Imagine losing your loved one due to an avoidable medical error? An error that could with technology be avoided at all costs is causing someone’s precious life. This harsh reality was faced by Tathagato Rai Dastidar who lost his father because of a misdiagnosis of acute myeloid leukaemia.
The grief pushed the alumnus of IIT Kharagpur to take up the entrepreneurial path in healthcare. He left his secured job and dived headfirst into finding the right solution for this problem. Despite no previous exposure in healthcare, he teamed up with his former colleagues Rohit Pandey and Apruv Anand to bring AI and data science to create more accurate screening options.
So in 2015, SigTuple was started. The main aim of this venture was to eradicate manual errors by introducing AI-led screening solutions. Their other quest was to make such options more affordable and accessible to the larger Indian population. They started with a microscopic review of blood samples and then slowly ventured into pathology and ophthalmology. They now perform retinal image analysis to urine and semen microscopy.
Since its inception, SigTuple has received $40.8 million in funds. Accel Partners, Chiratae Ventures, IDG Capital and Trifecta Capital Advisors have been its prime investors. In its series A funding and Series B funding they received $5.8 million each. Their last funding round was the Series C round in April 2019, where they raised $16 million.
They were one of the winners of RAISE 2020, an AI startup festival by NITI Aayog, that promotes the philosophy of Aatma Nirbhar Bharat. They have even received CE mark for 2 of its products and have been granted 11 patents. They now plan to expand pan-India and abroad as well. Their competition is CellaVisiona and Sight in the field of pathology and EyeArt and IDx-DR in the field of ophthalmology.
We often take a second medical opinion before any big decisions. Why not use such an innovative startup like SigTuple to offer us advice? With today’s innovation and technology, many avoidable errors can be eliminated. This makes healthcare more reliant and takes the extra workload off the doctors. Lettin them focus on other major concerns.