC Group plc aims to increase capital flows to underdeveloped markets so countries can finance their way out of poverty. Their focus is to find talented teams and cohesively grow great businesses in Africa and South Asia. CDC’s unique structure combines the best of private sector skills with a public-spirited mission. Their focus sectors to invest include financial services, infrastructure, health, manufacturing, food and agriculture, construction and real estate, and education, typically that which will lead to the economic growth of a country.

Alagappan Murugappan, Managing Director, Head of Intermediated Equity, South Asia, CDC Group plc, said, “We are pleased to be supporting pi Ventures for its AI-focused fund. This allows our capital to support early-stage companies that are innovating through technology to provide affordable goods and services at scale in areas such as healthcare among others.”

pi Ventures announced their second close in January this year at $25mn and the fund is expected to announce their final close shortly. Key contributors to the fund include Chairman of Hero Enterprise Sunil Kant Munjal, Electronic Development Fund (managed by Canbank Ventures), SIDBI, prominent family offices from USA, Canada, Singapore & India and leading entrepreneurs like Mohandas Pai, Binny Bansal, Deep Kalra, Sanjeev Bikchandani and Bhupen Shah among others. The fund is co-sponsored by In Color Capital of Canada.

Manish Singhal, Founding Partner, pi Ventures added, “CDC’s confidence fuels our vision to find, fund and support the best teams who are using Artificial Intelligence to solve real world problems. We are very happy to have their support and backing”.

pi Ventures has announced 6 investments so far - invested in SigTuple (revolutionising global healthcare space through data driven intelligence), NIRAMAI (non-invasive, non-touch, non-radiation approach to detect breast cancer), ten3T (medical grade wearable device), Zenatix (data-driven energy efficiency company acquired by Hero Electronix), CustomerSuccessBox (customer success platform which helps B2B SaaS companies reduce, churn and grow their recurring revenue by applying AI and ML) and Locus.sh (logistics optimisation platform).

The 70-year old CDC Group has been investing in India for over 30 years and has already made 595 investments across sectors.

CDC Group plc is the UK’s development finance institution. Wholly owned by the UK Government, it invests in Africa and South Asia with the aim of supporting economic development to create jobs. CDC has net assets of £5.1bn.

In May of last year, International Finance Corporation (IFC), a part of the World Bank Group, had invested $3 million in pi Ventures’ maiden fund.

pi Ventures is India’s first Applied Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning & IoT focused early stage venture fund, founded by Manish Singhal (Ex Co-founder & CEO, LetsVenture and prominent angel investor) and Umakant Soni (Ex Director India, Science Inc & Co-founder AI BOT company). Backed by some of the leading entrepreneurs globally, pi Ventures brings hands-on product and entrepreneurial experience to the Indian venture investing ecosystem. pi Ventures focuses on healthcare, logistics, retail, fintech and enterprise sectors.

[Top Image - YourStory.com]

Pi Ventures Appoints Abishek Surendran As A Partner

pi Ventures announces the appointment of Abishek Surendran as a full-time Partner at the AI, ML and IoT focused early stage venture fund. Abishek will be involved in strategy, deal flow and mentoring portfolio companies.

Abishek has been an early stage technology investor with multiple years of experience investing in frontier tech. In his most recent stint, he led AI investments at Exfinity Venture Partners as part of the founding team. Some of the investments that he led and was on board/ observer are Mad Street Den, Yobi.ai, iQlect, Locus, MarianaIQ and Absentia. He also supported the management teams of 10+ startups of Exfinity portfolio in various aspects of fundraising, strategy, hiring, etc. Prior to this, he led angel investments at Unilazer Ventures, the PE arm of the family office of Indian media industry veteran Ronnie Screwvala, where he managed a portfolio of 8 companies. He also has had a brief stint as an investment banker at Intellecap and as a software developer in TCS. Abishek is an Electronics Engineer from Mumbai University and an MBA from IIM-Bangalore.

