Surgeons have long relied on estimates to judge distances and anatomical structures during operations, which can lead to complications. In 2023, Dr Vinayak Rengan, a practising paediatric and neonatal surgeon, teamed up with Balachandran Seetharaman to address this problem.
Together, they founded Curium Life, a Bengaluru-based healthtech startup developing a surgical intelligence platform to help surgeons assess distances, anatomy, and spatial relationships during operations.
“Surgeons have been facing such problems and complications during surgery for a while now. We’re talking about 300 million surgeries every year. 50 million undergo complications. So our aim was to prevent those complications from happening again,” Dr Rengan says.
Curium's first product, SurgiMeasure, uses computer vision and deep learning to provide real-time anatomical measurements during laparoscopic and robotic procedures. The nine-member startup aims to build a foundation model for surgical applications rather than focus on a single-purpose AI tool.
Turning surgical video into spatial intelligence
Dr Rengan says the problem is particularly relevant to minimally invasive surgery. Laparoscopic cameras produce 2D images, making it difficult for surgeons to judge depth and distance without a physical reference.
According to him, surgeons currently have an average measurement error of around 30% when using methods involving rulers, threads, needles and calipers.
He compares Curium's platform to a navigation system for the operating room.
“We are sort of a Google Maps or a parking assistant to the abdomen, for instance,” he says. “We direct the surgeons during a laparoscopic and robotic surgery, what they can cut, what they shouldn't cut, and where certain things can go and how much.”
SurgiMeasure combines deep learning, computer vision, anatomical segmentation, and depth estimation to help surgeons understand spatial relationships during procedures.
According to Dr Rengan, the system has been deployed in live operating rooms and has achieved 98% instrument-segmentation accuracy, real-time inference at 30 frames per second, and end-to-end latency of less than 300 milliseconds. It has been tested in eight live surgeries at Dr Mehta's Hospitals in Chennai.
Curium is also developing the technology for applications beyond measurement. Its current roadmap covers eight procedures across hepatobiliary, gynaecology, urology, thoracic, abdominal, colorectal, bariatric, and hernia surgery.
From one surgical tool to a foundation model
Dr Rengan says the company’s long-term plan is to develop an AI system that can assist surgeons across different procedures rather than serve a single application.
The B2B startup plans to offer its software bundled with laparoscopic and robotic platforms to hospitals and surgical centres through subscription licensing.
Curium has also won the Johnson & Johnson Polyphonic Surgical AI Challenge 2026 and is building a network of surgeons and clinical collaborators.
The startup is entering a relatively new market. India's surgical robotics market was estimated at around $851 million in 2023, and Dr Rengan says only a handful of companies globally are working on real-time surgical AI.
“There are advantages to being a pioneer, but there are a lot of things which we will discover, like market potential and market pricing. We have ideas in our mind, but there are some things we will discover along the way as well,” he says.
Curium has raised a total of Rs 2.5 crore through grants, friends and family, and bootstrapping. The team is now preparing to raise another Rs 7.5 crore in a pre-seed round.
The startup plans to launch in India by mid-2027, followed by the US in 2028, subject to regulatory approvals.
Curium Life is part of YourStory's Tech30 cohort—a showcase of India's most promising startups of 2026, unveiled at TechSparks Bengaluru.
Edited by Teja Lele