• 11th cohort of Avishkar deeptech accelerator and 5th cohort of the OJAS Medtec accelerator
• Two AI startups Machstaaz and eSkinDoctor selected from over 100 applicants
• Startups to get strategy, business and research mentoring

HYDERABAD, India, Jan. 20, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- CIE at IIIT Hyderabad announced the onboarding of two startups Machstatz and eSkindoctor under Avishkar DeepTech accelerator cohort No. 11 & OJAS MedTech Accelerator cohort No. 5.  

AVISHKAR deeptech is a 6-month cohort-based accelerator for emerging tech startups and OJAS MedTech is an accelerator for startups in life sciences, biotechnology, diagnostics, point of care devices for healthcare along with cutting-edge emerging technologies facilitated by CIE@IIITH.

The accelerator brings together the deeptech expertise of IIITH's research labs and technology mentoring opportunities that help startups build quality product/features within shorter timelines. The startups also go through a structured strategic business mentoring from Co-Creation Consulting, customer introductions and investor connect for follow-on round of investments. Medtech startups also get access to medtech consortium which includes clinicians, hospitals, pharma, biotech & manufacturing companies. Investment readiness of the cohort startups is a key deliverable for the 6-month programme.  

A number of other ecosystem partners of IIITH also contribute towards the programme with business development services and tools. Prof Ramesh Loganathan, COO of CIE-IIITH said, "Nurturing and growing early-stage tech startups has been our focus since we started CIE in 2008.  Over the years we have had 400 startups in the incubator and about 20 in our Accelerator programs."

For this cohort, 7 startups pitched for OJAS Accelerator and 9 startups pitched for the Deeptech accelerator. The Investment Committee panel included professors, clinicians, angel investors and other ecosystem partners.  

"We are very happy to onboard eSkindoctor Healthtech private Limited, focused on Dermatology and is using Artificial Intelligence and Deep Learning algorithms to address the gap in availability of doctors by improving the accuracy and efficiency in triaging skin condition," says Dr. Sonali Khanra, Head OJAS Medtech BioNEST, IIIT Hyderabad.  

She adds that skin diseases pose significant threat to patients' well-being, mental health, ability to function, and social participation, a measure of disability defined broadly by the WHO. Technology interventions in early screening and diagnosis in low resource setting towards delivering high quality care are essential in improving the burden of skin diseases.

About IIIT-Hyderabad:

The International Institute of Information Technology, Hyderabad (IIITH) is an autonomous research university founded in 1998 that focuses on the core areas of Information Technology, such as Computer Science, Electronics and Communications, and their applications in other domains through inter-disciplinary research with great social impact. Some of its research domains include Cognitive Science, Visual Information Technologies, Human Language Technologies, Data Engineering, VLSI and Embedded Systems, Computer Architecture, Wireless Communications, Algorithms and Information Security, Robotics, Building Science, Earthquake Engineering, Computational Natural Sciences and Bioinformatics, IT in Agriculture and e-Governance.

Centre For Innovation & Entrepreneurship (CIE-IIITH):

CIE@IIITH, also known as CIE (Centre of Innovation and Entrepreneurship) is a DST approved incubator operational since 2008. CIE@IIITH has so far supported around 400 startups and has seed- funded 19 startups, 80% of which are cash positive. CIE@IIITH was also instrumental being the kiln of the initiatives that culminated into the foundation of T-Hub. Along with developments in AVISHKAR, OJAS medtech, CIE@IIITH is also focusing on turning a new leaf in terms of infrastructure facilities, programmes and startup engagements focusing towards building a deeptech startup ecosystem. New working spaces are launched, seed funding programmes, structured workshops and mentoring opportunities and technology transfer facilitation are also being deployed now.

OJAS BioNEST @ CIE-IIIT Hyderabad was founded in 2018 with a support by DBT-BIRAC. OJAS- BioNEST helps companies building products at the intersection of technology and medicine in areas such as disease prevention, detection, diagnosis, treatment, monitoring, and wellness. OJAS welcomes entrepreneurs working on futuristic, bold and innovative ideas, harnessing digital technologies in healthcare practice.