Manish Singhal, Founding Partner, pi Ventures says, "Umakant and I are very excited to welcome Abishek on board. He has been instrumental in leading AI investments in India. Additionally, with his rich experience as a venture capitalist, he will be a great addition to our current team."

Abishek Surendran says, "I am honoured and excited to partner with Manish and Umakant who share my ambition of supporting deep tech entrepreneurs and building next generation technology start-ups in India. I look forward to working with pi’s interesting portfolio and invest in cutting edge AI companies."

pi Ventures is India’s first Applied Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning & IoT focused early stage venture fund, founded by Manish Singhal (ex. Cofounder & CEO, LetsVenture and prominent angel investor) and Umakant Soni (Ex. Director India, Science Inc & Co-founder AI BOT company, 2010). pi Ventures focuses on healthcare, logistics, retail, fin-tech and enterprise sectors. Backed by some of the leading entrepreneurs globally, pi Ventures brings hands-on product and entrepreneurial experience to the India venture investing ecosystem.

10 Must Know Startup News From The Week Gone By [03 - 08 July]

Missed the happening of startup world? Here is the recap for you. Mentioned below are the 10 news which made buzz during in the week gone by.

Homegrown E-commerce Giant Snapdeal Rejects Flipkart’s $850 Mn Buyout Offer

Flipkart, Snapdeal merger is taking twist and turns with time. Recently, Jasper Infotech owned Snapdeal’s board has refused the initial offer by Flipkart. E-commerce major, Flipkart has completed the due diligence process and has made an offer of $800-850 million to buy Snapdeal. But Snapdeal’s board felt that offer made by Flipkart undervalued the company. Snapdeal’s largest investor, SoftBank has been proactively mediating the sale for the past few months.

India, Israel Launches 5 Year Technology Fund

Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to Israel has become the buzz of the town. The PM visit to Israel has further strengthen the relation between two nation by announcing the launch of a technology fund, the Israel India Innovation Initiative Fund, or I4F. The fund will focus towards growing the two countries’ business relations. In addition to the tech fund, the two countries also signed a total of seven accords aimed at boosting India and Israel’s cooperation in a number of crucial sectors right from agriculture and water to space research etc.

Not only this, the two countries have unveiled a bilateral innovation challenge that will see Indian and Israeli startups coming together to conceive solutions to fight some of the most critical challenges that the world is facing right now like water, agriculture and digital healthcare etc. The bilateral innovation challenge will be hosted on a new online platform called the India-Israel Innovation Bridge.

VC Investments in Startups Lowest in Last 3 Years, Decline By 25%

As per a report by Venture Intelligence, a research firm led by media entrepreneur Arun Natarajan, the quarter ending June saw venture capital investments in Indian startups decreasing by 25 percent from the figure locked in a year ago. The report highlighted that the venture capital investment amount in startups in India has decreased to $275 million in 78 investments from last year’s figure of #309 million in 104 deals. Venture Intelligence, which is considered as a leading source of information and analysis on private company financials, transactions and their valuations in India, also revealed that the June quarter was the lowest VC investment quarter seen by the Indian startup ecosystem in the last three years period.

WeWork Launches First Collaborative Work Space in Bengaluru

New York-based collaborative workspace, WeWork has launched its first community workspace in Bengaluru – ‘WeWork Galaxy’. WeWork targets two new centers’ in Koramangala and Whitefield respectively. The Bangalore launch also coincides with the opening of first location in Brazil (Sao Palo).

WorkSpace is well equipped to cater to 2200 members, powered by beautiful, functional work spaces, swimming pool and gym. The company is aiming to reach out to entrepreneurs, freelancers, SMEs and SMBs, startups across e-commerce, IT/ITES, retail, FMCG, healthcare, legal, and marketing segments amongst others.

