Taking the entrepreneurial plunge after doing corporate jobs for years isn't easy. But these four businesspersons have proved it's never too late to follow your heart
Geetha Manjunath, Founder and CEO, Niramai
Eye For AI
Starting something new or pursuing a completely different path comes easily to Geetha Manjunath. After 17 years in the field of computer science, she decided to do a PhD in a completely new subject. “I am like that. I went back and picked up a completely new topic, which is artificial intelligence [AI] and data mining. I never knew it would be such a big thing now,” she had told Forbes India in an earlier interview.
It meant going back to class and studying with younger students. She became a senior manager with an MNC, where the team worked on emerging markets solutions, transportation and traffic management systems as well as with hospitals and health care, trying to do “meaningful innovation with business and social impact”.
A tragedy in the family made her focus on breast cancer screening and on entrepreneurship in the form of co-founding Niramai in 2016, at the age of 49. Niramai provides non-invasive, radiation-free breast cancer screening using AI, and has received $7 million in funding and is at series A stage.
Niramai’s screening solution is portable, and has conducted 33,000 screenings. During the Covid-19 pandemic it offered Home Breast Health Screening for high-risk women or cancer survivors who needed monitoring. Last year it developed a FeverTest screening for identifying Covid-19 symptoms and got CDC UK funding for it.
(This story appears in the 17 December, 2021 issue of Forbes India. To visit our Archives, click here.)