This Indian health-tech startup beat nine rivals at Google’s Demo Day Asia

Medical-technology startup SigTuple Technologies Pvt. Ltd has been conferred the 'Judges' Choice' award at search giant Google's first Demo Day Asia programme held in Shanghai on Thursday.

The Bengaluru-based company was chosen for its work using artificial intelligence to support the healthcare system in India, a statement by Google said.

The Accel Partners- and Endiya Partners-backed firm will have an opportunity to be mentored by Google executives on product development and will get access to the Google for Entrepreneurs global partner network. In addition, it will be able to access a global network of accredited investors as and when it goes to market for its next funding round.

Founded in 2015 by Tathagato Rai Dastidar, Rohit Kumar Pandey and Apurv Anand, SigTuple develops cloud-based solutions for medical diagnosis, for which it collects data using artificial intelligence techniques. It has partnered with medical institutions to obtain data for analyses.

Prior to setting up SigTuple, all three co-founders were part of the Big Data Labs division at financial services firm American Express.

The company's flagship product is an AI solution called Manthana, which analyses and generates visual medical data from different devices.  

Manthana can analyse peripheral blood smears, urine and semen samples and retinal scans. The company has also filed for more than a dozen patents and has published research papers in medical and computer science journals.

The company last raised capital in June this year. It secured $19 million (around Rs 129 crore) in a Series B funding round led by existing investors Accel Partners and IDG Venture. Existing investors Endiya Partners, pi Ventures, VH Capital, Axilor Ventures and Flipkart co-founder Binny Bansal had also participated in the round.

Google’s Demo Day Asia

SigTuple was selected from a pool 9 other startups that were finalised for Demo Day. The final 10 were shortlisted from among 305 qualifying applicants from across the Asia-Pacific.

The judges who chose SigTuple were Jenny Lee, managing partner at GGV Capital; Qingsheng Zheng, partner at Sequoia Capital China; Plern Tee Suraphongchai, partner at early-stage venture firm Venturra Capital; and Bradley Horowitz, vice president of product management at Google.

Chinese startup Castbox, a podcast app that allows users to search for music using AI features, won the ‘Judges Favorite’ award last year. Since then, it went on to raise almost $13 million in funding.

The other finalists for Demo Day Asia were as follows:

DycodeX: An Indonesian startup that develops Internet of Things solutions for livestock farming.

Marham: This Pakistan-based healthcare startup helps people search, book appointments and consult with doctors online.

Swingvy: This South Korean firm provides human resources solutions for businesses.

FreightExchange: This Australian firm operates an online platform where freight carriers can sell unused space to shippers.

GITAI: This Japanese firm builds robots to help humans conduct scientific experiments in space.

Miotech: This Chinese fin-tech startup is developing AI-based software for financial services firms.

OneStockHome: This Thai company runs an e-commerce platform for construction materials.

Origami Labs: This Hong Kong-based firm makes smart rings which people can use to hear and send text messages without taking out their phones.

SkyMagic: This Singapore-based company provides drone swarming technology for live entertainment and traffic management systems.

Besides Asia, Google conducts its Demo Day programmes in the United States and Europe and has been running them since 2014.