Bengaluru-based medical technology startup SigTuple, which was founded by former American Express executives, has received a round of seed investment from wide-ranging and prominent investors including Flipkart founders Sachin and Binny Bansal, venture capital giant Accel Partners and other angel investors.

SigTuple, founded by former AmEx Big Data Labs executives Tathagato Rai Dastidar, Rohit Kumar Pandey and Apurv Anand in the middle of last year, is currently based out of Accel’s Incubation Center in Bangalore and aims to provide healthcare solutions by analysing blood samples and detecting different diseases using technology-powered tools.

SigTuple declined to share the exact amount of investment it has received so far. Seed investments are typically in the range of $500,000-$1million.

“In a country like India, trained medical practitioners are always at a short supply. Many people have to travel long distances to see a doctor or even get a simple blood test done. New doctors can’t be trained overnight. The only way healthcare services can reach more people is to make doctors more efficient,” said Dastidar and Pandey in an email to ET.

The team at SigTuple has currently built a technology-powered product called Shonit, which automatically analyses images of blood captured through a microscope. Shonit comprises a microscope, a cellphone app and a cloud-powered engine for analysis and reporting.

“Our aim is to build affordable solutions for automating disease diagnosis. A single pathologist can review analysis reports from multiple collection centers through our web-based interface, without the physical samples having to be shipped to a central testing facility,” Dastidar and Pandey added.

When contacted, Accel Partners confirmed its investment in SigTuple, but declined to share further details.

“Yes, we have made a seed investment into SigTuple, together with a couple of wellknown angels. The company is really early in its search for product market fit, and therefore cannot provide more details at the time,” said Subrata Mitra, Partner at Accel Partners, India, said.

For their products, SigTuple claims to have used elements of machine learning and artificial intelligence in order to make the process of analysing blood samples more accurate and eliminate the risk of human error.

SigTuple said that its flagship product Shonit, which is in advanced stages of development, can automatically detect various diseases like anaemia, malaria, leukaemia and other diseases.

Source: The Economic Times