ET Startup Awards 2024 | Top Innovator: BrainSight AI forces a rethink

Innovation in the mental health and neurology space has a massive potential to transform lives, the ET Startup Awards 2024 jury said, as it zeroed in on BrainSight AI as the winner in the Top Innovator category. While space technology startup SatSure was in contention, the potential use of artificial intelligence in reading complex MRI scans and its eventual impact on humans tilted the jury towards BrainSight AI.

“The Top Innovator category gives you a sense about the moonshot ideas that entrepreneurs are chasing ... It makes you feel that the world is going to be a better place,” said jury member and Caratlane founder Mithun Sacheti.

Founded in 2020, when the entire health sector was focused on fighting the pandemic, the startup had a tough time convincing hospitals to let it test its hypothesis and explaining the potential upsides of the software to top neurologists in the country.

“When we had started this firm, the idea was to put research around the human brain into practical use, but today that we have been recognised by The Economic Times, it shows that the idea has grown much bigger than the vision we had started with,” said BrainSight AI cofounder Laina Emmanuel. Things are changing, as more doctors are opening up to using these services, and specialised departments in large hospitals are keen to test the company’s systems, said Emmanuel.

From a business point of view, the tides seem to have turned for this fledgling startup. After securing a clinical licence earlier this year, the Bengaluru-based startup is now drawing up commercial contracts with nine large hospital chains and is in talks with two dozen others.

Shubman Gill, Indian cricketer and a member of the jury, while talking about BrainSight AI, pointed out that there were a lot of discussions in the Top Innovator category and that they specifically talked about BrainSight AI.

"It was very inspiring to see what people are doing, especially in that (mental health) space, to be able to help the country and uplift everyone," he said.

Globally, they have a competitor in Australia which operates in the similar space, but the founders are working hard to take this solution outside India. Emmanuel said hospitals in countries like Nepal and Africa have reached out to the startup to look at the results and analyses. They are also tapping developed markets like the US and Dubai to test their software.

“We had a dedicated team which has been working towards getting grants which helped us survive all these years. Now with commercial deployment taking place, we believe we have hit an inflection point and the business will grow from here,” Emmanuel said.

With the early test results looking promising, BrainSight AI is now getting a lot of requests from the psychiatry departments in these hospitals for deployment of their solution, besides the normal neuroscience teams. For Emmanuel this is a large opportunity opening up where the small team of 32 people at BrainSight AI can look to increasingly use artificial intelligence to read brain scans and help doctors analyse patients better and more efficiently.

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Other contenders

Agnit Semiconductors

Voxelgrids Innovations

Voxelgrids designs, manufactures and sells locally-made MRI machines, offering cost savings to users. The company’s ability to design and assemble the machine completely in India helps keep it affordable.

SatSure Analytics

SatSure provides actionable intelligence using satellite imagery for sectors such as agriculture, banking, insurance, utilities and aviation.

Ethereal Machines

Manufactures five-axis computer numerical control (CNC) machines, which are used for contract manufacturing in sectors like aerospace, defence, and consumer electronics.