When Prashanth Prakash noticed his blood sugar creeping toward pre-diabetic levels in his early 50s, he didn’t just tweak his diet or start running more. Instead, the venture capitalist known for backing startups such as BookMyShow, BlueStone, and Rentomojo went deeper. What began as a personal health concern turned into an exploration of the science of ageing.
“After your 50s, you start losing muscle mass—5 to 10 percent every decade,” says Prakash, founding partner, Accel India, and founding patron, Longevity India. “That idea of muscle atrophy really stayed with me.”
From experimenting with biohacking techniques and supplements to studying systems biology and cellular diagnostics, Prakash become a key figure in The Longevity India project. It is a growing coalition of Indian business leaders, scientists, technologists, and medical researchers who are reimagining ageing—not as a slow, inevitable decline, but as a phase of life that can be optimised and even reversed in some ways. Their mission is not to help people live forever, but to help them live well and disease-free into their 80s and beyond—prioritising healthspan over lifespan. In other words, they focus on healthy longevity.
Rooted in science, powered by artificial intelligence (AI), and drawing upon both ancient wisdom and modern medicine, this movement is reshaping how India thinks about health and ageing, how businesses will rethink workforce longevity, how healthcare systems will shift from treatment to prevention, and how society will redefine what it means to grow old. The project, led by researchers at the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) in Bengaluru, focuses on generating India-specific data that challenges global assumptions about ageing. “Whether it is supplements or pharmacogenomics, what drugs work best for our specific genes —there is a gap,” says Prakash. “Indians are largely using what is developed in the West. So, it became very important for us to anchor our work around Indian genetics.”
This realisation led to the launch of the BHARAT Study. Short for Biomarkers of Healthy Aging, Resilience, Adversity, and Transitions, it seeks to build the country’s first comprehensive ageing database and understand how healthy Indians age, organ by organ, in the context of their own genetics and environment.
The study aims to uncover what Saini calls the “Bharat baseline”, identifying biomarkers and ageing patterns unique to India. “Whatever clocks of ageing the world is developing, they don’t apply to India. Our epigenetic clocks are different.”
This divergence from global ageing models is why the Bharat Study is building organ clocks, or tools that assess biological age at the organ level.
Chronologically, your organ might be 50 years old, but biologically, where is it? Is it functioning like it’s 40? Or older than it should be?” says Prakash.
Though Western longevity science increasingly explores pharmacological interventions such as Rapamycin, an immunosuppressant believed to promote longevity when taken in low, pulsed doses. Saini cautions against blindly adopting such approaches. “If you knock out your immune system, you won’t die of ageing, you’ll die of infection,” he says.
The Bharat Study is collecting data across diverse Indian populations using multi-omics and AI-driven analysis to build a new framework for understanding how Indians age. This includes mapping the exposome, which is a relatively new concept that encompasses everything from diet and air quality to stress and microbial exposure. “It’s our genetics plus our exposome,” Prakash says. “And then there’s epigenetics, which is how your genetics manifest and drive action in your body today.”
At the heart of this is a push for precision in prevention. “People want to know what exactly is their issue, whether they are becoming pre-diabetic, and what could be driving that,” says Prakash. He points to the concept of phenotypes, or physiological manifestations of disease, as the key to understanding conditions such as diabetes. “Unless you understand whether the insulin resistance is coming from fat in your muscles or from pancreatic cells not functioning properly, you are missing the point.” This is where advanced diagnostics come in. “Standard blood chemistry often shows the result of a disease that has already set in. You are not seeing the trajectory of your health,” he says.
For a lot of human data to make sense, it needs to be brought together, analysed and looked at for patterns. “Without AI, we would spend five to 10 hours on each person. That is not sustainable,” says Prakash. AI helps triangulate data, find patterns, and personalise. “That is where the precision comes from—the ability to digest data, identify patterns, and then pinpoint where the issues lie,” he adds. And BioPeak he says, is “the clinic of the future”.
