Medical-technology startup SigTuple Technologies Pvt. Ltd on Tuesday said it has raised $16 million (Rs 111 crore) in a Series C round of funding led by Trusted Insight, a US-based networking platform for institutional investors.
While Trusted Insight came in as a new investor, existing backers Accel, Chiratae Ventures, Pi Ventures, Flipkart co-founder Binny Bansal and venture debt firm Trifecta Capital also participated in the round.
Bansal will now join the board of SigTuple, the company added.
The latest fundraise comes less than a year after SigTuple had raised $19 million (around Rs 129 crore) in a Series B funding round led by existing investors Accel and Chiratae Ventures last June.
SigTuple was founded in 2015 by Tathagato Rai Dastidar, Rohit Kumar Pandey and Apurv Anand. All three co-founders previously worked at American Express’ Big Data Labs.
The SigTuple group now has three companies under it -- SigTuple Technologies Pvt. Ltd, Mirable Health Services Pvt. Ltd and Truelyser BioSystems Pvt. Ltd.
SigTuple Technologies is the parent company which is engaged in the development of medical solutions for high-volume screening tests that require manual analysis of visual medical data. It also develops a cloud-based system to run the operations of a diagnostic lab.
Mirable Health has two business verticals -- Humain Diagnostics, which is a lab chain for diagnostic tests and Medyog, which brings a lab experience to the homes of consumers.
Truelyser BioSystems is engaged in the assembly and distribution of medical devices and software developed by SigTuple and a few other companies.
The commercialisation of SigTuple devices -- AI100 -- started last year and it has deployed more than 30 devices with blood analysis enabled on them. The company is planning to enable urine and semen analysis on these devices by the end of June. It also plans to launch a new version of the device by the end of this year.
“It is important to look at healthcare holistically to make it affordable, accessible and accurate. Therefore we are looking to pioneer a new fabric for diagnostics," said Pandey, co-founder and chief executive officer of SigTuple. "This fabric will not only enable us to provide a better customer experience but will also power our vision to improve the healthcare services through data-driven intelligence."
Sigtuple had first raised $740,000 in 2016 from Flipkart founders Sachin Bansal and Binny Bansal, Accel Partners and a few other angel investors, including former Biocon executive Nirupa Bareja and Amazon Lab126 executive Debanjan Mukherjee.
The startup had raised $5.8 million (around Rs 38.8 crore) in Series A funding in early-2017 led by Accel Partners with participation from Chiratae Ventures (formerly IDG Ventures), Endiya Partners, pi Ventures, VH Capital and Axilor Partners.
Alex Bangash, founder of lead investor Trusted Insight, said that healthcare requires a new infrastructure powered by technology to make it accessible to everyone and it is partnering with SigTuple for their vision to revive healthcare infrastructure.
Trusted Insight is a platform that hosts a network of institutional investors. The platform helps connect investment decision-makers at endowments, foundations, pensions, insurance companies, sovereign wealth funds, family offices, corporations and healthcare systems, according to its website.
Deals in the segment
SigTuple is among a growing number of health-technology startups that have attracted investors in recent times.
In February, breast cancer screening startup Niramai Health Analytix Pvt. Ltd raised $6 million in a Series A round of funding led by Tokyo-headquartered management consulting firm Dream Incubator.
Niramai, which stands for non-invasive risk assessment with machine intelligence, uses big data analytics and artificial intelligence, instead of thermal images, to detect breast cancer at the early stages.
