Healthtech company Qure.ai to hit fund trail

Qure.ai, a Mumbai-based healthtech firm that uses artificial intelligence (AI) for medical imaging diagnostics, is gearing up for a large fundraise early next year to fund business expansion organically as well as through acquisitions, its CEO said.

"We will be raising more funds in a few months," Prashant Warier, chief executive of Qure.ai, told ET in an interview. He declined to specify the quantum of funds Qure.ai plans to raise but said it would be in "triple digits".

As for acquisitions, Qure.ai is eyeing companies that have complementary solutions as well as market access in certain geographies, Warier said. "We have a target list of companies that we want to acquire, and we are working on it seriously," he said.

Qure.ai is also investing on the commercial side to set up sales teams in different parts of the world, specifically in the US, UK and western Europe, along with acquiring data to build new products and get regulatory approvals for existing products, Warier said.

"Every USFDA approval is quite expensive...at least a quarter million dollars (about ₹2 crore) for a single approval," he said.

Qure.ai has seen a lot of interest among global investors and life science companies. It had raised $40 million in series C round in March 2022 where the participants included Novo Holdings (that owns Danish drugmaker Novo Nordisk), Healthquad, MSD (called as Merck & Co in US), and existing investor MassMutual Ventures. Peak XV Partners (formerly Sequoia Capital India & SEA) and Fractal Analytics invested $16 million in the company in February 2020.

Founded in 2016, Qure.ai has developed diagnostic solutions based on machine learning and AI that can read and interpret medical images like X-rays, CTs, and ultrasounds in less than a minute.