Numaligarh Refinery To Assist Startups in Assam

Assam-based Numaligarh Refinery Limited (NRL) has decided to promote startups in Northeast India region. If we talk of the funds, initially, to assist startups, company has come up with a fund of Rs 10 Crore which will come as a grant for startup venture. Commenting on the development, P.Padmanabhan, Managing Director, NRL said, “We want to create entrepreneurship ecosystem in Northeast India. Once the ideas are submitted, jury will evaluate the same. We will evaluate if the project requires seed funding, scale up funding or any other assistance. We will tie up with incubation Centre.”

Flipkart Executives To Deliver Packages To Customers

E-commerce major, Flipkart has recently flagged off a program where its employees will visit customers across the Indian subcontinent in the month of July as a part of the company’s 10th anniversary celebrations. As a part of the program, Flipkart’s top executives, which includes its CEO Kalyan Krishnamurthy, and its employees across business functions will get an opportunity to personally visit a customer, especially in tier 2, 3 and 4 towns like Bhopal, Patna, Amritsar, Vijaywada, Guwahati, Cuttack, Nashik and Jamnagar to thank them for supporting the company for ten long years.

Shamik Sharma To Join pi Ventures As Venture Partner

Early stage venture fund, pi Ventures has appointed Shamik as a Venture Partner. He was previously the Chief Product and Technology officer at Myntra where he was responsible for driving technology strategy and culture. At pi Ventures, Sharma will work with portfolio founders to help them get past critical hurdles, design their product roadmaps and hire specialised talent. His role will involve supporting pi Ventures in deep understanding of technology and IP via technology deep dives of prospective portfolio companies and support in bringing interesting startups aligned with pi Ventures’ investment theme to their deal pipeline.

Capsula.Studio to Set Up a Startup Accelerator

Capsula.Studio at Tel Aviv University has partnered with a commercial vehicles seating and interiors company, Pinnacle Industries, to establish a startup accelerator, Pinnacle Capsula.Studio in Pune. The partnership aims to accelerate innovative entrepreneurs to market through Capsula’s proven ‘Mentored Customer Validation’ program and knowledge center which connect entrepreneurs with global value network players and the research community.

The Studio has been conceived as a not-for-profit entity which will be located at The BHAU Institute which is a part of the College of Engineering. It will act as a bridge between Indian and Israeli entrepreneurs and will allow novel ideas rapidly gain market traction.

Housing’s Rahul Yadav Joins ANAROCK Property Consultants

ANAROCK Property Consultants, which prominent real estate industry stalwart Anuj Puri launched last month has appointed Housing.com’s co-founder and ex-CEO Rahul Yadav as Chief Product & Technology Officer. Yadav’s experience in harnessing the consumer housing market at via technology will add the key element to the business.

Yadav, who will be based out of ANAROCK’s Mumbai offices in Bandra-Kurla Complex, assumes his new role from July first week and is already building his team of product and technology experts.

Edtech Startup BYJU’S Acquires TutorVista And Edurite

The creator of K-12 app, BYJU’S has acquired TutorVista and Edurite from Pearson. The partnership is focused on expanding international reach and creating a diverse product portfolio. Launched in 2015, BYJU’s has become one of the preferred education app for students across age groups with 8 million users and 4,00,000 annual paid subscriptions. With an average time of 40 minutes being spent by a student on the app every day from 1700+ cities and towns, the BYJU’S app is making learning enjoyable and effective. BYJU’S is making learning contextual and visual, and not just theoretical.

pi Ventures Ropes In Shamik Sharma As Venture Partner

Applied artificial intelligence, machine learning and IoT focused early stage venture fund, pi Ventures has appointed Shamik as a Venture Partner. He was previously the Chief Product and Technology officer at Myntra where he was responsible for driving technology strategy and culture. At pi Ventures, Sharma will work with portfolio founders to help them get past critical hurdles, design their product roadmaps and hire specialised talent. His role will involve supporting pi Ventures in deep understanding of technology and IP via technology deep dives of prospective portfolio companies and support in bringing interesting startups aligned with pi Ventures’ investment theme to their deal pipeline.

