Hyderabad youngsters’ innovate affordable device for managing diabetes

Hyderabad: The day of almost every diabetes patient starts with pricking their finger to test the blood-glucose levels early in the morning. And by the time they are ready to retire for the day, they generally would have repeated the process at least two to three times.Having gone through this drill her whole life, a […]

Hyderabad: The day of almost every diabetes patient starts with pricking their finger to test the blood-glucose levels early in the morning. And by the time they are ready to retire for the day, they generally would have repeated the process at least two to three times.Having gone through this drill her whole life, a 20-year-old city girl Duvvuru Varshita, dreamt of finding a painless and affordable solution for managing diabetes.

She, along with Vimal Kumar came up with an easy-to-use and low-cost non-invasive glucometer called EzLyf – a configurable, inexpensive, and painless plug-and-play glucose monitoring system. Recently, their company, VivaLyf Innovations, which is incubated at the University of Hyderabad, received heavy funding from Peyush Bansal, founder and CEO of Lenskart and Anupam Mittal, founder and CEO of People Group on Shark Tank India.

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“I was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes at a very early age,” shares Varshita, “And it is a very expensive disease to manage. The doctors advise the patients to test their blood sugar levels at least three to four times a day. As each glucometer strip costs about Rs 40, to keep a check on diabetes every day would cost around Rs 160 every day and close to Rs 4,800 per month. And the expenses do not stop here, as one also has to ensure they take regular medication to keep the blood sugar in check. Such expenses can disrupt the budget of any middle-class family,” she adds. Varshita was only 10 years old when she promised her father that she would find a solution for this.

Even though she qualified for IIT, Varshita chose to seek a career in biotechnology, and it was during a national Hackathon that she met Vimal, an electronics engineer, who helped her further her dreams.

Explaining about the device, Vimal says, “EzLyf device is as small as a pen drive. You just need to connect it to your smartphone, open the app and place your finger on the screen. The app records values using near-infrared spectroscopy (NIR). A beam of this light interacts with glucose molecules in your finger to calculate the absorption spectrum between the molecules and the wave. These spectrum values are filtered with the help of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and the values are displayed on your smartphone, in a maximum of 60 seconds. You can use the device in a public space, without drawing any attention to yourself.”

This is not the first time, Varshita and Vimal have won an award. The startup was the second runner-up in the EMPOWER-2021, Accelerating Women Entrepreneurship competition and won the TiE Women Global Pitch-2021 in Hyderabad. They also won the NITTE healthcare innovation hackathon and were named in AIM-NITI Aayog’s top nine prospective healthcare start-ups for 2021.

Bhanu Reddy Varla, a senior entrepreneur and investor, mentored the duo on their way to success. “I noticed them at the University of Hyderabad. They were very passionate about this project and that’s what made me invest in the start-up. I have been able to engage several experts in this field to help the team better the product before we launch it. It was a very proud moment for me when they received the funding at Shark Tank India.”

Currently, the device is undergoing pre-clinical trials and will be ready to be launched in the market in the next six to eight months.

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