Ex-ISRO Scientist Builds Blockchain-powered Healthcare Platform That Stores Patient, Hospital, Doctor, and Lab Data Securely

Have you ever travelled to another country (or even city) and suddenly fallen ill?

Had to visit a doctor but it was a hassle from there onwards?

The health professional might've requested your health records. You would've ended up regretting not carrying them on the trip.

Or maybe…you have recently gotten blood work done, and the lab reports were directly sent to the doctor instead of you? Or maybe they were just misplaced, to begin with.

“You'll be surprised to know how many mishaps like these keep happening in the healthcare industry. While unified solutions exist, they often operate in silos. What we've built is an entire secure ecosystem for an individual's health and everything related to it,” Abhishek Chakrala, founder of PranaChain, tells Startup Pedia in an exclusive interview.

Founded in 2025 and recently launched in September, PranaChain is an Indian and Canada-based decentralized, next-gen blockchain platform enabling secure, transparent, and consent-driven exchange of health data. It has various modules such as Patients, Doctors, Hospitals, Labs, Pharma Research, and Insurance.

Read More: Meet Raipur Brothers Who Launched A Pure Masala Brand With Zip-lock Packs & Shook Up Players Like Everest & Catch - Clocked Rs 92 Cr Revenue

THE BACKGROUND

Hailing from Tirupati in Andhra Pradesh, Abhishek Chakrala has quite an extensive career trajectory.

He worked as a scientist at ISRO (Indian Space Research Organisation).

Later, he moved to Canada to pursue his master’s degree, during which he collaborated with multiple tech ventures and innovation-driven organizations.

Over time, Abhishek became a consultant and advisor to more than twenty startups across the United States, Canada, and Malaysia, helping them scale through strategic technology adoption and innovation. 

“My breakthrough moment came when I won commercialization rights for two NASA patents after securing top honors in the NASA Space Race Challenge. Then, I was invited to serve as an advisor for the NASA Space Race Challenge,” Abhishek tells Startup Pedia.

At the NASA Space Race Challenge, he guided and supervised teams on transforming space technologies into viable commercial ventures.

“In around 2022, I secured the position of COO at a startup called SomnoTech, which is based in Windsor, Canada. We are building a sleep improvement device there,” Abhishek shares.

But the idea for PranaChain was planted way back in 2021.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, Abhishek was visiting his hometown in India.

That's when, one after the other, numerous gaps in the healthcare industry became clear to him:

• When people are travelling, carrying their physical health records with them is mostly the last thing on their mind. But when they fall ill and visit a doctor in a new city or country, previous healthcare records become a crucial thing.

“Plus, during the COVID-19 pandemic, everyone was being extra cautious so as not to touch physical copies brought by someone. There was a clear demand for an online solution,”Abhishek explains to Startup Pedia.

• In countries like the United States and Canada, laboratories send a patient's blood reports to their doctor. Not to the patient. They're against sharing the patient's data via mediums like WhatsApp.

“While the privacy aspect of it is understandable, this whole ordeal becomes really tasking for the patient. They have to run around to get their hands on data that is literally theirs,” he adds.

• While unified healthcare portals exist in the market, they all work in silos.

“They do store health data, but then that's about it. There is nothing unified or end-to-end about them,” Abhishek Chakrala says.

Taking these gaps in the Indian and international healthcare industry into account, Abhishek Chakrala had an idea to build an end-to-end next-gen blockchain platform enabling secure, transparent, and consent-driven exchange of health data across all stakeholders like patients, hospitals, labs, pharma research, and insurance agents and companies.

“It wasn't a hasty decision to start PranaChain. My team and I conducted tests for 8 months across countries like India, USA, Canada, Italy, and France,” entrepreneur Abhishek Chakrala mentions.

Read More: Bihar Friends Clock Rs 1.5 Cr Monthly By Selling Flavoured & Raw Makhanas In Bulk To 41+ Indian & International Food Brands

JOURNEY AND CHALLENGES

While the idea for PranaChain was sown in 2021, it was only in 2023 that Abhishek Chakrala bootstrapped the startup with approximately Rs 22 lakh and began the development phase by bringing together a small team of developers and engineers across India.

In addition to this, the startup founder also filed a patent for PranaChain in India.

In the initial days itself, it became very clear to the team that building the platform on Web2 wouldn't work – security issues were a major concern.

“So we decided to go ahead with a decentralized blockchain framework,”Abhishek Chakrala tells Startup Pedia.

The whole of 2023 was spent in evaluating blockchain challenges and navigating them. For instance, the team had to zero in on a particular blockchain that is compatible with healthcare compliance requirements as well as the technical needs of the platform.

“Finding an appropriate blockchain architecture was the most challenging part of the journey. We connected with blockchain experts, crypto organizations, local accelerators, and even universities that could help us. It was a whole lot of external support blended with internal brainstorm,”startup founder Abhishek explains.

