Did you know that the survival rate for most cancers drops from 90% when caught in stage one to below 20% when caught in stage four or later? An evocative fact like this, combined with the painful story of a loved one who passed away from cancer after a late diagnosis, is how an ad for early disease-detection startup Cent begins. 

This is one of many. 

Another expounds on the drawbacks of full body screenings that rely on CT scans, which privilege speed over accuracy. Not Cent, says the ad, which has built a health-intelligence stack around the more comprehensive MRI. This is how the startup that kicked off a year ago is spreading its gospel to people. 

Coming from the founder of Practo, Shashank ND, this is an altogether different concept. 

Eighteen-year-old Practo has evolved from a doctor-discovery platform into what could very well be called an e-commerce platform for health, encompassing everything from appointment bookings to medicine delivery. After raising nearly $230 million in funding, it’s only just turned Ebitda positive, according to its FY25 annual letter. 

In contrast, Cent’s ambit is more upstream, way before a company like Practo enters the picture. The question it’s answering is simpler: how do you get to people before they become patients? 

“The ideal consumer is anyone above the age of 35, who wants to start thinking about their health,” said Anshul Khandelwal, another one of Cent’s three co-founders. 

Cent is far from the only one in this space. Its closest competitor, Nura, offers 120-minute full-body scans using its proprietary Fujifilm imaging technology to both B2C and B2B customers. 

Others like Niramai and Qure.ai are primarily B2B players that sell to hospitals. The former has pioneered a non-invasive combination of thermal imaging and AI to screen Indian women for breast cancer, whereas the latter uses AI to scan medical images such as X-rays and CT scans for abnormalities. 

Compared to these, Cent’s proposition is tamer. 

What it’s offering is a homegrown AI-orchestration layer that sits on top of pre-existing hardware from Siemens and off-the-shelf software modules for MRI, CT, and Dexa scans already found in hospitals. To put it simply, Cent neither diagnoses diseases nor refers you to medical professionals who can.

© The Ken