Founded by Rajat Jain, Sunfox Technologies has been making strong advances in the space of portable ECG devices with end-to-end software support. Manufactured completely in Dehradun, the product can diagnose arrhythmia and heart attacks with 99.76% accuracy compared to gold standard machines used in ICUs in hospitals.
“Wearable devices today are mostly designed for countries where the availability of emergency services and senior doctors are high. This makes such devices unusable for Indian conditions, especially in remote rural India,” says Jain. Our device and software platform give comprehensive first line of information about the heart in case someone experiences cardiac problems or uneasiness. Any person nearby can use it and transfer the reports to doctors while proper medical help arrives,” he adds.
The product contains only three electrodes that can be placed on the chest and can be connected to smartphones running Sunfox’s app, via their device called Spandan, which sends out ECG signals to the smartphones for processing. “We have tested it from babies to adults, and in some cases on reptiles like crocodiles which gives us confidence in its accuracy. We also give a two year warranty which even the premium wearables do not give,” says Jain.
Sunfox has taken a frugal approach to make the product portable and affordable. The device does not contain any button and needs internet only when the ECG report that is generated by Sunfox’s app locally on the smartphone needs to be shared. According to Rajat, the initial four years spent on R&D were focused on removing unnecessary parts from gold standard devices and making high quality electrodes that do not produce much noise. With multiple patents granted for this product, the product currently sells for Rs 7,000-Rs 8,000 via e-commerce channels and users can use the app for no extra cost for the lifetime of the product.
“The market is so big in India that our business is a volume game in reality. We have a minimum of 3 crore recorded cardiac patients and that in itself is a big market to cover. We don’t have to depend on returning customers,” says Jain. “We are trying to make this product much simpler and bring the price down to around Rs 3,000 to capture more market,” he adds.
In addition to selling via e-commerce channels, the startup has partnered with three state governments where primary health care centres and other medical divisions are using the product. “Operational challenges still exist as we scale, especially if we are using public healthcare routes. We aim to solve that with our simpler product in near future while we continue to be best sellers on e-commerce platforms,” says Jain. So far, the startup has raised around $750,000 from angel investors, VCs and from Shark Tank India investors.