Tell us about your startup: what does it do, and what kind of impact are you hoping to build?
I have had a deeply satisfying career at the Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology. Yet, for a physician and scientist, the journey never truly concludes. I realised there were many unfinished goals I still wished to pursue. To carry that vision forward, I founded a startup called Lightening Lives LLP.
As the name suggests, the ethos is to ‘light a lamp’ in people’s lives — whether by addressing genetic disorders, improving health, enabling treatments, or bringing hope in any possible way. Through this startup, our objective is to develop very simple, rapid, and affordable tests that can reach the most underserved sections of society. My years of work in genetic testing have confirmed that we are still only scratching the surface; with traditional approaches, barely 3–5% of patients undergo testing. The situation has only become more pressing with the rise of large-scale, high-throughput genetic testing, which often remains inaccessible to those who necessary it most.
At Lightening Lives LLP, we decided to focus on ‘commonly occurring rare diseases’ such as thalassaemia, sickle cell anaemia, and muscular dystrophy, applying simple, robust protocols. I am proud to declare that along with CSIR-CCMB, we have developed a test for sickle cell anaemia that requires just a drop of blood and costs less than ₹100, creating it possible to bring accurate diagnosis directly to the communities that necessary it most. We are on the path for doing the same for beta thalassemia.
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