Commenting on the development, Manish Singhal, Founding Partner, pi Ventures said, “With two decades of rich experience and business wisdom, Sharma is a great addition to the pi team. His unique mix of deep and broad technical expertise, product design, and business experience will play a key role in enriching our investment decisions as well as a welcome help for our founders”.

Sharma brings immense value with his experience of being an angel investor and technology advisor for several Indian startups. With his capability of understanding roadblocks from the technology perspective he will mentor and enable the startups to reach their goal at a faster pace. Shamik’s experience of recruiting talent to build big teams at large companies as well as startups in short periods will benefit pi Ventures and their portfolio as they plan to invest in 18-20 startups over the next 3-4 years.

" We hope our focus on deep technology-based opportunities will help create many disruptive products and businesses out of India,” said Sharma.

Sharma has held key roles in several organizations and has over 17 years of technology experience. Shamik has spent most of his career in the bay area and was the Vice President, Software at Lytro, a light field camera startup company founded in 2006. Prior to that, he has also held executive roles in RockYou, StumbleUpon and Yahoo! Shamik is a Computer Science graduate from IIT-Kharagpur and holds a Master’s degree from the University of Maryland.

pi Ventures was founded by Manish Singhal (ex. Co-founder & CEO, LetsVenture and prominent angel investor) and Umakant Soni (Ex. Director India, Science Inc & Co-founder AI BOT company, 2010). The fund focuses on healthcare, logistics, retail, fintech and enterprise sectors. Backed by some of the leading entrepreneurs globally, pi Ventures brings hands-on product and entrepreneurial experience to the India venture investing ecosystem.

IFC Pumps In $3 Mn In AI Focused Fund pi Ventures

International Finance Corporation (IFC), a part of the World Bank Group, is investing $3 million in pi Ventures’ maiden fund. Fun plans to utilise freshly infused fund for investing in companies leveraging technologies such as applied artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning and IoT across a range of sectors.

Commenting on the development, Ruchira Shukla, Regional Lead, Venture Capital, South Asia, IFC said, “This investment is aligned with IFC’s objective to act as a catalyst to spur entrepreneurial activity and support technology startups that drive innovation in India and globally, and solve complex problems across industries.”

IFC is making investments through the ‘IFC Startup Catalyst programme’ which aims to build local ecosystems to drive innovation and entrepreneurship. IFC has both a direct investment practice and is also a Limited Partner (LP) to local PE and VC funds.

Founded in mid 2016 by Manish Singhal and Umakant Soni, pi Ventures is an early stage investment fund focused on startups in the area such as applied artificial intelligence, machine learning and internet of things (IoT). Till date, fund has made four investments in the healthcare and energy-efficiency space, namely Sigtuple, Zenatix, Ten3T and NIRAMAI. Earlier in March 2017, pi Ventures had announced the first close at $13 million.

“Getting IFC to back us in our journey is very meaningful to us. Not only do they bring a wealth of knowledge but also a world-wide network which can be very useful for our investee companies. We appreciate IFC backing disruptive product companies in the Applied AI space via pi Ventures,” said Manish Singhal, Founding Partner, pi Ventures.

IFC's committed portfolio in India is over $5 billion as of June 30, 2016. In FY16, IFC committed $1.1 billion in new investments in the country. In addition to strengthening local capital markets in India, IFC is focused on boosting financing in infrastructure and logistics, promoting financial inclusion, helping create conditions to attract increased private capital, and helping structure public-private partnerships.

IFC’s focus areas in venture capital include consumer internet, edutech, healthtech, cleantech and emerging technology solutions based on data analytics and AI.  IFC’s venture capital investments in India include online grocery major Big Basket, edtech startup Byju, Portea- a company providing affordable home-care and Blackbuck, a leading player in elogistics.

IFC Pumps In $3 Mn In AI Focused Fund pi Ventures

International Finance Corporation (IFC), a part of the World Bank Group, is investing $3 million in pi Ventures’ maiden fund. Fun plans to utilise freshly infused fund for investing in companies leveraging technologies such as applied artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning and IoT across a range of sectors.

