How Tata Trusts and Sridhar Vembu kept the first MRI scanner built in India out of a multinational’s hands

India has built most major categories of hospital equipment domestically; the MRI scanner has been a rare exception.

The magnets, the electronics and the software have come from a small number of multinational manufacturers, and Indian hospitals have paid import prices for them.

The running cost matters as much as the purchase price.

Conventional scanners are cooled by liquid helium, which is scarce, expensive and difficult to transport, and the machines are heavy enough that hospitals often can't install them just anywhere in a building.

Innovations was founded in Bengaluru in 2017 by Arjun Arunachalam, who holds MS and PhD degrees from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and worked at the GE Global Research Center in New York between 2006 and 2008.