At BioPeak the journey begins with a person’s medical and lifestyle history to establish a personalised baseline. Most diagnostic tests—including for genetics, metabolites, microbiomes, and hormones—are done at home, followed by an in-clinic assessment covering scans such as DEXA scans, VO₂ max tests, gut and mitochondrial health assessments. This generates around 60 GB of data per person, which is analysed by a multidisciplinary team and AI to create a detailed, predictive health profile.
“The goal is to decode your body, identify risks early, and personalise interventions to improve both healthspan and lifespan,” says Pardal. Take iron deficiency. In a conventional setting, the solution is an iron supplement. But BioPeak’s approach is different. “It is now possible to determine whether it is an issue of iron production, iron consumption, or something more complex like a genetic predisposition such as sickle cell. In such cases, simply prescribing iron may not lead to the intended outcome,” he says.
This model considers not just genetics, but also lifestyle, “exposome” and how that influences gene expression. “Then there is what is already manifesting, which shows up through their metabolites, biochemistry, or even imaging,” adds Somil Sharma, BioPeak’s vice president of sales. “We are combining all of this for each person and looking at data reference points to understand what is impacting which pathway at the cellular level, and then making interventions to address that.”
Pardal says BioPeak’s strength lies in its flexibility and precision. “Everything we do is based on data. From that, we build a highly personalised programme that may include supplements, nutrition, stress management, mindfulness, sleep, and exercise. There is no one-size-fits-all approach.”
The startup is backed by marquee investors including Nikhil Kamath of Zerodha, Ranjan Pai of Claypond Capital, and Accel. According to Pardal’s research, the lifespan for most Indians is 67-68 years on average. “The world average is 76 years. So it is not about increasing lifespan to 122, it is about taking that 67 to 76 years,” he adds.
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Despite the buzz around anti-ageing pills and quick-fix solutions, Saini of IISc remains sceptical about their relevance in the Indian context. “Pharma companies always want quick-fix solutions. They want one pill that solves all the problems,” he says. But longevity, he argues, does not lend itself to such simplicity. “It is not going to be easy. There isn’t going to be one pill. Longevity requires changes at multiple levels.”
In India, where environmental and genetic factors shape ageing differently, it is a complex issue and that is why Indian pharma companies have not embraced longevity as a business opportunity. “If I can’t give you a medicine, I have nothing to gain. There is no business model. That’s why pharma industries aren’t championing longevity,” says Saini.
As the science of ageing evolves, Saini believes the future lies in integrated medicine—a shift away from treating the body as a “bag full of organs” and towards a more holistic understanding of health. “If your gut goes wrong, someone fixes your gut. If your heart goes wrong, they fix your heart. But ultimately, this is not a bag full of organs; it’s a connected, interconnected system,” he says. Prakash agrees: “No single school of medicine has all the answers. Modern medicine is great for acute care. But there is also what I call slow medicine like ayurveda and other traditional systems. Can we integrate the two for the benefit of the individual?”
This interconnectedness, Saini says, demands a new kind of diagnostics—one that does not just look for what is broken, but for what is working well. “Our diagnostics are aimed at broken things. If you keep looking for signs of damage, you’ll keep finding damage. What we need now is a way to measure health.”
Through the BHARAT Study, Saini and his team are working to identify organ-specific signs of ageing, with the goal of slowing deterioration and improving quality of life. “If I can find that organ-specific science of ageing, I can probably put a page to every organ, identify the weakest one, and slow down its decline. That’s the wish list for longevity.”
He points to global demographic shifts as a wake-up call. In many countries, birth rates are falling below replacement levels, shrinking the younger population. Though this is not yet India’s problem, Pardal warns it is on the horizon. If older individuals retire and become dependent, it places a growing burden on healthcare and social systems, especially in countries with retirement benefits.
