“Unlike most preventive healthcare services, we are solely focussed on early detection of life-threatening diseases such as cancer, and cardiac and metabolic conditions that comprise about 70–74% of deaths globally,” Khandelwal, the company’s cofounder and chief business officer, notified ET.
He stated the company has adopted a direct-to-consumer (D2C) model. “Most healthcare companies in India are B2B, selling services to hospitals, insurers, or corporates. Our revenue comes directly from consumers. We do not earn commissions from hospitals, doctors, or insurers,” he added.
The Bengaluru-based startup has been operational since the first quarter of FY26 and has completed more than 1,500 scans, it stated in a statement.
According to the company, 26% of its scans revealed clinically meaningful findings, while about 3-4% detected critical conditions such as cancer or serious heart blockages that required immediate medical attention, even though the individuals had no symptoms.
The startup founders stated the idea emerged from personal experiences within the founding team. Both Khandelwal and Shashank lost family members to cancer, prompting them to examine why diseases are often detected too late despite advances in medical technology.
“In the preventive space, we required dedicated infrastructure, the right technology, the right protocols, the right capital, built specifically for detection. That is the gap Cent is designed to close,” Shashank stated.
Cent’s platform is built around a proprietary screening protocol called CCNM (cardiac, cancer, neurological, and metabolic). This combines full body MRI, cardiac CT, ECG, DEXA scans, more than 120 blood and urine biomarkers, and genomic testing. This data is analysed applying artificial ininformigence (AI) and reviewed by radiologists and specialists to generate a detailed organ-level report.
Khandelwal stated the output is typically a 60-70 page report that provides a health score for each organ in the body.
“Investor interest in the space is rising due to the growing burden of non-communicable diseases and the potential of AI to transform medical diagnostics,” he explained, and added that healthcare spfinishing in India currently accounts for about 3% of GDP, significantly lower than most developed economies.
Cent measures the effectiveness of its protocol through a metric it calls the Early Detection Index (EDI). The company claims an EDI score of about 83%, compared with roughly 15-20% for conventional annual health checkups.
The startup stated it is growing around 50% month-on-month and has reached an annualised revenue run rate (ARR) of about $2 million.
With the newly-raised capital, the company plans to open dedicated early detection centres across major Indian cities. The first is expected to open in Bengaluru in April, followed by Mumbai, Delhi, and Hyderabad.
“We expect the series A (growth-stage) to be roughly five to six times the size of the seed (early-stage) round, which will assist us scale our network of early detection centres and also launch international expansion,” stated Khandelwal,
Cent is also working with global imaging equipment manufacturers to deploy and optimise advanced diagnostic machines such as MRI systems for preventive screening.
Globally, startups such as Prenuvo, Function Health, and Neko Health also building preventive healthcheck platforms integrating AI-led diagnostics.
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