SigTuple in talks to raise up to $50 million in fresh funds

Bengaluru: Medical technology start-up SigTuple Technologies Pvt Ltd, which uses artificial intelligence (AI) to aid medical diagnosis, is in talks to raise about $40-50 million in fresh funds in a Series C round, according to three people aware of the discussions.

SigTuple has held early discussions with investors, including DST Global, PremjiInvest and Ratan Tata’s UC-RNT fund, the people cited above said. SigTuple may bring at least one new late-stage investor on board, if not more, they added.

All three of them requested anonymity. Founded by former American Express executives Rohit Kumar Pandey, Tathagato Rai Dastidar and Apurv Anand, SigTuple has raised over $25 million in capital till date from Accel Partners, IDG Ventures, Endiya Partners, Flipkart co-founders Sachin Bansal and Binny Bansal, Pi Ventures, Axilor Ventures and others.

In the proposed funding round, Sachin Bansal may also invest more capital and raise his 3.5% stake in the medical artificial intelligence start-up, though that has not been finalized, the people cited above said. Bansal, who exited Flipkart earlier this year and sold his entire stake in the company after its buyout by Walmart, is currently considering raising a fund of $700 million-$1 billion to invest in start-ups, Mint had first reported on 3 August. Mint had reported then that Bansal was planning to invest in an AI start-up.

SigTuple declined to comment for this story.

Earlier this year, SigTuple raised $19 million from Accel, IDG and other existing investors in a Series B round.

The company, which has built hardware and software on artificial intelligence technology to digitize pathological tests for hospitals and clinics, is one of the breakout healthcare technology start-ups in the Indian start-up ecosystem over the past few years.

Its flagship artificial intelligence platform Manthana is capable of processing visual medical data from other medical devices and making medical recommendations, including disease detection.

SigTuple developed Manthana to digitize pathology, including scanning of blood, urine and semen samples.

The artificial intelligence software can recognise images of blood to quantify normal and abnormal blood cells, to track sperm cells in microscopy videos and create digital sample test reports, making them accessible to a pathologist at any given location.

The latest funding talks from SigTuple are part of a broader boom in the funding environment in India’s rapidly growing start-up ecosystem.

Mint reported in August that startups have been raising multiple rounds of capital in quick succession at increasingly higher valuations. Increasingly, this year is resembling 2014, when a handful of relatively mature start-ups raised huge sums of capital in short time at eye-popping valuations.