Chennai-headquartered software firm Zoho has invested Rs 35 crore in the Bengaluru-based medical devices startup Voxelgrids, which manufactures Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) scanners.
The investment will be done in two tranches and Zoho will get 25 percent stake in the firm over the period of two years.
For Zoho, this is the latest in the series of investments it has made in the healthcare sector. The other companies Zoho has invested include vTitan, and SignalChip. Over the years has made a total investment of Rs 250 crore in critical R&D projects.
“Our mission is to invest in critical technology know-how in India. This fits very well with that mission. We have a medical devices company vTitan, which has started shipping products already. So Zoho has experience with medical devices,” Sridhar Vembu, co-founder & CEO of Zoho, told media persons on September 7, announcing the investment in Voxelgrids.
Vembu said that one of the pressing concerns in the country is the lack of indigenous industrial know-how and manufacturing capabilities. “A healthy DeepTech ecosystem is vital to solving this issue and driving structural economic change. Voxelgrids is one of the few companies that is working to solve this problem with MRI machines entirely built in India. “We need more such companies that can own and command this type of engineering know-how across different sectors,” said Vembu.
Voxelgrids was founded by Arjun Arunachalam in 2017 and has raised seed funding earlier. The MRI scanners the company manufactures will be priced 50-60 percent lower than what is available currently. According to Arunachalam, this is a segment that is absent today.
Arunachalam said that the company is working with multiple channel partners across India, the US and Europe. “We also intend to develop strategic partnerships and finally, Zoho's mere presence and stature helps us establish a presence in the Indian marketplace to begin with,” he added. Voxelgrids manufactures 1.5T MRI scanners that are lightweight, portable and easy to install and is made in its facility in Bengaluru.
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