Reliance Digital Health has invested an undisclosed amount in the oncology healthcare platform Karkinos Healthcare. ‘Kark’ in Hindi means cancer whereas ‘nos’ means elimination. Its headquarter is in Mumbai but its operations take place in 4 locations in Kerala. 

It was launched in July 2020 and is made up of ex-Tata group members. R Venkataramanan and Ravi Kant are the co-founders of Karkinos. The former was the former managing trustee of Tata Trusts and the latter was the former vice-chairman and MD of Tata Motors.

This may be the prime cause that the startup was personally backed by Ratan Tata and the Tata Group. This year Tata Group invested Rs 110 crore in this platform. Initially, Rs 35 crore will be invested and the rest of the capital will be kept in tranches.

Tatas have been actively seeking ways to enter the healthcare segment. With Tata Medical they entered into Covid testing and diagnostics; with Tata1MG they entered the pharmacy segment and with Tata Health they entered in teleconsultation.

Its other investors are Venu Srinivasan, Ronnie Screwvala, Vijay Shekar Sharma, Kris Gopalakrishnan and Bhavish Aggarwal. The startup is also backed by USA-based Rakuten Medical. The San Diego venture is a global clinical-stage biotechnology firm. Karkinos is also setting up a cancer control centre at Jawaharlal Nehru Institute of Medical Sciences.