Commenting on the development, Ruchira Shukla, Regional Lead, Venture Capital, South Asia, IFC said, “This investment is aligned with IFC’s objective to act as a catalyst to spur entrepreneurial activity and support technology startups that drive innovation in India and globally, and solve complex problems across industries.”

IFC is making investments through the ‘IFC Startup Catalyst programme’ which aims to build local ecosystems to drive innovation and entrepreneurship. IFC has both a direct investment practice and is also a Limited Partner (LP) to local PE and VC funds.

Founded in mid 2016 by Manish Singhal and Umakant Soni, pi Ventures is an early stage investment fund focused on startups in the area such as applied artificial intelligence, machine learning and internet of things (IoT). Till date, fund has made four investments in the healthcare and energy-efficiency space, namely Sigtuple, Zenatix, Ten3T and NIRAMAI. Earlier in March 2017, pi Ventures had announced the first close at $13 million.

“Getting IFC to back us in our journey is very meaningful to us. Not only do they bring a wealth of knowledge but also a world-wide network which can be very useful for our investee companies. We appreciate IFC backing disruptive product companies in the Applied AI space via pi Ventures,” said Manish Singhal, Founding Partner, pi Ventures.

IFC's committed portfolio in India is over $5 billion as of June 30, 2016. In FY16, IFC committed $1.1 billion in new investments in the country. In addition to strengthening local capital markets in India, IFC is focused on boosting financing in infrastructure and logistics, promoting financial inclusion, helping create conditions to attract increased private capital, and helping structure public-private partnerships.

IFC’s focus areas in venture capital include consumer internet, edutech, healthtech, cleantech and emerging technology solutions based on data analytics and AI.  IFC’s venture capital investments in India include online grocery major Big Basket, edtech startup Byju, Portea- a company providing affordable home-care and Blackbuck, a leading player in elogistics.

Revolutionary Breast Cancer Screening Startup NIRAMAI Raises Funding Led by Pi Ventures

NIRAMAI Health Analytix, a startup that’s building a revolutionary non-invasive, non-touch, non-radiation approach to detect breast cancer has raised seed funding led by pi Ventures with participation from Ankur Capital, Axilor Ventures, 500 Startups and Flipkart co-founder Binny Bansal. NIRAMAI (Non Invasive Risk Assessment with Machine Learning) is a pioneer of a new patented technology called Thermalytix© that can remove technological, logistical, and cultural barriers that hinder breast cancer screening among women today. The start-up’s solution uses artificial intelligence over thermal images to address the issues of early detection of breast cancer.

NIRAMAI has recently been inducted by Axilor Ventures for its summer 2017 accelerator batch.

NIRAMAI is on a mission to create a universal cancer screening method that can save lives by detecting breast cancer at an early stage. The overall hardware-software solution is portable and uses big data analytics, artificial intelligence and machine learning for reliable, early and accurate breast cancer screening. Early diagnosis is critical in saving the life of a cancer patient. Their method of screening is based on principles of Thermography that can detect tumors 5 years before mammography or a clinical exam can detect.

NIRAMAI was founded in July 2016 by Dr. Geetha Manjunath who comes with 25 years of research and innovation expertise in areas such as data analytics, machine learning, cloud computing, semantic web and Nidhi Mathur who is a serial intrapreneur with rich experience in business planning, strategy and product management. Both the women cofounders have previously worked with companies like Xerox Research Center and Hewlett Packard Labs.

[caption id="attachment_116078" align="aligncenter" width="700"] NIRAMAI Team[/caption]

Dr. Geetha Manjunath, CEO & Co-founder of NIRAMAI, says, “Mortality rates among breast cancer patients are very high in India. Our solution is portable, low-cost, very safe, privacy-sensitive and can detect cancer at a very early stage making it very suitable for regular preventive health checkup as well as screening camps. This investment will help us strengthen our IP portfolio, expand operations and ensure our cancer screening tool is readily available for commercial use.”

