(Image Source: Indian Television)
Rohit Hiwale spent years watching pathology labs struggle with the same manual bottleneck. Tissue samples arrive, need to be sliced into thin sections, scanned into digital images, and analyzed for cancer. Every step relies on skilled technicians working slowly by hand. Mistakes happen. Diagnoses take weeks. In 2017, he decided to build robots to fix it.
Morphle Labs, the Bengaluru-based startup Hiwale founded with co-founder Anchit Navelkar, just raised $5 million in Series A funding from Inflexor Ventures. The capital will fund expansion into the US and European markets, scale manufacturing, and push for regulatory approvals in major international healthcare systems.
The startup builds two flagship products. RoboTome is a robotic microtome that slices biopsy blocks into ultra-thin sections at more than twice the speed of trained technicians while maintaining perfect consistency. MorphoLens is a high-resolution scanner that digitizes over 100 slides per hour using advanced optics and AI-driven imaging. Together, they automate two of the most labour-intensive steps in cancer diagnosis.
The Problem Is Real and Global
Globally, more than 60 percent of histopathology labs report unfilled positions. That means backlogs. That means diagnostic delays. That means cancer patients are waiting weeks for results they need immediately.
Radiology and hematology got automated decades ago. But anatomic pathology, the core of cancer diagnosis, remains stuck in manual workflows. Pathologists squint at microscope slides for hours. Technicians spend entire shifts slicing samples by hand. The process is slow, expensive and error-prone.
India’s histopathology market alone is projected to reach $1.35 billion by 2030, growing at 17.1 percent annually. But many labs lack the workforce to meet demand. Morphle is building infrastructure that pathology labs desperately need.
Why This Matters for India’s Startup Ecosystem
Morphle represents something important: India-for-the-world deep-tech. The company builds precision hardware combining robotics, optics, embedded systems and AI. That’s not app-based software. That requires PhD-level engineering, proper manufacturing, and global regulatory navigation.
The startup’s team of nearly 100 people operates between Bengaluru and Boston. Many team members are hardware and robotics specialists, not typical software engineers. That’s expensive but necessary for medical-grade automation.
The Road Ahead
With fresh capital, Morphle plans to expand hiring across robotics, optical engineering, computer vision and medical-grade software. The company is in the critical go-to-market phase for RoboTome, according to CEO Hiwale. Demand is exceeding expectations.
For investors backing Morphle, the bet is clear: automation in histopathology is not a nice-to-have. It’s essential infrastructure that healthcare systems globally will pay to deploy. The company has already proven product-market fit in 30 countries. The question is whether it can scale manufacturing and navigate regulatory approvals fast enough to capitalize on demand.
That’s why Morphle Labs is a startup worth watching in 2025.
