Medvolt AI is using GenAI to make drug development faster, cheaper, and more efficient
With an AI-led platform for drug discovery and a growing global client base, Medvolt AI is emerging as one of India’s most promising deeptech pharma startups.
Pharma R&D is often considered slow, expensive, and uncertain. Developing a new drug can take over 10 years and cost billions, and a large percentage of drug development fails before human trials.
The biggest challenge lies in the preclinical stage, where scientists spend years identifying, testing, and refining molecules—this delays innovation and adds huge costs to drug development.
Pune-based, Medvolt AI is working to make drug discovery faster, more affordable, and more accurate through advanced artificial intelligence (AI).
“Pharma R&D is still fragmented and depends too much on traditional lab work,” says Ritvik Vipra, Co-founder and CTO of Medvolt AI. “This process hasn’t changed in decades, and that’s where we saw an opportunity to use AI.”
The startup was founded in Pune in 2022 by Dr Madhura Vipra, who is the CEO of the startup.
Madhura Vipra is a veteran life sciences professional with over three decades of experience. Her son, the co-founder of Medvolt AI, Ritvik, is a machine learning engineer from IIT Roorkee. Before starting Medvolt AI, Ritvik worked with Athena and YOUPLUS, where he developed a strong foundation in data science and AI.
The idea for Medvolt AI emerged when Ritvik was helping his mother automate parts of her biomedical consulting workflows. That’s when the duo realised that combining domain knowledge in biology and chemistry with AI could dramatically reduce research timelines.
What started as a few automation scripts soon evolved into a larger vision—a full-stack AI platform for drug discovery.
The solution: AI-powered drug discovery
Medvolt AI’s core innovation is its platform Medgraph, a modular AI system that uses advanced simulations to speed up preclinical research. It combines large biomedical datasets through a Knowledge Discovery Engine, linking millions of data points from different sources. This helps scientists design, test, and improve new drug molecules virtually.
Medvolt AI uses generative AI, combined with graph AI, natural language processing, and physics-based simulations to power its end-to-end preclinical drug discovery platform.
“Our goal is to make drug development faster, cheaper, and more efficient,” says Ritvik. “AI and domain expertise together help researchers take more shots on goal.”
The startup claims to reduce project timelines by up to three times, cut R&D costs by 10x, and lower downstream failure risks by nearly 25%.
From ideation to launch
Medvolt AI was registered in 2020, but started operations in 2022 after a funding round by friends and family. Over the next three years, the team built the platform from scratch, creating its own datasets and testing the technology with real research partners.
By early 2025, the startup had fully validated its platform and gained six global clients within five months of launch. The company now has a 14-member team, including experienced pharma and medtech experts.
The company’s clients include Resync from the US, and Jaivika Healthcare, and Hi-Tech Biosciences from India. It also collaborates with major research institutes in India—Tata Memorial Centre, C-CAMP Bengaluru, and Science and Technology Park, Pune.
Product and pricing
Medvolt AI follows a hybrid SaaS model with three main services.
The first is knowledge curation, which offers clients access to Medvolt AI’s specialised biomedical datasets.
The second service is SaaS licensing, which gives companies subscription-based access to Medgraph’s AI modules. This costs $2,000 to $50,000 a year based on the features chosen.
The third is turnkey projects, wherein the company delivers custom AI solutions for biotech firms. These projects start at a higher ticket size for long-term collaborations and go for 18 months of collaborations.
Competition and market
Globally, Medvolt AI competes with players such as Insilico Medicine, Nimbus Therapeutics, and Atomwise. In India, competitors include Boltzmann Labs, Peptiris, and Molecule AI.
Ritvik believes Medvolt AI’s deep domain partnerships and proprietary databases set it apart.
“Unlike most Indian players, we develop both platform services and our own drug assets, which expands our market significantly,” he says.
According to a report by Roots Analysis, the global AI in drug discovery market is estimated at $2.9 billion. It is projected to grow significantly and reach $13.4 billion by 2035.
Expansion and future plans
Medvolt AI has raised $250,000 in pre-seed funding from Lead Angels, Startup India Seed Fund Scheme, and angel investors from the pharma sector.
The startup is now raising a $2 million seed round, with some commitments already in place. It aims to reach $1 million in ARR by 2027 through its platform services and plans to earn more by out-licensing its own drug assets.
Over the next two years, Medvolt AI plans to establish a presence in the United States, with 50+ clients on board. It is also developing new drug assets for out-licensing by 2028, potentially unlocking multimillion-dollar deals in the global pharma market.
Medvolt AI is part of YourStory’s Tech30 cohort—a selection of India’s most promising startups of 2025—unveiled at TechSparks Bengaluru.
Edited by Swetha Kannan