Then, in 2024, PranaChain focused on frontend development.

In 2025, after rigourous testing, during mid-September, the next-gen blockchain platform for the healthcare ecosystem was finally launched in the market.

Read More: Kerala Man Who Went To The USA To Become An Investment Banker Now Runs An AI-Trading Firm That Lets You Buy Real Estate In Fractions

PRANACHAIN: THE HEALTHCARE ECOSYSTEM IN ONE SECURE PLACE

To put it simply, PranaChain has been designed as a decentralized, complete medical ERP based on Web3.

It provides a secure and unified digital health infrastructure that solves multiple challenges in the industry such as:

• Fragmented data silos between hospitals, labs, and researchers
• Lack of patient ownership and consent tracking
• Administrative inefficiencies and costly redundancies
• Lack of patient ownership and consent tracking
• Security, compliance, and interoperability issues

With PranaChain, data sharing is seamlessly facilitated among healthcare stakeholders, with proper consent approvals in place.

It acts as a blockchain-powered Electronic Health Records (EHR) platform designed to empower individuals with full control of their data, at all points of their health journey. The data is stored in a decentralized manner, meaning there is no chance of it getting tampered.

“Think of PranaChain as a large software managing everything a patient, hospital, or clinic does – but it's built using Web3 technology and is consent-driven,” entrepreneur Abhishek notes.

The next-gen blockchain platform for healthcare offers various modules with multiple use cases:

1. Patients

In this module, individual patients can securely upload and store their health records, use an AI model to gain deeper insights into their overall health, and predict potential diseases based on their medical data.

Additionally, they can book appointments with doctors directly through the platform and review notes, diagnoses, and recommendations from each consultation, ensuring transparency, continuity of care, and complete ownership of their medical journey.

“The Patient Module is designed to give individuals complete control over their health journey. From managing records and understanding diagnostics to engaging with doctors – everything happens seamlessly within one secure ecosystem,” Abhishek Chakrala explains.

2. Doctors

With PranaChain, doctors can access their patients’ health records seamlessly, upload clinical notes for them to review, and even upload digitized prescriptions.

“Doctors also get real-time, consent-based access to external lab reports and patient history,” startup founder Abhishek says.

3. Hospitals

PranaChain acts as an efficient ERP for hospital administration and helps with managing doctors’ appointments, patient status, patient condition, room allotment, and doctor availability.

“The platform has interoperability and blends with existing healthcare systems of the hospital,” he adds.

4. Labs and Diagnostics

PranaChain streamlines test results and enables patients to directly request their blood and other reports.

Laboratories can upload them securely on the platform and open access only to the patient.

These reports then automatically get linked to the patient's existing health records.

5. Pharma and Research

For advanced medical research, labs and organizations can get access to anonymous health data sets and utilize it to make their findings. These data sets are shared only upon receiving consent from the patients.

They can also connect with consenting individuals and involve them in their trials.

6. Insurance Providers

PranaChain simplifies claims processing and lets insurance agencies gain access to (with consent) a patient's healthcare records. This streamlining and transparency directly helps minimize fraud claims.

Read More: Gurugram Startup Eliminates Stress From People’s Life By Running Errands On Their Behalf – Clocks Rs 4.8 Cr In FY25

THE PRANATOKEN

Along with combining blockchain technology with patient-centric solutions, PranaChain has made it simpler and more affordable for individuals to make payments to doctors and healthcare providers, especially in a foreign country.

“A lot of people struggle to make payments to a doctor while they are on a trip. They either don't have the local currency or have the option to use their credit cards which invariably charge a substantial foreign currency exchange fee. That's why we've built our very own crypto currency, the PranaToken,” entrepreneur Abhishek Chakrala tells Startup Pedia.

Every transaction that happens on PranaChain can simply be processed via the secure PranaToken.

“So now our customers will have three options to make payment — either directly pay in cash, use cards or UPI, or use the PranaToken,”Abhishek Chakrala notes.

WHAT'S IN STORE

Currently in its beta phase, the PranaChain platform aims to serve everyone in the healthcare ecosystem with safety and decentralized security.

While trials in numerous Indian clinics have already been confirmed, Abhishek Chakrala has also partnered with a startup incubator in Canada and a semi-government-backed accelerator in Dubai.

“PranaChain is set to become the go-to platform for every patient, hospital, doctor, and lab – in India as well as globally. This is a sensitive industry, and our team has built features with a purely patient-centric approach. So everyone knows where their data is and what's happening to it,” Abhishek Chakrala signs off.

Read More: Done with juggling between Ola, Uber, Rapido for cheap rides, entrepreneurs from BLR built an app to compare & book rides in one place