Indian health tech startup poised to win Rs 773 crores in global competition: Here’s how
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GOQii has managed to do something that has never been done before by any Indian company. Its longevity subsidiary Sanjeevini has successfully reached the final round of XPRIZE Healthspan. This is a seven-year, $101 million competition to restore ten years of aging in people aged between 50 and 90. Out of the 600 teams competing from 58 countries, only GOQii from South Asia has made it into the finals. The other finalists include some of the biggest names in biotechnology around the world such as Johns Hopkins, Mount Sinai, a NASDAQ-listed biotech from Longeveron, and Japanese and Korean national consortia.
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Everyone else here is trying to get there via biologics or gene therapy or pharmaceuticals. Alive OS, which is GOQii’s entry, is an omni-channel protocol based on wearables, AI coaches, games and biological age testing from omics science, done largely from a phone. This is a very different wager on how to really make a difference when it comes to ageing and it needs to be said up front because of one very simple reason – India does not have the clinical infrastructure or health care expenditure levels needed to match the competition when it comes to biologics. With 150 million people over the age of 60 today, on track to reach 347 million in 2050 and thin geriatric resources, India has some of the highest out-of-pocket healthcare expenses in the world.
The figures from the proof-of-concept trial lasting 60 days are impressive on paper. 97.5% retention rate, 97% supplement compliance, no adverse event, 0% serious adverse events per 2,400 participant-days, and 13 out of 19 in the intervention arm saw improvements in the three target areas: muscle function, cognitive performance, and inflammation. Notably, the sample size in this case was relatively small, 40 people randomised and 39 analysed, which is normal for proof-of-concept trial but very far from proving efficacy. The press release itself makes that clear: this trial was supposed to test safety and feasibility of the intervention, not its efficacy, which will be established in the next trial – a 12-month, assessor-blinded, randomised controlled trial conducted in Mumbai, Delhi NCR, Jaipur and Bengaluru, supervised by an independent Data Safety Monitoring Board.
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The team conducting it is where it becomes clear that there’s science behind the marketing, not just wellness fad. Professor Anurag Agrawal, who directed the genomic surveillance network of 28 laboratories in India INSACOG, is the Lead Principal Investigator here. The consortium includes Koita Centres for Digital Health of Ashoka University, IIT Bombay, NIMS Jaipur, and Tata 1mg for diagnostics services.
Neither is it about the money, at least not in an immediate sense. GOQii claims that the trials are self-funded, participants do not pay for being part of it, and the unit economics tally up to around $150 per month in terms of supplementation and coaching via the platform. Either way, if Sanjeevini or any other finalist manages to meet the target XPRIZE sets regarding ten to twenty years of health function restoration, the entire concept of health span as a product category will be altered, and it will happen in reverse order from India.
What makes it problematic is the time frame of four years. The year 2030 will bring the conclusions of the trials in question, especially in a field where claims regarding longevity have become common currency, but very few pass the peer review test.
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