But what if older people remained healthy, sharp, and self-reliant? Pardal argues that they could continue contributing meaningfully. These are individuals with experience, global exposure, and valuable insights. “It’s a different mindset, and while we are not there yet, the conversation is beginning.”
He cites a compelling insight: “For every additional year of productive lifespan added, the American economy gains trillions of dollars. That’s the thinking behind longevity science; it’s not just about living longer, it’s about contributing longer.” Pardal believes our expectations around ageing are outdated, shaped by historical patterns of productivity loss. “But if we change that, we change the entire conversation. That’s what the real debate around lifespan is about—improving the quality of life.”
Prakash adds a personal lens to the discussion. “Can you carry your grandchild? Can you dance at your daughter’s wedding? These are the real reasons why healthspan matters.” The benefits, he says, ripple outward. “Yes, it also means greater productivity, longer working lives, and national economic benefits.”
Even a modest extension of healthspan—say, from 60 to 65—could save the country crores in healthcare costs. “We are not saying people should live forever; we are saying: Can we moderate the curve of decline? Can we compress morbidity?”
This vision of healthy longevity challenges how we think about work, age, and ambition. Pardal believes that if people are physically, cognitively, and biologically younger, they will naturally want to do more. Often, he says, the passion to pursue something and the ability to do it do not align, but healthy longevity narrows that gap. It opens the door to older startup founders, second or third careers, and a rethinking of organisational structures. With healthy longevity, people can be more productive for longer. That means organisations may need to restructure themselves and review who does what, and for how long.
“It’s about the power that individuals gain. Imagine a world where people can pursue what they love well into their 80s. That opens up entirely new possibilities as well as new markets,” Pardal says. If older individuals remain active, they become active consumers too.
The government has declared non-communicable diseases an epidemic, underscoring that fitness is the most effective way to prevent these lifestyle-related conditions from eroding the country’s demographic dividend. Research suggests that a more active India could add more than ₹15 lakh crore to the gross domestic product by 2047 through increased productivity and reduced healthcare costs.
Kris Gopalakrishnan, one of the founders of Infosys and a patron of the Longevity India project, envisions longevity not as a luxury pursuit, but as a public health imperative rooted in science, accessibility, and behavioural change.
“The business of longevity,” he says, “is a holistic look at health and changing people’s behaviour… creating affordable solutions so they can stay healthy much longer. Whatever we do, we want to make sure it is available to a large percentage of the population. It should not be only for the rich.”
Though the idea of a national policy on ageing and longevity may seem timely, Mazumdar-Shaw believes India needs a policy that encourages research in this area. “We must first build a strong scientific foundation.” She favours targeted investment in research, suggesting that longevity should be recognised as a priority area for India. “Some research funding should be budgeted for it,” she adds. With private capital beginning to flow into the space and initiatives like BioPeak supporting research-led models, she sees an opportunity for India to take the lead in a field still in its early stages globally. “We have missed the boat in so many areas of research. I think we now have a chance to lead in this one.”
Gopalakrishnan suggests a shift from curative to preventive healthcare, from reactive hospital visits to proactive daily choices. “People think about health only when they fall sick. That’s too late. We need to create incentives for people to think about health every day.” This includes integrating traditional systems like ayurveda and yoga into mainstream healthcare but only through evidence-based and scientifically validated approaches. “It can’t be just knowledge. You need businesses that practise this, and you need incentives to change people’s behaviour,” he adds.
From food labelling and insurance-linked health scores to digital literacy and mental health support for the elderly, Gopalakrishnan’s approach to longevity is systemic, inclusive, and rooted in India’s unique context.
“It’s a long journey,” he says, “but it has to start with science, move to market, and ultimately shift to culture.” For Prakash too, this isn’t just a personal mission; it is a national imperative. “As a country, we are becoming metabolically unhealthy and increasingly prone to cardiovascular issues. We need to wake up and act,” he says.
First Published: Nov 20, 2025, 12:33
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