Dr. Rajesh Tummuru’s career in healthcare started with studying medicine in India. It was during this time that he came across the problems existing in the healthcare system. He subsequently spent the next three years at Vanderbilt Hospital in Nashville, Tennessee managing clinical studies in the orthopaedic division. He then followed that up with an MBA from Vanderbilt Business School concentrating in healthcare and strategy. Rajesh always had a focus of serving patients and some how bettering care in the system. Also, he spotted that most of the healthcare inefficiencies stem not from lack of infrastructure but misuse, negligence, and improper training. This was the time when the idea of Promea Therapeutics triggered. “It was important at Promea that we didn’t just offer products, but holistic solutions to burning blood banking industry problems,” says Rajesh. Pooja has also been a part of Promea’s journey since inception. Pooja has a background in Finance and Operational Strategy; having

worked in multiple bootstrapped startups in their finance departments before, she could easily perceive the shortfalls and the gaps to be addressed at the start. “I wanted to make sure, that with a startup, we need to have all the systems in place and all interdependencies planned out in order to have smooth operations,” she mentions. This marked the beginning of Promea, a healthcare company that develops and manufactures high quality, affordable, and accessible medical devices.

Promea specializes in invitro diagnostics and blood banking/diagnostic lab services. Transfusion Transmitted Infections(TTI’s) have become common these days and it occurs mostly because of improper testing of blood at blood bank/diagnostic labs. At times, this is either due to gaps in the technicians training or the quality of the diagnostic kits the lab uses. Team Promea provides a membership program where they directly work with blood banks/diagnostic labs to improve their SOP’s, provide training to their staff, and provide quality diagnostics and blood bags. The company truly offers India's first holistic solution in the blood banking/ diagnostic industry to create a direct impact on patients’ lives.

“We have a robust R&D and Quality control. Every batch of kits and consumables that we provide to our membered blood banks/diagnostic labs goes through stringent testing. We work with our customers to make sure their standards are maintained,” mentions Pooja.

“We are strongly a mission driven company. Our target in the diagnostics space is to reduce the number of potential transfusion transmitted infections (TTI’s) in blood banks/diagnostic labs. Our other aim is to help strengthen existing blood bank assets, not create new ones,” adds Rajesh.

The Growth over the Years
Promea Therapeutics values attitude and diversity. The company houses a competent team of people from different industries to bring in different viewpoints to the table. Since inception, the company has come a long way and has been performing over its initial expectations.It started with a mere customer base of 5 blood banks and hospitals in Telangana and Andhra Pradesh combined and now is working with over 250 blood banks and hospitals within just 18 months of full scale operations. “Over the last year, we have taken our initial system and tweaked it according to our findings in the market, which has helped increase our efficiency and increase our growth rate. We had generated over 2 crores of sales in the first year and now have generated over 14 crores of sales in the last financial year,” Rajesh concludes.