Manish Singhal, Founding Partner, pi Ventures added, “Breast Cancer is a major killer across the world. In India, one out of two women die after getting diagnosed with breast cancer since the detection happens very late. Early detection is key to saving lives and is enabled very well with the innovative and disruptive AI based solution from NIRAMAI. We are excited to partner with them in their journey to solve this important and worldwide problem.”

Co-founder of the Mumbai-based impact investor Ankur Capital, Dr. Ritu Verma said “We are very excited to partner with NIRAMAI. Their early detection solution is low cost, zero radiation and non contact, which very effectively addresses the concerns and limitations for larger adoption of screening for women across all segments. Breast cancer rates are growing in India and having such a solution is imperative for addressing the dismal survival rates we are seeing today.”

Shalini Prakash from 500 Startups, the leading global venture capital seed fund shared "We are always very excited to discover stellar teams and disruptive companies solving big problems, and NIRAMAI is definitely one of them. Breast cancer rate is increasing every year and there is a huge gap in the health industry. NIRAMAI’s technology solves this problem for millions of Indian women by early detection and taking preventive measures for breast cancer ahead of time."

Binny Bansal, co-founder of Flipkart said “The innovation from NIRAMAI is solving a key problem in women’s health today. We are happy to partner with this new startup that is socially relevant, innovative and has good market potential."

[Top Image - NIRAMAI Co-founders Dr. Geetha Manjunath & Nidhi Mathur (L-R)]

AI Focused Fund pi Ventures Announces the First Close of Their Fund at $13M

Applied Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning & IoT focused early stage venture fund pi Ventures announced the first close of their maiden fund at $13mn. The $30mn fund is expected to close within this year. Limited partners include India’s top lender to small businesses, SIDBI, prominent family offices from USA, Canada, Singapore & India and leading entrepreneurs like Mohandas Pai, Binny Bansal, Deep Kalra, Sanjeev Bikchandani and Bhupen Shah among others.

Co-founded by Manish Singhal and Umakant Soni, pi Ventures will invest in early stage start-ups that focus on solving problems in healthcare, logistics, retail, fin-tech and enterprise sectors using AI, ML and IoT. The Bengaluru based VC plans to invest in 18-20 start-ups from this fund over a 3-4 year time frame.

Manish Singhal, Founding Partner, pi Ventures and hardware techie at heart says, “India is the dark horse in the AI race given it has lot of data, brilliant data science talent & early adoption environment due to broken processes and we are happy to play a part in helping India leapfrog with AI. We are thankful to our early backers, investors and founders who have chosen to work with us. We are very excited to play a role in building a strong AI based product ecosystem in India.”

pi Ventures has made three investments so far in the healthcare & energy-efficiency space, namely SigTuple, Zenatix and ten3T. SigTuple is in the medical diagnostic space and is creating a deep learning driven, cloud based solution for detection of abnormalities and trends in medical data, for blood diagnosis. Zenatix is a data-driven energy efficiency company that uses advanced machine learning based models and delivers 10 to 30% energy efficiency to large commercial consumers of electricity along with predictive insights to prevent downtown. ten3T is in continuous monitoring of medical data like ECG in real time through its own smart patches to enable mobile ICU for smaller hospitals.

pi Ventures is India’s first Applied Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning & IoT focused early stage venture fund and was founded in mid 2016 by Manish Singhal and Umakant Soni. Both come with rich experience in setting up, building and scaling companies. Manish has been Cofounder & CEO at LetsVenture and a prominent angel investor. He has rich product experience having worked with Sling Media, Ittiam Systems, Motorola and wrote a part of MPEG 4 standards, the dominant video standard even today. Umakant Soni was Director India, Science Inc & Co-founder of one of the first AI BOT company out of India, called Vimagino

pi Ventures holds interesting #chAI (AI over a cup of chai) sessions to bring together and encourage the ecosystem. An open-for- all session, it has been attended by researchers from universities, startups, large companies and students. Startup founders share how they use AI to solve problems. With eight
sessions so far (5 in Bangalore and 3 in New Delhi) it leads to a lot of cross pollination of ideas among founders and educates the audience about best practices in building AI companies.

