A Sun Pharma-backed start-up, which non-invasively measures haemoglobin count in blood, is targeting a turnover of ₹100 crore in three years followed by a listing of the entity on the bourses.

Bengal-born Partha Pratim Das Mahapatra, who heads EzeRx Health, said he plans to raise around $10-12 million, expand his product range product and have more facilities during this period.

Mahapatra, an electronics engineer and a Capgemini, ITC Infotech and Grant Thornton alumnus, recollects his early struggles in pitching his product before doctors.

“I used to get these questions: are you a doctor? Are you from IIT? And I said no I am neither a doctor nor from IIT. There were also questions like how does your device work? Who did your validation?” he said.

“After the product was commercially ready, I visited 167 doctors in 2020-21. But I could only sell a few devices. And then I realised that selling devices to the doctors is very tough and understood that my target customers are not the doctors directly, but have to reach out to governments looking for cost-effective and large-scale deployable solutions,” he said.

The company has since got validation from ICMR, sold over 5,000 devices, screened more than 25 lakh individuals and working in states such as Odisha, Assam, Jharkhand, UP and Himachal. The company is also in discussion with the Bengal government.

The start-up is also involved with organisations such as the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Unicef and pharma companies Cipla, Emcure, BSV, Sun Pharma and Zydus. It plans to work with
leading hospital chains and patents registered in multiple geographies.

Early spark

It was a family crisis that prompted Das Mahapatra to explore the medtech and biotech space. “My mother had a cardiac problem and the root cause was anaemia,” he said.

“The idea was to build a device to test for haemoglobin quickly and in a non-invasive and cost-effective way that can also be deployed on a large scale for primary screening.”

“Globally there is only one product which can do this but the cost works out to around ₹40-50 per test. By making this in India with our in-house technology and manufacturing capability, we have brought this down to ₹10 per test,” Das Mahapatra said.

“We set up our manufacturing base in Bhubaneshwar and got monetary support from the government of Odisha, Department of Science and Technology, Department of Biotechnology and MEITY under various accelerator programmes.”
“KIIT Technology Business Incubator helped us to connect to hospitals and research labs and had invested some money. Indian Oil Corporation and Sun Pharma are also investors ,” he said.

Future plan

The start-up has one device to measure haemoglobin. There are plans to develop products to measure hormonal imbalance in women, and it is working on parameters such as the measurement of thyroid, bilirubin, creatinine and glucose.

“We have got land from the Odisha government and we would be setting up our manufacturing unit. We are looking to increase our headcount to around 100 and open zonal offices in Delhi, Mumbai and Bangalore,” he said.

“To expand we would be requiring funds and we are in discussion with private equity funds and also existing investors,” he said.