Avio Smart Market Stack (ASMS), formerly Bartronics India, has signed a share subscription cum shareholders’ agreement with Hyderabad-based Huwel Lifesciences.
Under the agreement, Avio Smart Market Stack will acquire a minority stake in Huwel and collaborate on business development and project execution. Under this structure, ASMS is contractually entitled to receive a defined share of the net project revenues arising from orders secured and executed through its institutional engagement and business development efforts.
Huwel Lifesciences’ tuberculosis diagnostic platform has recently undergone a Health Technology Assessment conducted by the Department of Health Research under the Ministry of Health & Family Welfare. The assessment evaluated molecular tuberculosis diagnostic platforms deployed nationwide.
As per its findings, Huwel’s Quantiplus MTB FAST platform enables testing at an approximate cost of ₹340 per sample, whereas molecular testing systems currently used in government programmes typically range between ₹700 and ₹1,000 per test.
A key differentiator for the Quantiplus platform is its compatibility with open RT-PCR systems. “This enables the government to leverage thousands of RT-PCR machines installed across India during the Covid-19 response, facilitating rapid deployment of the platform without the need for proprietary hardware or significant additional capital expenditure,’’ a release said.
India conducts close to one crore tuberculosis tests annually under the National TB Elimination Programme (NTEP). With detection and drug-resistance testing combined, the annual molecular TB diagnostics market is estimated at around ₹1,000 crore, according to the release.