ten3T, Medical Grade Wearable Device Startup, Raises Seed Funding Led by Pi Ventures

Bangalore based medical grade wearable device startup, ten3T announced that it has raised an angel round of funding from Pi Ventures. The round also saw participation by a group of angels, including V. Krishna Prasad, Co-Founder of Qikwel, Bhupen Shah and other angel investors from the Valley and Bangalore. ten3T has developed its first wearable medical device ‘Cicer’, which will make cardiac health easily accessible to everyone.

ten3T builds wearable medical devices that collects and integrates medical grade data in real time. Besides manufacturing the devices, it deploys, manages and analyzes the data with predictive functioning. Each wearable device will include multiple sensors to collect clinical grade data, continuously streaming signals from ECG, pulse, SpO2, respiratory rate and temperature – all gathered within 30 seconds, all analyzed and reported in real time. ten3T will manage and analyze the continually streaming data on an intelligent cloud based platform to provide accurate medical grade data to doctors with analytics and predictive modeling. ten3T will be an end-to-end operator of the real time ECG monitoring business – building the hardware, software, data storage and data analytics.

ten3T founding team comes with rich experience in medical and biomedical fields. It is co-founded by Dr. Sudhir Borgonha, a physician and an entrepreneur (graduate of St. John’s Medical College, Bangalore and the Sloan School of Management, MIT) and two biomedical engineers - Rahul Shingrani, (Marquette University) comes with years of research and development experience in the medical device space and Prasad Bhat who has experience in regulatory and quality systems in medical devices.

Dr. Sudhir Borgonha, Co-founder & CEO, ten3T, says, “Medical care continues to be traditionally managed. With technological advances, there is an urgent need to build more powerful diagnostic capabilities coupled with interpretative tools. ten3T integrates its proprietary hardware and software to build convenience, cost benefits and intelligent reporting to the physician and patient. It is our vision to make cardiac care preventive, predictive and accessible to all.”

Manish Singhal, Founding Partner of pi Ventures, adds, “We are very excited to partner with the talented team at ten3T. Sudhir and his team have done some path breaking work in bringing out a compact and medical grade device. We believe that Cicer will make ECG and cardiac health monitoring easy, intelligent and more accessible for all, across India and globally. At pi Ventures, we are looking to support disruptive product companies in the Applied AI, ML and IoT space and ten3T presents a very compelling case.”

The funds will be deployed to beta test the company’s first device, Cicer in multiple healthcare settings, including doctors in private practice, nursing homes and for at-home monitoring.

Cicer monitors real time ECG, respiration, pulse and temperature and streams them simultaneously in real time to the doctor’s tablet and the nursing station. This empowers a number of smaller nursing homes without an ICU to offer ICU equivalent services when patients are walking around or even in their homes. Cicer can be used to get a Spot ECG i.e. an instant reading or can be worn for hours (similar to a Holter monitor). The device is a self-enclosed, wireless 9 cm wide smart patch that is held against the chest for 20 seconds to generate an instant ECG or worn for several hours for continuous monitoring.

Rahul Shingrani, Co-founder & CTO, says, “Being self-enclosed, the device requires little training. Collecting large volumes of clinical grade data will help us build predictive tools, bringing artificial intelligence into the clinic”.

In India, given the fact that 30% of deaths are caused with cardiac issues at the core and lack of an adequate number of cardiologists, we are on our way to claiming the unfortunate distinction of being the cardiovascular disease capital of the world with 70 million cases by 2025. As such we need to find unique ways to accurately monitor and diagnose cardiac function. ten3T will do just that by being an end-to-end operator of the real time ECG monitoring business – building the hardware, software, data storage and data analytics.