Multiple factors have played a key role in driving the growth of artificial intelligence and analytics market in India, especially in Bengaluru. We look at some of the key drivers which resulted in the growth of AI and analytics startups in the city.

As per the AIM study, startups raised an all-time high capital, registering a 368% growth from 2017. In 2018, startups with operations in India and globally raised approximately USD$ 529.52 million in funding rounds.

Added to this is a growing trend among successful startup entrepreneurs to invest in other startups as well as the entering of non-tech participants in the market through acquisitions. In April 2018, Mukesh Ambani owned Reliance invested $180 million into Embibe, the Bengaluru-based AI education platform. The Softbank led financing of Automation Anywhere is one of the biggest deal breakers in present times.

Realising the potential of startups in job creation and bring out new development thus affecting the economy at large, corporates, educational institutions and even government has played a vital role mentoring and grooming young startups. Even traditional non-players such as Target and YES Bank have stepped into the analytics startup market to prepare startups through their accelerator programmes.

Educational institutions such as IITs and IIMs have also played a vital role in identifying young entrepreneurs and nurturing their startup dreams. Through world-class R&D infrastructure, impressive alumni network and through monetary support in the form of seed and early-stage funding, key educational institutes in India are contributing extensively to the startup boom.

With the global market for AI and ML looking very promising, AI startups are looking market and product expansion into new markets. In 2018, California and India based Automation Anywhere bagged the biggest cheque of $300 million from SoftBank Vision Fund. As compared to 2017, where the startups received an aggregate investment of $113 million, funding rose to a record 368% in 2018.

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Started in 2005, this startup is focused on therapeutic applications of Regenerative Medicine, which is a branch of translational research in tissue engineering and molecular biology that deals with the replacing and regenerating human cells, tissues or organs to restore or establish normal function. It delivers technologies for the safe and effective treatment options to patients all over the world at the highest medical standards.

Artelus stands for “artificial learning system” and was founded in the year 2017. This startup is focused on detecting diabetic retinopathy (DR) using deep learning algorithms. It captures the patient’s retina image, analyses it and presents a report out of it. It can be used to detect DR in less than a total of three minutes, which is way faster than humans. It is also striving to create early detection tools for TB, breast cancer and lung cancer with the help of its AI screening tool.

ChironX founder, Mausumi Acharyya, is an expert imaging an AI expert. Founded in 2017, ChironX (earlier known as Advenio Technosys) detects diseases from large populations of medical images. It has an autodiagnostic software which uses complex image processing AIalgorithms along with classical machine learning techniques. Their modules also use a lot of deep learning algorithms. Currently, it is working for retinal abnormality detections and acute respiratory infections. ChironX’s research activities are funded by the Biotechnology Industry Research Assistance Council (BIRAC) and the Bill Melinda Gates Foundation and are being seed funded by KStart.

It is a Pune-based startup that provides diagnostics to customers through automation. This 2014 startup delivers reports to patients or organisations online as soon as they are available. It also offers online payment, monitors all patient activities in real time and enables doctors to access the patient data anytime. Doctors can also sign their patient reports with just one click. Their focus is maximum digitization and automation in providing medical diagnostics, due to which report entry errors are completely eliminated.

Founded in 2014, Lybrate is the country’s first online doctor consultation platform. In a fast-moving, busy world today, we hardly have time to go to a doctor physically for every minor health problem that we face. Often we end up ignoring some symptoms that seem minor to us but turn out to be serious, because of our over-occupied work lives. Lybrate has an online application via which patients can connect to doctors and have a consultation online. The patients can also book lab tests and appointments online.

Their aim is to make health care accessible to all the masses through their startup. It provides a high-quality ReMeDi Remote Healthcare Delivery Solutions. It collects information on various physiological aspects of patients remotely and provides them with its diagnosis. By doing this, they make the whole process of diagnosis affordable. They currently operate in four cities with the main focus on healthcare delivery. The majority of their work has been in schools so far and also have an app-based tool for parents to plan nutritious meals for their children. Apart from this, they also offer annual health check-ups and health education. It was founded in 2002.

Back in 2014, it was just a handful of IoT start-ups, with no ecosystem support and hardly any investors. Today, we have over 1,250 IoT start-ups, many generating revenue not just in India but globally and smaller size exits already happening, they added.

The effort is to raise the IoT Quotient of India by developing business case and ROI for industrial IoT, cyber security and edge computing, as companies globally are increasingly getting digitised.

According to 2017 study report by Management Consulting firm Zinnov, the city of Bengaluru is the prime destination for IoT startups to set up a base in the Indian subcontinent. Bangalore comprise nearly 52% of India’s total Internet Of Things startups.

Additionally, the major MNCs are doing substantial portion of their IoT development in India. A number of Systems Integrators with IoT practices, and a growing ecosystem of investors, incubators/accelerators, angel community, mentors/advisors are there to add the IoT Quotient of India.

Between 2014 to 2018, a lot had been done in IoT ecosystem in India by global as well as local industry bodies. In 2015, global chipmaker giant Intel had launched Intel Maker Lab in India for IoT innovators and startups in the country.

In the same year, a report by Gartner had predicted that India will boast of at least 5 IoT startups with billion dollar valuations by the year 2018. The report also suggested that about 20% of the Indian white-collar workforce will be able to access enterprise data on their personal electronic devices by the end of year 2017.

