Building Your Digital Health Startup: From Validation to Funding

Healthcare is one of the fastest-growing startup sectors.

First, a bit of my own bias on the automation versus human debate.

If you think about what a doctor needs to do to diagnose an illness, she needs to consider all the symptoms, take into account all the test results, consider all the treatment options, factor in all the side-effects of various medications and their interplay with other medications the patient is already taking. This is, effectively, a multi-variate optimization problem that a doctor has to do in her head. And, she needs to keep up with all the new research and advances in medical science, and factor those in as well. The field of medicine is full of incorrect diagnosis and mistreatment of illnesses. Now, if you replace this whole process with software, medical diagnosis becomes a truly scientific, deterministic process. I can tell you, if I have the option of being diagnosed by software versus a human doctor, I would always prefer software. It will be far more accurate.

If the medical profession can be automated to that extent, billions of people can have access to quality medical care. Today, this number is relatively low.

Entrepreneurs have a tremendous opportunity ahead.

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Krish Kupathil is the Founder of Mobiliya Technologies. When we spoke in 2013, the company was known as AgreeYa Mobility, an enterprise mobility and mobile system integration company providing solutions for collaboration and communication products for mobile platforms. QuEST Global acquired Mobiliya in 2018.

Sramana: Krish, let’s start with your personal story. Where are you from? What is the story to your personal journey?

Krish Kupathil: I was born and brought up in Delhi, India. I did my schooling and college in India. I started dabbling in software in 1987 and did some initial work in India. I got into software related businesses surrounding finance. I did some work out of Europe and Singapore before landing in the U.S. ten years ago. I was involved in a few startups in earlier years as well.

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