Ask HN: What are some startups working on big problems in the developing world?

I'm not directly associated, but one of my friends was an early employee who worked on some of the early prototypes and helped set up a location in India. They make a cheap (a few thousand dollars vs tens/hundreds of thousands of dollars) and compact (Read: portable) eye-exam device that interfaces with a smartphone for its camera and processor. Think of a traveling doctor bringing eye exams to patients in remote villages. Pair that with some of those cheap adjustable glasses (http://www.ted.com/talks/josh_silver_demos_adjustable_liquid...) and you've got a means for providing first-world eye care to the rest of the world.

I think the company is still based in Cambridge, MA.

The company is building a mobile based care platform for patients with diabetes or at risk of diabetes along with a Square equivalent device for diagnostics. While cost is one of the issue for patients, it is not the only one. Quality of care varies significantly across a city and the moment you step outside a major city, there is little to no specialized care for chronic conditions that need some form of training for managing the condition. A mobile phone with some form of internet connectivity is ubiquitous these days. So leveraging that to reach as many people as possible makes sense. There are over 80 million people with diabetes in India and another 80 million are expected to develop it over the next decade or so. Add to this the costs and quality of life of patients who have to suffer the complications (kidney failure, amputation, etc), and any improvements that can be made to these numbers with technology is worth the effort and makes business sense too.

The problem isn't India specific. China, US, Europe and the Middle East have similar or higher prevalence rates. It is just that India makes sense as a place to start doing things.

It's been a few years that we have been working on this. We mostly operate out of Bangalore but we have an office in Boston too. Feel free to drop by!

http://world.time.com/2013/05/12/no-answers-in-sight-for-ind...

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-11-07/india-s-deadly-diab...

http://www.geckolandmarks.com/