In the spring of 2020, as COVID-19 overwhelmed intensive-care units across India, hospitals discovered a brutal supply-chain truth: the ventilators keeping patients alive were overwhelmingly imported, and the imports had stopped coming. In Pune, a small startup that had spent three years building waterless robots for cleaning solar panels decided to do something audacious — design and build an ICU ventilator from scratch. Eighty-four days later, it had one. Today, Noccarc Robotics says more than 4,000 of its ventilators are deployed across 700+ Indian hospitals, making it one of the country’s most serious attempts at import substitution in critical-care equipment.
From solar robots to breathing machines
Noccarc was founded in 2017 by Nikhil Kurele, Harshit Rathore and Tushar Agarwal — engineers who started out solving a very different problem: dust on solar panels. Their waterless panel-cleaning robots found customers, but the pandemic forced a hard pivot. With ventilator demand spiking and global supply chains frozen, the team applied its robotics and mechatronics experience to medical hardware, building the V310 ventilator in 84 days. The company says it supplied more than 2,800 units during the COVID crisis.
What separates Noccarc from the wave of pandemic-era ventilator projects — most of which quietly shut down — is what happened after the emergency. Instead of winding down, the company kept building, iterating toward a full ICU-grade platform and putting it through India’s medical-device certification gauntlet — the same gauntlet Lenek is now running with its handheld X-ray.
The V730i: certified for the ICU
The flagship V730i is designed for adult, paediatric and neonatal ventilation. According to the company, it is the first ventilator in its segment to be BIS-certified under IS 13450 (Part 2, Section 12), and it holds a CDSCO manufacturing licence (Class C) — the two regulatory gates that matter for critical-care devices sold in India. Manufacturing runs out of an ISO 13485:2016-certified facility in Pune.
On paper, the feature set reads like a deliberate answer to Indian ICU realities: more than 50 parameters tracked, remote monitoring through the company’s HorizonView system on phones and laptops, over-the-air updates via Wi-Fi, GSM or LAN, and expansion ports for hospital IT integration. The company holds 18 granted patents with 9 more filed, covering its ventilator platform.
Why ventilators matter for Make in India
Critical-care ventilators sit in an uncomfortable corner of India’s medical-device trade. Industry estimates cited in the company’s materials suggest the majority of ventilators used in Indian hospitals have historically been imported — a dependence the pandemic turned from an economic footnote into a national-security-style vulnerability. Noccarc’s bet is that a domestically designed, certified and serviced machine can compete with global brands not on price alone but on responsiveness: local service networks, software updates, and features tuned to Indian hospital workflows — a Made-in-India medtech story in the same vein as NIRAMAI’s Thermalytix screening camera.
The customer list the company cites includes AIIMS, JIPMER, Sassoon Hospital in Pune and Apollo Jabalpur, alongside hundreds of smaller hospitals. Funding totals roughly $6.68 million from investors including the Indian Angel Network and SIDBI, plus project support from the Technology Development Board.
A startup that built solar-panel-cleaning robots designed an ICU ventilator in 84 days — and stayed to become one of India’s few certified critical-care device makers.
Key takeaway
Noccarc’s arc — from solar robots to a BIS-certified ICU ventilator in 700+ hospitals — is import substitution as it is supposed to work: not a tariff wall, but a domestic company earning its way into one of the most certification-heavy corners of medical hardware.
What is the Noccarc V730i?
The V730i is Noccarc Robotics’ flagship ICU ventilator, designed for adult, paediatric and neonatal patients. According to the company, it is BIS-certified under IS 13450 (Part 2, Section 12) and manufactured under a CDSCO Class C licence at an ISO 13485:2016-certified facility in Pune.
How many ventilators has Noccarc deployed?
The company says more than 4,000 of its ventilators are deployed across 700+ hospitals in India, and that its machines have supported over 80,000 patients. These are company-reported figures.
Who founded Noccarc Robotics?
Nikhil Kurele (CEO), Harshit Rathore and Tushar Agarwal founded the company in Pune in 2017, initially building waterless robots for cleaning solar panels before pivoting to ventilators during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Is Noccarc’s ventilator certified for clinical use?
Per the company, the V730i carries BIS certification (IS 13450 Part 2 Section 12) and a CDSCO manufacturing licence (Class C). As with any medical device, hospitals should verify current regulatory status before procurement.
More Read
Sources & further reading
- Noccarc Robotics — official site — Company site: V730i specifications, certifications, deployment figures
- YourStory: Noccarc Robotics profile (Jul 2025) — Reporting on the company’s journey, customers and funding
- Inc42: Noccarc funding coverage — Coverage of the company’s $6.68M+ raise and investor base
