The Voxelgrids journey – from inception to reality
OUR JOURNEY
Over the Years
New Beginings
- Company founder Arjun Arunachalam studied at the University of Wisconsin-Madison from where he received his MS and PhD degrees.
- From 2006-2008, he worked at the GE Global Research Center, Niskayuna, NY.
- He resigned from GE research in October 2008 with the intent of eventually starting an entrepreneurial venture.
2008-2009
Exploring Opportunities
- One year of gathering market understanding
- Establishing relationships with potential investors, vendors and other partners
2009-2010
Initial Challenges
- One-year long attempts to raise funding futile.
- Joined IIT-B as a faculty in EE and continued to work in the field of MRI despite obvious challenges that existed due to MRI being a completely nascent field within India academia specifically in an engineering context.
2013 April
- Arjun’s wife Nivedita was offered an excellent opportunity in Singapore and so their family relocated.
- While in Singapore, Arjun received a Grant from Spring Singapore for developing MRI related intellectual property
- A small test scanner platform for MRI was built from this grant for initial proof of concept tests
2016 May
- Contacted Tata Trusts and shared his proposal for building cost effective, state of the art Magnetic Resonance Imaging scanners in India.
- The Trusts were supportive and introduced Arjun to the Foundation for Innovation and Social Entrepreneurship (FISE),.
- The Voxelgrids journey eventually started under FISE where the core team was employed during the initial years.
2017
First Steps
- Voxelgrids team worked as FISE employees and developed a proto-MRI scanner. This prototype was deployed in mid 2017 at The Sathya Sai Institute of Higher Medical Sciences, Bengaluru, under an MoU signed between the two parties.
- The first set of images from this scanner were obtained in March 2018.
In mid 2019, Voxelgrids received a significant grant from the Biotechnology, Industry, Research , Academic Council (BIRAC) for development of indigenous cryogenic magnet and MRI technologies. The company was previously awarded a grant by the United States-India Science & Technology Endowment Fund as well. The company was also a recipient of the BIRAC Innovator award 2020 that was presented by the Vice-President of India. This enabled the company to take its first independent steps towards operating as an independent entity. Subsequently, the company was ISO 13485 certified in mid 2020.
In 2021, the company closed on its series-A funding with Zoho Corporation, a privately held multi-billion-dollar software company. Voxelgrids today is an independent entity supported by multiple stakeholders and is on a mission to provide cost effective, state of the art Magnetic Resonance Imaging scanners for the world markets.
Our Investors
Innovation Partners
Leadership
Arjun Arunachalam
CEO
Arjun is the Founder and CEO of the company. He has more than a decade of experience working in the field of MRI with previous professional stints at the GE Global Research Center and IIT Bombay where he worked as MRI scientist and Assistant Professor respectively. He holds MS and PhD degrees in the electrical engineering and has a strong background in MRI physics.
Shankar Murthy Udupa
COO and Design Head
– Mechanical Engineering
Currently leading mechanical design & development and quality functions at Voxelgrids. Graduate in mechanical engineering with around 30 years’ experience in design & development of various mechanical systems. Contributed to all aspects of medical device development lifecycle including design, prototype development & testing, quality compliance, regulatory testing, and reliability engineering. Passionately working towards the goal of having customers diagnosing patients through Voxelgrids scanners.
Anil Kumar Narayan
Director of Manufacturing
Anil has 34 years in various disciplines of Engineering – Design, Manufacture, Integration and Testing. Specific areas of expertise include Design & Development of Specific Purpose Machinery & Allied Equipment with PLC/CNC/PC based Controls & Data Acquisition. Anil holds BE degree in Mechanical engineering from REC Srinagar, India, and an MTech degree in Machine Tools from REC Warangal, India.
Devanathan Mukunthan
CFO
Mukunthan is a Chartered Accountant and Company Secretary with FCCA qualification. He has had a professional career spanning almost 45 years and joined as CFO with Voxelgrids in June 2019. He has been assisting the CEO on all Financial matters including, costing, and budgeting and other administration matters.
Srinivasa Rao Deshpande
Head – RF and electrical engineering
Excellent and compassionate team lead. His expertise is backed with 17 years of relevant industry experience in design & development, prototyping of the entire suite of MRI RF coils. Srini has also made a significant contribution towards setting up of the company’s Quality Management System and product related Regulatory tests and filings.
Swathy Padarthi
Head – Software engineering
A member of the founding team, Swathy has over 7 years of professional experience and is currently leading a diverse and talented software team that owns the entire software platform for the company’s MRI product. These include pulse sequence development, image reconstruction algorithm development, sub-systems embedded software and all spectrometer firmware. Swathy has also made a significant contribution towards all product related regulatory filings.
The company today is 30 employees strong with deep expertise in multiple MRI related engineering fields such as cryogenics, RF and electromagnetics, Mechanical engineering, and MRI physics.
The Board
Arjun Arunachalam
Founder and promoter director at Voxelgrids
Raghava Kumar Molluru
Raghava is FISE’s nominee on the board of Voxelgrids. He has been a strong supporter of the company and its founding team from the first day when they were incubated at FISE.
Shailesh Kumar Subbaraya
Shailesh is Zoho co-founder and its nominee on our board. Shailesh is a graduate of IIT Madras and VP of engineering at Zoho corporation. He brings decades of product development experience especially within a startup environment.
Prashanth Sabeshan
Prashanth is an independent director on the board of Voxelgrids. He is a partner at Argus Partners (Indian Corporate Law Firm) and author – “Investing in India’s Infrastructure and Energy Sectors” (A Thomson Reuters Publication). Prashanth is also a faculty at the National Law School, Bangalore.
QUICK LINKS
Contact Us
Phone:
+91-80-29517496
Email:
info@voxelgrids.com