Ankit Modi ’s journey with Qure.ai could have ended almost as soon as it began. He had an offer from Epic Systems in the US, and though the company’s first H-1B application for Ankit failed, it succeeded the following year. But by then, he had started Qure .ai with Prashant Warier and Preetham Putha, and Ankit was in a huge dilemma. “The choice was stark – stay back and build Qure with Prashant, Preetham, and the others, or move to Wisconsin to work in healthcare,” he recalls.
The decision hinged on what he calls ₹reversibility’. Moving to the US could always be an option later if Qure didn’t work out, he told himself. Lengthy talks with Prashant, and a look at Qure’s talented founding team convinced Ankit this was the team he wanted to grow with. And he took the decision to stay even though his experience with a previous fitness offerings and healthy food venture called CrankOut had shown him that success takes more than just hard work or a strong team. “The right people, the right technology, and the right timing all must align – and even then, nothing is guaranteed,” he says.
Today, Modi has no reason to look back on his decision. And he finds himself in the US very often, because a lot of Qure’s business comes from that country.
Great partnership
Prashant, Preetham, Ankit and Bhargava Reddy founded Qure.ai in 2016 as a health-tech company leveraging deep learning and AI to make healthcare more accessible. Its solutions analyse medical images like X-rays, CT scans, and MRIs to aid in the early detection and management of various diseases such as tuberculosis, lung cancer, and stroke.
Ankit recalls that a chance flathunting connection led him to Prashant, whose company, Imagna Analytics , had just been acquired by analytics company Fractal . And Ankit was keen to learn from someone who had successfully built and exited a venture. Though he was exploring ideas with others, Prashant’s experience and track record stood out.
“One of our first milestones was becoming the first AI company in the world to get published in The Lancet, and at the time, we didn’t even realise how big that was until doctors started telling us. When Covid-19 hit, starting in Lombardy, in Italy, San Rafael Hospital reached out to Qure.ai, prompting the deployment of their chest X-ray algorithm for Covid cases. Six months later, BMC in Mumbai approached the team, bringing significant global attention,” he said.
WHO recommends Qure.ai
By 2021, the World Health Organisation (WHO) issued a recommendation allowing Qure’s AI to read chest X-rays in the absence of radiologists, paving the way for worldwide adoption. Today, Qure.ai’s solutions are deployed in over a hundred countries.
AstraZeneca recognised that Qure.ai’s algorithm could also detect lung cancer early from chest X-rays and funded its adoption across hospitals worldwide, becoming the first pharma company to see its value. They had a drug, Tagrisso, for stage one and two lung cancer patients but weren’t finding enough patients. They saw Qure’s AI as a way to broaden the funnel.
This was soon followed by Merck, Johnson & Johnson, and today, Qure.ai works with at least 10 of the top 20 pharma and medical device companies, including Pfizer, Medtronic, and Cipla.
Qure.ai addresses tuberculosis, which is largely a sanitation and healthcare access problem. Countries like Lesotho or Malawi have almost no radiologists – Malawi has just two for the entire country. Community-level screening capturing thousands of X-rays daily would be impossible without AI. WHO has created a funding pathway for AI alongside X-ray machines, and today, many countries procure Qure.ai’s software to detect TB. Together, solutions to detect tuberculosis and lung cancer account for roughly 85% to 90% of Qure.ai’s revenue.
Built GenAI solution before ChatGPT
Qure.ai’s technology is built on deep learning algorithms. The company began in 2016 using convolutional neural networks, later moving to deep neural networks and transformer-based architectures. Unlike traditional software engineering, deep learning requires domain expertise. Qure.ai’s researchers have, over years of working closely with doctors, effectively become highly skilled radiologists.
During development, the team discovered that their algorithm performed better on men’s X-rays than women’s due to biased datasets. To address this, they built a generative AI solution – well before ChatGPT – to create synthetic data representing women with certain conditions. The algorithms were also fine-tuned for different geographies, as X-rays from Kenya, Bihar, or Australia present unique nuances. Detecting tuberculosis, for example, is not merely a technical challenge but a contextual one. To ensure the AI works effectively across diverse settings, Qure.ai’s team of 75 clinicians also travel extensively.
Today, Qure employs close to 280 people across Mumbai, Bengaluru, London, US, Dubai, and Africa. “Distribution has become the key moat. Our distribution is very strong in primary healthcare centres, so the plan is to do more there – not just imaging,” says Ankit. The team has launched an app called AIRA, an AI assistant that listens to doctor-patient conversations, suggests better questions, diagnoses, and fills EMRs (electronic medical records) automatically.
