Ratan Tata, chairman emeritus of Tata Sons, has made an undisclosed amount of investment in San Francisco-based Murgency Inc., which runs an emergency response mobile app.
The company will use the funds to augment technology and scale operations.
“He (Tata) clearly wanted us to launch and grow the network in India first before taking it overseas,†said Shaffi Mather, founder, Murgency, in a statement. “Tata’s investment in MUrgency will help attract leading talent to the company and major partnerships beyond India.â€
In April, MUrgency had raised funding from Kris Gopalakrishnan and S. D. Shibulal led early-stage venture fund Axilor Ventures.
The US-based startup was founded by Harvard University graduate Shaffi Mather in 2014. Mather had previously founded Ziqitsa Healthcare Ltd.
The startup, which kicked off its India operations in the three adjacent cities of Chandigarh, Mohali and Panchkula in February, has developed a responder network of 36 hospital emergency rooms, over 40 ambulances and more than 350 medical professionals. It claims to have an average response time of under 9.20 minutes.
It is planning to roll out its services in Amritsar and Jalandhar in the last week of May and cover the entire state of Punjab by the end of June. The company plans to make its services available across India by 2018 and around the world by 2020.
Murgency was developed in academic partnership with Stanford ChangeLabs, Harvard Asia Center and MIT Global Health.
Tata has been an active angel investor, investing in more than 25 startups in the last two years. He had recently put money in baby products e-commerce site FirstCry.com. He has also invested in animal lovers’ portal Dogspot, startup analytics firm Tracxn and coupons site CashKaro in 2016.
This is Tata’s third investment in healthcare startups. He had earlier put money in Lybrate and Swasth India.
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