Bengaluru just got a glimpse of what the future of healthcare might look like, and it doesn’t start with symptoms.
Cent, a new preventive health startup founded by Practo founder Shashank ND, has opened its first centre in the city. Spread across 7,000 sq. ft., the facility is built with a singular purpose of detecting serious diseases in people who feel perfectly healthy.
This isn’t a hospital. It’s not even a diagnostic lab in the traditional sense. Cent is positioning itself as something else entirely. An early detection engine powered by artificial intelligence, designed to spot life-threatening conditions before they show up in everyday life.
From reactive care to shooting for a 100-year healthy life
India’s healthcare system has long been built around reacting to illness. You feel something’s wrong, you seek care, and treatment follows.
Cent is challenging that model.
The name itself is a signal. “Cent” stands for century. The startup’s mission is to push healthy human lifespan toward 100 years by focusing on what it calls the “pre-symptomatic window”. The phase where diseases exist but haven’t yet made themselves known.
Its core proposition is to find the fire before there’s smoke.
And it’s leaning heavily on AI to make that possible. Cent claims an early detection index of 83%, positioning its screening protocols among the most advanced globally.
Closing the detection gap
For Shashank ND, the launch of Cent is not just a business pivot or just another startup. It’s a direct response to a brutal personal experience.
In 2024, he lost three close family members and friends to stage 4 cancers. Cases where the disease progressed silently until it was too late to act.
“That kind of loss makes you stop looking away,” he said.
According to him, India has world-class capabilities when it comes to treating illness. But when it comes to detecting disease early, before symptoms appear, the infrastructure simply hasn’t existed.
“The right tech stack, the precise protocols, and the focused capital simply weren’t there for detection,” he explains.
He sees Cent as the bridge across that chasm. “What changes the game right now is AI,” he stresses.
“We’ve reached a point where we can spot cancer or looming cardiac trouble in people who feel perfectly fine—and we can do it with accuracy that avoids unnecessary panic. If you can shift the timeline of discovery, you fundamentally shift the outcome. That’s the entire point of this.”
The team building the detection layer
Cent is being built by a tightly knit founding team that blends healthcare, consumer tech, and AI expertise.
Shashank ND, the mind behind Practo, is joined by co-founders Arpit Garg (ex-Lenskart) and Anshul Khandelwal (ex-Ola Electric). The clinical leadership is anchored by Dr Nandakumar, who serves as Chief Radiologist.
Together, the team brings a unique blend of experience from scaling large-scale health platforms, building consumer tech companies, and working deep within diagnostic medicine.
The initial capital to fuel this vision came from a seed round backed by OneFlow Holdings (Shashank ND’s family office) and South Park Commons. The funding amount remains undisclosed.
The CCNM Protocol
At the heart of Cent’s model is its proprietary CCNM Protocol, designed to screen for the four major categories of health risk: Cardiac, Cancer, Neurological, and Metabolic.
The process is structured as a single, comprehensive visit powered by AI-assisted diagnostics that screens for over 300 conditions.
Here is how it works:
- Imaging: Whole-body MRI, low-dose CT, and DEXA scans.
- Biometrics: A deep dive into 120+ blood and urine markers plus ECG data.
- The AI Layer: Algorithms crunch organ-level risk and multi-omics data that, frankly, wasn’t even possible to process this way half a decade ago.
The early data is a bit of a wake-up call. Of the 1,500+ scans already completed since early FY26, 26% revealed clinically meaningful findings. More critically, 4% flagged conditions that required immediate intervention in people who had no prior symptoms.
The expansion roadmap
Cent isn’t building a sprawling hospital chain. They are building precise, single-purpose detection centres. A focused approach that keeps both costs and diagnostic quality under tight control.
That focus seems to be paying off early:
- The company is growing at roughly 50% month-on-month
- It has reached an annualised revenue run rate of around $2 million
Expansion is already underway. Starting April 2026, Cent launched its first centre in Bangalore and plans to launch centres in Mumbai, Delhi, Pune and Hyderabad.
Its near-term goal is to complete 50,000 scans within the next twelve months.
Wrapping up
At its core, Cent is attempting to shift how people think about health. From something you respond to, to something you actively manage.
Its long-term ambition is bold: 10 million scans and one million lives saved by 2035.
If it works, the conversation around healthcare could fundamentally change from “How do I treat this?” to “How do I make sure it never happens?”
-By Alkama Sohail and the AHT Team
