In the traditional medical journey, a patient visits a doctor only after a symptom a lump, a pain, or a cough appears. By then, for diseases like cancer or cardiac failure, the window for easy intervention has often closed.

Cent, a Bengaluru-based healthtech startup founded by industry titan Shashank ND (the founder of Practo), is aiming to flip this reactive model on its head. The company has announced an undisclosed funding round from OneFlow Holdings and South Park Commons to scale its AI-led early disease detection platform.

Joining Shashank in this ambitious venture are co-founders Arpit Garg (formerly of Lenskart) and Anshul Khandelwal (formerly of Ola Electric), bringing together a powerhouse of expertise in scale, consumer tech, and healthcare systems.

The AI Advantage: Seeing What Symptoms Hide

Cent operates on a Direct-to-Consumer (D2C) model, offering advanced scans specifically designed to identify “silent killers” cancer, cardiac issues, and metabolic diseases long before the patient feels any discomfort.

The startup’s secret sauce lies in its AI-driven diagnostic layer. By utilizing proprietary algorithms to analyze scan data, Cent can identify anomalies that might be overlooked in standard screenings. Since becoming operational in the first quarter of FY26, the startup has already completed over 1,500 scans, revealing startling statistics about the hidden health of the urban population:

• 26% of scans identified “clinically meaningful” findings that required medical follow-up.

• 3–4% of scans detected critical, life-threatening conditions requiring immediate emergency intervention.

Riding the Oncology Funding Wave

The investment in Cent comes amidst a massive surge of capital into India’s specialized cancer care and diagnostic segment. As the country faces a rising burden of non-communicable diseases, investors are moving away from general wellness toward deep-tech clinical solutions.

Cent joins this elite group, but with a unique focus on the Pre-Symptomatic phase, aiming to catch diseases at “Stage 0” or “Stage 1” where the survival rate is exponentially higher.

A New Era of Preventive “Deep-Screening”

The entry of a seasoned founder like Shashank ND into the early-detection space signals a shift in the Indian healthtech narrative. While Practo focused on access to doctors, Cent is focusing on the data that makes those doctors more effective.

“We are building for a world where nobody is diagnosed ‘too late’,” the company stated. By focusing on high-risk categories like oncology and cardiology, Cent is positioning itself as an essential preventive layer for India’s aging and high-stress professional demographic.

With the backing of South Park Commons a community-led fund known for supporting high-conviction technical founders Cent is now poised to expand its scan capacity and refine its AI models to lower the cost of early detection for the masses.

By : Vanshika Tayal