Prakash Mallya, Managing Director, Intel India, Sales & Marketing Group said that with the introduction of the technologies like 5G, coupled with affordability of sensors, IoT is set to be a part of our daily lives.

The annual IoT Next 2018 summit brought the entire community together discussing and debating state of affairs and future trends, connecting with global IoT counterparts, and showcasing the start-ups from India.

Ravi Gururaj , President, TIE Bangalore said that the aim to build IoT landscape from sensor to the cloud for making the technological evolution deeper.

Research by McKinsey Global Institute estimates the impact of the Internet of Things on the global economy will be $6.2T by 2025. NASSCOM and Deloitte recently pegged the IoT market in India at $5.6B in 2016, growing to over $15B by 2020.

For the last three consecutive years, Qualcomm has successfully hosted the Qualcomm Design in India Challenge, a platform that helps product startups working on useful and innovative hardware products, in turn supporting India’s technology ecosystem and the dream of a digital India.

Qualcomm helps startups speed up their design cycles as well as time to market by providing relevant Qualcomm technologies and product development support at the Qualcomm Innovation Lab in Bengaluru. This includes design, development and software support from a dedicated Qualcomm engineering team, access to a dedicated lab with high-end equipment for camera and audio tuning, RF calibration for WiFi, Cellular, BT and GPS, thermal testing, and access to free samples of QC SoCs and development kits and SW platforms

The 2018 program has evolved from 2016 and 2017. While the overall format has largely been maintained, the key change is the rollback to a single cohort, like in 2016, rather than two cohorts in 2017. The third edition also has additional incentives for the 15 shortlisted startups, such as $5,000 for filing patents during the incubation phase and accelerator programme services from Anthill Ventures. The shortlisted startups also get an initial cash award of $10,000 each.

The 15 chosen startups working in the areas of medtech, smartinfra and wearables are undergoing hardware incubation at the Qualcomm Innovation Lab until February 2019. At the end of the incubation period, the startups will participate in the finale and three winning startups will be awarded $100,000, $75,000 and $50,000 respectively.

Here’s a quick look at five medtech startups and how they are working on making an impact in the healthcare sector, and leveraging Qualcomm Technology:

Bengaluru-based Artelus leverages Deep Learning and Artificial Intelligence to develop AI-powered primary screening devices that can detect TB, breast cancer, lung cancer and diabetic retinopathy, enabling clinicians to make a faster and more accurate diagnosis and provide preventive care. It was founded in October 2015 by Pradeep Walia, a serial entrepreneur whose startup had over 24 patents in AI technology, Rajarajeshwari K and Lalit Pant. Artelus has a vision to reach out to the ‘forgotten billion’ (primarily people in rural areas and those who cannot afford healthcare) by making it possible to deliver a quality healthcare experience beyond the boundaries of hospitals and specialised clinics, while reducing the burden of the already overworked healthcare practitioners in India.

Traumatic Brain injury (TBI) is one of the leading causes of disability around the world. It is estimated that around 10 million people are affected annually because the injury is detected at a very late stage when the brain has already suffered irreparable damage.

To address this challenge, Ahmedabad based startup Bioscan Research team is using patented technology to develop the world’s fastest brain haemorrhage detector that can detect the injury at an early stage within two minutes. The non-invasive, portable device is being developed to enable even non-medical practitioners to screen patients.

A smart home healthcare company based in Kharagpur, mBreath Technologies is working on developing Artificial Intelligence (AI)-based wireless home health monitoring devices for diagnosing and monitoring health status. One of its key product is SleepDoc+, a wireless multi-person sleep assistant that uses ultra-low power FMCW (frequency-modulated continuous-wave) radar to detect vital physiological parameters like the respiration rate and heart rate of multiple people simultaneously from a distance of 3-5 meters. The IoT-based solution determines the sleep quality of the user and helps to diagnose sleep-related disorders such as sleep apnea, snoring, insomnia, etc.

Founded by Bharath Patil and Radhika Patil in November 2017, Chigroo Labs is building a small cradle for babies with auto-swinging and integrated contactless baby monitoring capabilities, called Cradlewise.

The cradle can be used for an entire day after being charged for just two hours and consumes less power. The related mobile app can be used for video and audio monitoring and the sleep reports generated can help parents understand how well the baby is sleeping.

Cradlewise is using the IoT offerings from Qualcomm. “A Snapdragon chipset is the core of the smart cradle. We are using the APQ8016 from Snapdragon 400 series. The powerful processor helps us detect and act on events in real time. It also helps us in doing edge computing. The bundled software which is open sourced for the Snapdragon platform helps us in accelerating development,” says Radhika.

Turtle Shell Technologies’ non-contact, non-wearable health monitor Dozee can be placed under the mattress to track and develop the health baselines of a user, making monitoring health super easy.

Dozee keeps track of a user’s vitals, heart rate, respiration, sleep patterns, restlessness, stress levels and other parameters on a regular basis and does a trend-based analysis to detect any early signs of health deterioration which might need attention. The Advanced Health Intelligence platform has already proved to be a life-saver for many of its customers, by alerting users about early symptoms of tuberculosis, sleep apnea and threatening infections. Dozee has been clinically tested and proven to have an accuracy rate of 98.4 percent, which is akin to medical grade sensors. The independent studies have been conducted at HCG Oncology and NIMHANS, Bangalore.

The team plans to use Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 212 chipset. This will help them in running all their algorithms in real-time on the device, which currently run on remote servers hosted on their cloud platform.