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Startup Mantra: Putting your health in your own hands
Avegen has two key health offerings: the HealthMachine platform, which operates as an SaaS system; and the “Together for Her”, software for the maternal care sector. From cardiac care to HIV to pregnant women, the startup is all about informed empowerment
Founded in 2015, Avegen is a health-tech startup based in Pune and London.
Avegen builds digital care programmes that it claims are personalised, patient-centric and evidence-based.
Its HealthMachine platform is a software-as-a-servce (SaaS) deploying these digital care programs that improve health of individuals with long-term conditions. These digital care programmes – built on a compliant and scalable platform - are designed around the patient enabling proactive care for patients with chronic conditions, and supports clinicians in improved patient management.
Coming together
Says Apte, “The team is split between Pune and London. Nayan is based in London and he heads our commercial and client services team. The product development team and program management is of India. Nayan and I have been in touch since 2006-07. While I sold my previous company, Nayan was also looking to start something. We essentially decided that it was a good time to get together and launched this venture in late 2015.”
HealthMachine – Powering digital care programmes
HealthMachine puts each patient in control of their own health, tracking progress and strengthening outcomes. Easy-to-use functions and gamification touches make HealthMachine-based care programmes intuitive and effective, removing traditional barriers. Avegen currently has three digital care programs on HealthMachine:
•Cardiac rehabilitation
•Maternal health
•HIV
‘Together for Her’ in India
Explaining the digital care program for women, Kalnad said, “Avegen has been working in the digital healthcare space since 2015 in both India and the UK. It is Avegen’s Vision to transform healthcare using technology, and we work in multiple disease and care areas, including cardio-pulmonary care, HIV, and maternal health. Together for Her (TFH), our maternal healthcare program was started in 2017 with a vision to improve the quality of maternal healthcare and reduce preventable maternal deaths.”
Kalnad claims that TFH is a completely digital care program for pregnant women with over 30,000 users at present.
The application provides gestational week-specific information on recommended healthcare behaviours, as well as data-driven feedback on their nutritional and antenatal behaviours.
Additionally, TFH uses machine learning and predictive analytics to provide maternal health information that is personalised to a pregnant woman’s health status.
“Firstly, we want to reduce deaths during pregnancy. In terms of impact on women’s health, we aim to reduce anaemia prevalence in mothers who use the app by at least 20 per cent, compared to treatment as usual. Also, we are aiming at having 25 lakh mothers on our TFH program in the next five years,” Kalnad adds.
Gupte says explains, “We all consume lot of technology every day. However, most advanced and powerful tech is unfortunately directed at making us buying something, instead of improving our lives. What drives me is using same tech to have a positive impact on peoples’ lives. India is a powerhouse of delivering software and IT projects to the world but we don’t develop world-class software for Indian consumers. We wanted to change this and hence, we developed TFH which is available to Indian users in English and Hindi.”
Providing relevant content
Says Gupte, “The content on the platform changes on two dimensions. Fresh relevant content is being developed on a regular basis, while in terms of personalisation, when a mother signs up we build a profile for her based on the areas of interests. Pregnancy is definitive journey of nine months and hence, week by week, certain content becomes more relevant. So, respective content is shown to them correspondingly.”
First adopters
The biggest customers Avegen’s HealthMachine are pharmaceutical companies and hospitals in the UK. In India, doctors and non-governmental organisations (NGOs) are the first adopters.
“Avegen also helped one Mumbai-based NGO build a helpline for HIV positive patients during the first lockdown in the country in March 2020,” says Gupte.
Funding
Merck for Mothers (MFM) has been a funding partner with Avegen since 2017. MFM has supported the development of TFH, which was started as a quality-of-care review platform and has since evolved into the current maternal care program. MFM works with partners around the globe to support innovative solutions that aim to end maternal deaths.
As for Avegen, Dr Kalnad says, “We are a bootstrapped company. The initial investment was mainly from friends and family. We had raised around $250K in 2016. This year we want to raise fresh round of funding of about Rs28 to Rs30 crore to expand in Europe. We want to be the first or major company having origins in India which will make big in the digital therapeutics and digital care program space.”
