One in six Indians has diabetes. India houses the second-highest number of diabetic patients in the world. 77 million Indians have diabetes and by 2045 the number will rise to 134 million. Women are at a higher risk of developing diabetes than males but both face similar health risks. Having diabetes increases the chance of having heart attacks and stroke. It also creates problems for those with obesity. 

Not only do diabetic patients suffer from health consequences, but they also have to go through tedious tasks like maintaining health records, have regular checkups and keep a constant check on their blood sugar levels. When Shreekant Pawar found that his father had lost its file with over 100 blood sugar reports, he realised how arduous the process was to maintain offline. 

Pawar had initially been a part of Yousendit.com and then completed his MBA from the University of Northampton. He decided to collaborate with his childhood friend, Hemanshu Jain and they started Diabeto in 2012. Jain was a mechanical engineer. Both of them opened Farasbeee, a digital marketing venture, From this venture they roped in funds to start Diabeto. Diabeto was a non-intrusive device that can sync with the patient’s glucometer and send reports to the users’ application on the mobile. 

The same year, the duo got an angel investor Amir Shaikh, who invested $30,000 and became a co-founder of the company. Shaikh was an electrical engineer from McGill University, Canada. The trio participated in an accelerator program organised by the Government of Chile named Startup Chile. Startup Chile was a startup incubation programme. They received an additional $40,000 grant from there.

In 2015, they had received 500 pre-orders and were in talks with Nasscom and Google for further funding and making their product widely available. Diabeto is one such product that embodies the idea of Make in India. Such innovations not only create benefits for the healthcare sector and in the lives of patients. It also creates employment and an opportunity for exports. Will Diabeto be the revolutionary product that eases the life of 77 million diabetic patients in India and many more patients abroad?