About Machstatz:

Machstatz provides end to end solution in Industrial IoT. They use artificial intelligence and machine learning algorithms to provide predictive and process analytics solutions to manufacturing industries. Their solutions are being implemented in manufacturing industries which increases production efficiency, reduces downtime of industrial machines and eliminates defects in real time. Machstatz offers Smart devices along with Connectivity, Communication, Software Analytics, Dashboarding and reporting in order to provide a complete solution to its customers.  

Started in 2017 by the founders Sameer Patnaik, Pruthviraj Subudhi & Srikant Gupta the startup has gained traction quickly with acquiring customers in industries like Iron & Steel, Chemical, Glass, Textile and Automotive. Machstatz uses flexible models, proven diagnostic instruments, sophisticated software and unmatched analytic expertise to deliver sustainable, scalable and cost effective based maintenance and monitoring programs that ensure industrial asset availability, helping to maximize runtime productivity and increase overall operational efficiency.  

In 2018 the startup was featured among Top 60 startups across India for 'The Economic Times Power of Ideas' conducted by IIM Ahmedabad in association with Facebook, Department of Science & Technology (DST), Govt. of India. Machstatz is also funded by angel investors and technology business incubator DERBI foundation supported by Dept. of Science & Technology, Govt. of India based out of Bangalore. They are a strong team of 15 members with expertise in Industrial Automation & Data Science.  

With the additional support and funding from IIIT Hyderabad - Machstatz aims to scale up and expand their customer base. Utilize the mentoring process in scaling up their product and reach out to global markets.

About eSkindoctor:

One of the founders, in his earlier company,  while working on a project to design solutions to improve maternal and child health in rural India realized that the primary access to healthcare for many people were quacks. In fact, a WHO report in 2016 stated that over half of all those practicing allopathic medicine did not have any medical qualification. Technology can help to fill this gap and provide information and connect with right doctors at the right time. Mumbai based eSkindoctor Healthtech private Limited is focused on Dermatology and is using Artificial Intelligence and Deep Learning algorithms to address this gap.

Skin problems are one of the least cared for, because the number of dermatologists in India for a 138-crore population is around 7000, and they are most concentrated in big cities. The number of skin problems that people face in India is around 68 crores per year.  

This and many more other reasons compelled Arun a graduate from IIM A, Naveen a Graduate from BITS Pilani and Anand a Graduate from XIM to setup eskindoctor.com- A platform that allows patients to understand their skin condition and access quality dermatologists. The platform is driven by augmenting skin disease diagnosis and management with AI, improving both efficiency & accuracy of care.

Making Triaging Skin Condition Simple  

"Patients can access eskindoctor.com on their mobile phone or laptop and upload a photo of the affected part and answers a few questions asked by the artificial intelligence tool. Based on data provided, patient is shared with information about their skin problem and guides them to resolution by engaging with a dermatologist on the platform," Anand Says .  

"Currently we have built the model to triage all the common, very common and rare skin diseases prevailing in India. We are able to triage accurately around 100 Plus Skin Conditions. We have used public data sets and proprietary data sets to train our model," Arun Says  

Providing access to Dermatologists with curated case capsule

eSkinDoctor.com uses the combination of a state-of-the-art deep learning model working with a proprietary Differential Diagnosis (DD) algorithm to present doctors with a curated case capsule along with Provisional diagnosis recommendation of AI engine for a highly efficient diagnosis.  

Doctor reaches out to patient if they need any additional information to complete the prescription. The entire process can be completed on an average in 5 Minutes, helping doctors to improve efficiency and accuracy," says Naveen. eSkinDoctor is led by highly experienced team behind it. They are alumni of IIMA, BITS PILANI and XIM with a track record of couple of decades in IT industry and with the additional support and funding from IIIT Hyderabad - eSkindoctor aims to scale up and expand their customer base and utilize the mentoring process in clinical validation and scaling up their product to reach to global markets.

For further information, please contact:

Sunory Dutt
Head of Communications
IIIT-Hyderabad
E-mail: sunory.dutt@iiit.ac.in

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