Inside Medantrik’s Bet on Preventive Respiratory Healthcare
4 min read
- By | July 13, 2026
India’s challenge isn’t a shortage of respiratory care; it’s a lack of early detection.
Priyaranjan Tiwari discovered this reality not in a journal but on a ward in Kanpur during the nation’s gravest COVID‑19 crisis. Holding a device he had assembled himself, he watched it dispute the readings of the machine beside it.
The discrepancy between the data displayed and the actual patient condition sparked the question that led to the creation of Medantrik Medtech. In India, respiratory illnesses claim more lives each year than many realize—not because treatment is unavailable, but because the disease is often spotted too late.
Priyaranjan and co‑founder Prikshit Hooda are working to reverse that trend.
From Crisis to Company
When the second wave of COVID‑19 hit India in 2021, the oxygen shortage revealed a deeper systemic flaw. Hospitals struggled to confirm whether the concentrators flooding in from across the country were delivering medical‑grade oxygen. Priyaranjan joined a nationwide volunteer group of engineers and IIT researchers tasked with solving that exact problem.
He engineered the motherboard that powered those concentrators and built India’s first Oxygen Purity Meter—a real‑time checker of whether supplied oxygen met clinical standards. A solution that previously cost over one lakh rupees as an import was produced for roughly ₹8,000. The team’s efforts later informed the Bureau of Indian Standards framework for oxygen purity meters.
Through this network, Priyaranjan met Prikshit Hooda, an IIT Kanpur graduate who was leading concentrator and ventilator development on the same campus. Their initial collaboration was practical:
Prikshit’s team needed a purity meter; Priyaranjan had one. Their discussion soon expanded beyond oxygen.
A New Challenge to Tackle
While assisting hospitals during the oxygen emergency, Priyaranjan spoke with pulmonologist Dr. Anand Kumar at GSVM Medical College in Kanpur. The conversation shifted from concentrators to a far larger issue: respiratory diseases are frequently diagnosed late because affordable, reliable diagnostic tools remain out of reach for most.
That exchange changed everything. If blood pressure and glucose can be tracked at home, why not lung health? The question drove Priyaranjan Tiwari and Prikshit Hooda to establish Medantrik Medtech in 2022, with a goal to make respiratory care preventive, accessible, and affordable.
What Medantrik Is Developing—and Why the Sequence Matters
Medantrik’s product strategy centers on two devices that address distinct stages of a person’s interaction with lung health.
The first is Nodex—a compact, auto‑calibrated handheld that brings laboratory‑grade lung function testing into everyday environments. Priced at about ₹6,000, it is suited for both clinicians and patients, delivering accurate respiratory diagnostics without costly equipment or specialist calibration. The long‑term aim is simple: make Nodex as common in Indian households as a blood‑pressure cuff.
Medantrik, however, does not launch with Nodex. That decision reflects the founders’ careful consideration of the market they are entering.
The second offering is Iron Lung—not a medical device per se, but a respiratory wellness station designed for gyms. Each user receives a personalized smart card encoded with age, weight, height, and gender. The system uses that profile to establish an individual’s ideal lung‑health baseline, then guides them through daily breathing exercises while logging progress over time—mirroring the feedback loop that keeps people coming back to a treadmill, now applied to the lungs.
Instead of waiting for illness to spark awareness, Medantrik introduces Iron Lung in fitness centers, encouraging users to monitor lung health as part of routine wellness. The concept is straightforward: build awareness first, create demand next—a strategy the company is now supporting with pending patents.
Scaling the Vision
Backed by roughly ₹1.5 crore in government grants from the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology, national innovation initiatives, and competitive hackathons, Medantrik Medtech has steadily transitioned from research to production. The company has also set up its own manufacturing facility, strengthening its capacity to scale Indian‑made respiratory technologies.
Today, Medantrik’s lineup includes NODEX, NODEX diagnostics tool, and Iron Lung, a wellness platform promoting preventive lung care, together embody the company’s broader mission to make respiratory healthcare more accessible, affordable, and proactive.
The Road Ahead for Medantrik
In the coming years, Medantrik plans to broaden the reach of both products, targeting the deployment of 10,000 Iron Lung systems and 1.5 lakh NODEX devices. For founders Priyaranjan Tiwari and Prikshit Hooda, the larger ambition extends beyond mere scale—it’s about reshaping how people perceive lung health.
Their vision is to make respiratory monitoring as routine as checking blood pressure, shifting the focus from treating illness after it appears to preventing it before symptoms arise.
If that happens, Medantrik’s greatest achievement will not be the devices it creates, but the habit it helps instill.
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