India’s preventive healthcare sector is seeing a fresh wave of innovation with the launch of Cent, a Bengaluru-based healthtech startup focused on early detection of serious diseases. The company has secured about $5 million in seed funding from South Park Commons and OneFlow Holdings, signalling investor confidence in a model that aims to identify life-threatening conditions before symptoms even appear.
Cent has been founded by Shashank ND, best known as the co-founder of healthcare platform Practo, along with Arpit Garg, former product leader at Lenskart, and Anshul Khandelwal, who previously held marketing and product leadership roles at Ola Electric. Together, the founding team is attempting to tackle one of healthcare’s biggest challenges: detecting diseases early enough to change outcomes.
Centa: A Healthcare Model Built on Early Detection
Unlike conventional diagnostic centres that often rely on doctor referrals or symptom-based testing, Cent is designed as a dedicated early-detection platform. Its approach integrates advanced medical imaging, biomarker testing and artificial intelligence to identify health risks at an early stage.
The platform screens for over 300 health conditions, with a focus on major disease categories including cancer, cardiac, neurological and metabolic disorders. These screenings combine whole-body MRI scans, low-dose CT imaging, DEXA scans, ECG testing and more than 120 blood and urine biomarkers. The results are analysed using AI-powered systems to generate detailed organ-level health assessments, which are then reviewed with clinicians.
The protocol developed by the company is called CCNM, referring to Cardiac, Cancer, Neurological and Metabolic screening.
Early Traction Signals Market Demand
Since beginning operations in 2025, the startup has completed more than 1,500 scans. Early findings indicate that 26% of these scans identified clinically meaningful issues, while 4% flagged critical conditions requiring immediate medical attention, many in individuals who did not show symptoms at the time of testing.
The company has reported around 50% month-on-month growth and currently operates at an annualised revenue run rate of roughly $2 million. Cent aims to conduct 50,000 scans in the coming year as it expands its services.
Expansion Plans for Detection Centres
In order to support this growth, Cent plans to open dedicated early detection centres starting April 2026 in Mumbai, Delhi, and Bengaluru, followed by Pune and Hyderabad.
This infrastructure development is based on the startup’s philosophy that preventive healthcare is not a part of the general hospital system but needs dedicated facilities. This focus on detection will help the company structure the concept of preventive screening in a more sophisticated manner.
The Long-Term Vision
The name Cent is derived from the word “Century,” symbolising the company’s vision of enabling people to live healthier lives well into their hundredth year. Over the long term, the startup aims to facilitate 10 million health scans and contribute to saving one million lives by 2035 through earlier diagnosis and intervention.
As India’s healthcare system develops, it seems that preventive health is slowly but surely emerging as the next frontier. If Cent is successful in scaling up its early detection model, it has the potential to be part of the movement to take healthcare from reactive to proactive.
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