[Funding Alert] Chiratae Ventures Invests In Medical Robotics Company Aether Biomedical The funding will primarily be used for commercialization of Zeus V1 across India and Europe

Venture capital Chiratae Ventures on Wednesday announced seed investment of an undisclosed amount in a medical robotics company, Aether Biomedical. The investment was part of Chiratae Venture's DeepTech innovators programme.

Other investors in the round included Joyance Partners and Sunfish Partners.

The funding will primarily be used for commercialization of Zeus V1 across India and Europe. The company also aims to continue its research and development efforts by building the next generation of the bionic limb and building accessory products such as prosthetic wrists and prosthetic elbows.

Speaking on the announcement, Sudhir Sethi, founder and chairman, Chiratae Ventures, said "We see deep-tech playing a pivotal role in shaping scalable solutions across verticals. As technology evolves so does the benchmark for innovation, Aether and its team is a great example of that. We're excited to partner with them along with Joyance Partners and Sunfish Partners."

Commenting on the announcement, Dhruv Agrawal, founder and CEO, Aether Biomedical, said "As an early-stage startup, we're thrilled by the faith and excitement shown to us by incredible partners such as Chiratae, Joyance and Sunfish. As a company, we're deeply committed to pushing the boundaries to create solutions that enable fulfilling lives for millions of people across the globe. Building at the intersection of robotics, mechatronics, research, insights and innovation we hope our solutions help 10 million-plus amputees globally live better lives and re-invent medical tech."

Aether claims that its first product Zeus, a multi-action bionic limb, is a low-cost high efficacy product aimed to create data-driven rehabilitation accessible and more robust. The product offers one of the highest grip forces in the market and is priced at a much affordable rate to bring a larger set of amputees under their purview. The company said it was able to achieve the product by employing some of the latest advancements in biosignal processing, machine learning and additive manufacturing which have the potential to further expand the scope of their solutions in the broader sphere of data-driven rehabilitation.

There are reportedly more than 10 million amputees around the world. Around 80 per cent of them live in developing countries where the penetration of prosthesis is below 10 per cent. A large number of amputees (who even have access to rehab solutions) either get dropped out of rehabilitation because of high costs, low efficacy products, barriers to repeatability, or all.