Qure is now working on COPD (chronic obstructive pulmonary disease), to detect early signs of heart failure. Qure has raised $120 million and is valued over $500 million. Ankit says they expect to break even by the next financial year. “Funding will only be for expansion, not survival,” he says.
The decision hinged on what he calls ₹reversibility’. Moving to the US could always be an option later if Qure didn’t work out, he told himself. Lengthy talks with Prashant, and a look at Qure’s talented founding team convinced Ankit this was the team he wanted to grow with. And he took the decision to stay even though his experience with a previous fitness offerings and healthy food venture called CrankOut had shown him that success takes more than just hard work or a strong team. “The right people, the right technology, and the right timing all must align – and even then, nothing is guaranteed,” he says.
Today, Modi has no reason to look back on his decision. And he finds himself in the US very often, because a lot of Qure’s business comes from that country.
Great partnership
Prashant, Preetham, Ankit and Bhargava Reddy founded Qure.ai in 2016 as a health-tech company leveraging deep learning and AI to make healthcare more accessible. Its solutions analyse medical images like X-rays, CT scans, and MRIs to aid in the early detection and management of various diseases such as tuberculosis, lung cancer, and stroke.
Ankit recalls that a chance flathunting connection led him to Prashant, whose company, Imagna Analytics , had just been acquired by analytics company Fractal . And Ankit was keen to learn from someone who had successfully built and exited a venture. Though he was exploring ideas with others, Prashant’s experience and track record stood out.
“One of our first milestones was becoming the first AI company in the world to get published in The Lancet, and at the time, we didn’t even realise how big that was until doctors started telling us. When Covid-19 hit, starting in Lombardy, in Italy, San Rafael Hospital reached out to Qure.ai, prompting the deployment of their chest X-ray algorithm for Covid cases. Six months later, BMC in Mumbai approached the team, bringing significant global attention,” he said.
WHO recommends Qure.ai
By 2021, the World Health Organisation (WHO) issued a recommendation allowing Qure’s AI to read chest X-rays in the absence of radiologists, paving the way for worldwide adoption. Today, Qure.ai’s solutions are deployed in over a hundred countries.
AstraZeneca recognised that Qure.ai’s algorithm could also detect lung cancer early from chest X-rays and funded its adoption across hospitals worldwide, becoming the first pharma company to see its value. They had a drug, Tagrisso, for stage one and two lung cancer patients but weren’t finding enough patients. They saw Qure’s AI as a way to broaden the funnel.
This was soon followed by Merck, Johnson & Johnson, and today, Qure.ai works with at least 10 of the top 20 pharma and medical device companies, including Pfizer, Medtronic, and Cipla.
Qure.ai addresses tuberculosis, which is largely a sanitation and healthcare access problem. Countries like Lesotho or Malawi have almost no radiologists – Malawi has just two for the entire country. Community-level screening capturing thousands of X-rays daily would be impossible without AI. WHO has created a funding pathway for AI alongside X-ray machines, and today, many countries procure Qure.ai’s software to detect TB. Together, solutions to detect tuberculosis and lung cancer account for roughly 85% to 90% of Qure.ai’s revenue.
Built GenAI solution before ChatGPT
Qure.ai’s technology is built on deep learning algorithms. The company began in 2016 using convolutional neural networks, later moving to deep neural networks and transformer-based architectures. Unlike traditional software engineering, deep learning requires domain expertise. Qure.ai’s researchers have, over years of working closely with doctors, effectively become highly skilled radiologists.
During development, the team discovered that their algorithm performed better on men’s X-rays than women’s due to biased datasets. To address this, they built a generative AI solution – well before ChatGPT – to create synthetic data representing women with certain conditions. The algorithms were also fine-tuned for different geographies, as X-rays from Kenya, Bihar, or Australia present unique nuances. Detecting tuberculosis, for example, is not merely a technical challenge but a contextual one. To ensure the AI works effectively across diverse settings, Qure.ai’s team of 75 clinicians also travel extensively.
Today, Qure employs close to 280 people across Mumbai, Bengaluru, London, US, Dubai, and Africa. “Distribution has become the key moat. Our distribution is very strong in primary healthcare centres, so the plan is to do more there – not just imaging,” says Ankit. The team has launched an app called AIRA, an AI assistant that listens to doctor-patient conversations, suggests better questions, diagnoses, and fills EMRs (electronic medical records) automatically.
Qure is now working on COPD (chronic obstructive pulmonary disease), to detect early signs of heart failure. Qure has raised $120 million and is valued over $500 million. Ankit says they expect to break even by the next financial year. “Funding will only be for expansion, not survival,” he says.
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