For its innovative technology, HistoIndex was successful in getting a total grant of more than $0.77 million from A*STAR, SPRING and the ministry of information, communications and the arts, and equity financing worth $1.5 million from SPRING SEEDS and angel investors. HistoIndex also received grants in China, Taiwan and European Union for its product.

HistoIndex has taken an active approach to enhance the reach of its technology. In 2011, the company joined hands with National Taiwan University Hospital and Taiwan-based Chang Gung Memorial Hospital to collaborate on research using the breakthrough imaging technology. It has also applied for approvals from European Conformity Mark.

Taking an innovative approach to maintain revenue cycle, beginning 2012, HistoIndex instituted a pay-per-use model as a source of revenue. Through this model, clients can enlist HistoIndex's services to scan and issue reports on specific tissue samples. Besides having a strong revenue model, HistoIndex also intends to expand its regional reach and is looking to expand in China. This is in addition to its current Singapore headquarters, business development office in San Diego, US, and a manufacturing site in Europe. In the next 18 months, HistoIndex plans to go beyond liver and kidney diseases and look into cervical and breast cancer. In the longer term, HistoIndex plans to add multi-modular imaging capabilities into its existing imaging platform.

Dr Noel Moore, CEO, HistoIndex says, "Our aim is to scale our core competency across different organs and application spaces while remaining in the biophotonic domain. HistoIndex's R&D roadmap is realistic and achieveable with the skills we have and is likely to have significant impact on research, digital pathology and clinical diagnostics."

(inputs from Vipul Murarka)