Artelus Wins Roche Drishti HealthTech Challenge with AI-on-a-Chip Innovation
Indian healthtech startup Artelus has been named the winner of the prestigious Roche Drishti HealthTech Challenge, a joint initiative by the Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade (DPIIT) and Roche Pharma India under the Startup India program . The recognition comes with a financial grant of ₹35 lakh to co-develop and pilot the winning solution in partnership with Roche Pharma India.
🏆 The Challenge: 80+ Startups, One Winner
The Drishti HealthTech Challenge was launched to identify and support transformative, scalable solutions addressing India’s most pressing healthcare challenges, with a particular focus on retinal diseases and digital health infrastructure . The initiative received applications from 80+ startups working across digital health domains .
A distinguished jury comprising retinal health experts, startup mentors, and members of the Roche India leadership evaluated applications through a rigorous, multi-stage assessment process based on:
- Problem relevance and impact potential
- Market readiness and leadership credibility
- Regulatory, legal, and intellectual property strengths
💡 The Winning Innovation: DRISTi
Artelus won the challenge with its flagship innovation DRISTi (Diabetic Retinopathy Screening), a CE Class 1 AI product that redefines point-of-care diagnostics .
🩺 The Problem: A Growing Public Health Crisis
Diabetic Retinopathy (DR) is a rapidly growing public health crisis in India, with delayed diagnosis leading to preventable blindness . The disease is the leading cause of vision loss worldwide, affecting over one-third of all people with diabetes .
🧠 The Solution: AI on a Chip
What sets DRISTi apart is its groundbreaking “AI on a Chip” technology, enabling fully offline retinal screening that functions entirely without internet or cloud connectivity . This breakthrough democratises healthcare by bringing comprehensive retinal diagnostics directly to the remotest corners of India.
Key capabilities of DRISTi:
- Detects 4 stages of Diabetic Retinopathy
- Identifies 16 DR-related pathologies and 20 other multi-pathologies
- Provides instantaneous results at point-of-care
- Generates explainable AI outputs with heatmaps to highlight regions of interest
- Already deployed in 50+ centers across India
🤝 A Partnership for Impact
Rajji Mehdwan, Managing Director & CEO of Roche Pharma India, underscored the significance of the collaboration:
“Retinal diseases are stealing sight across India. The healthcare community has clinicians dedicated to helping people and the medicines that can truly make a difference. What we didn’t have was a way to make early diagnosis accessible to everyone. Artelus solves that. Their offline AI technology brings screening to places we’ve never been able to reach before—expanding access to a much wider group of people. That changes everything.”
Girish Somvanshi, Co-Founder & VP of Artelus, added:
“At Artelus, we are building the infrastructure to ensure every patient is identified, referred, treated, and followed up – at a population scale optimized for India and the rest of the world.”
🌍 A Milestone for India’s HealthTech Ecosystem
The award ceremony, hosted at the Swiss Embassy in New Delhi in the presence of Her Excellency Maya Tissafi, Ambassador of Switzerland to India and Bhutan, marked another milestone in Indo-Swiss collaboration .
Her Excellency Maya Tissafi noted:
“The Trade and Economic Partnership Agreement between EFTA and India has intensified the economic relationship between our countries. It creates a ground for exactly the kind of innovation we see today… Its work shows how healthtech can make early diagnosis more accessible and bring quality healthcare closer to those who need it.”
Shri Ateesh Kumar Singh, Additional Secretary, DPIIT, added:
“Fostering an ecosystem where advanced technology seamlessly integrates with grassroots healthcare delivery is key to sustainable economic development. Initiatives like the Roche Drishti HealthTech Challenge underscore the immense potential of the Indian startup community to deliver high-impact solutions.”
🔮 The Road Ahead
This recognition validates the rapid progress made by homegrown healthtech startups disrupting India’s healthcare landscape . Artelus is now poised to scale its offline AI diagnostics across India and international markets, with deployments already underway in the UK, UAE, Australia, and South Africa .
For more updates on India’s healthtech ecosystem, startup innovation, and funding news, keep it locked on StartupPoint.in.
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