NOCCARC'S MEDELE OF INDIAN SMART VENTILATORS

With its innovative smart ventilators, Pune-based startup Noccarc is spearheading the Make Medical Electronics in India’ movement

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Man proposes, God disposes! Techpreneur and IIT Kanpur alumnus Nikhil Kurele is well-versed with this statement. From securing funding for a startup that built robots for cleaning solar panels to pivoting to smart ventilators during Covid-19, Kurele was driven by his zeal to manufacture a hardware solution in India that addressed a unique yet common problem for his country.

Eight months after shifting from a 18.6 square metre (200 square feet) room at IIT Kanpur to scale operations to build robots that cleaned solar panels, in June 2019, Kurele, along with his co-founders Harshit Rathore and Tushar Agarwal, watched the pandemic dent their plans. However, the roadblock did not last long, as in May 2020, the co-founders gathered their knowledge, resources, and funds to address local challenges and introduced ventilators, focusing on comprehensive care.

Identifying the core issues in existing products: multiple patient devices, high running costs, and limited information accessibility to decision-makers, Noccarc developed the V310+ ventilator, which sold more than 2200 units during the second wave of Covid-19 and, by the end of the pandemic, the figure went up to 3600! The company launched a second category of smart ventilators featuring a digital platform that allows remote access to patient information, V730i, in June 2023, and has sold around 55-60 units.