Dr. Nihar R. Deka: When a Doctor Decided That Treating Patients Was Not Enough

Founder Series | The Quantiq

Respirit Healthcare is a Guwahati-based MedTech startup. Its founder, Dr. Nihar R. Deka, is preparing to launch what he describes as one of India’s first indigenous, IP-led respiratory-care devices. Last Monday, I spent an hour with him trying to understand the journey so far. What emerged was a story that goes far beyond a device. The company has already secured a patent for the soon-to-be-launched product. However, that milestone now feels like the smaller part of the story. The bigger ambition is already taking shape: an AI-powered, cloud-based platform designed to monitor lung health and provide early warnings.

His wife and co-founder, Dr. Smitakshi Medhi, Co-founder & Chief Pulmonologist, is an important part of that story. Her medical specialisation, their years of working in different places, and the experience of Covid all shaped the realities they saw in clinical practice. Together, these factors came into the decision to build Respirit.

That is perhaps what makes Dr. Deka’s entrepreneurial journey interesting. It did not begin with a technology idea looking for a problem. It began with a doctor confronting a problem that he increasingly felt he could not ignore.t.https://www.respirithealth.com/

Before Respirit, there was a doctor

Dr. Deka grew up in a middle-class family where both his parents were teachers. Like many families of that background, the expectation was straightforward: study well, build a stable career, and do something meaningful with it. Medicine became that path. It eventually took him towards paediatrics and, later, a very different kind of professional journey.

But medicine also taught him something textbooks could not. A doctor meets people from very different backgrounds and circumstances, and dealing with them requires more than clinical knowledge. Dr. Deka speaks about empathy almost as a professional necessity: the ability to understand people, read situations, and respond to the person behind the illness.

That understanding became especially important during the pandemic. Medicine stopped being a detached profession and became, for millions of people, a matter of life and death.https://www.respirithealth.com/about-us

Covid changed the question

During the Covid-19 pandemic, Dr. Deka was responsible for Oil India Limited’s Covid-care facility. The experience brought him face to face with the complexity of respiratory illness, and in particular, with how quickly a patient’s lungs could deteriorate.

He describes seeing patients whose condition could worsen suddenly, sometimes leading to death. The experience, he says, was frightening. More importantly, it opened his eyes to how much remained to be done in respiratory healthcare. For someone already trained as a doctor, the question gradually changed. It moved from ‘How do I treat the patient in front of me?’ to something much larger: ‘What else can I do about the problem itself?’

There was another, more personal dimension to that decision. While Dr. Deka was posted in Duliajan, his wife, Dr. Smitakshi Medhi, was practising in Guwahati as a pulmonologist. Maintaining two lives in two different places was becoming increasingly difficult. In fact, Deka says physical separation influenced about half of their decision to build something together. Meanwhile, her specialisation gave the emerging venture an important clinical advantage.

So the decision to leave a secure professional position was not simply an entrepreneurial leap. It was a combination of professional conviction, family circumstances, and an opportunity he had begun to see in front of him.

Respirit began with patients, not a device

The early version of Respirit was not a sophisticated technology company waiting for a product launch. After Dr. Deka left Oil India and relocated to Guwahati, the couple’s earlier partnership setup evolved into Respirit Healthcare. The company was registered in July 2021. The first practical step was to establish clinics offering diagnosis and consultation across different ailments, rather than concentrating exclusively on respiratory care.

That decision turned out to be far more important than it might appear at first glance.

The clinical business gave Respirit revenue while the technology was being developed. This allowed the founders to work on a deep-tech healthcare product without putting the entire company under immediate financial pressure. Dr. Deka describes this as a strategic decision. Deep-tech development, he explains, inevitably involves uncertainty, delays, and setbacks. The clinical and consultancy operations provided the stability needed to continue the larger mission.

There is another interesting dimension to this model. A clinical setup does not merely generate revenue. It also keeps a healthcare technology company close to real patients and real clinical problems. For Respirit, that proximity creates the possibility of learning continuously from the people and situations the technology is ultimately meant to serve.

In other words, the clinic was not simply a financial safety net. It became part of the environment in which the larger healthcare idea could develop.

Why respiratory health?

For Dr. Deka, respiratory healthcare was compelling because the problem was simply too large to ignore. He points to the burden of lung-related illness in India and Assam. Behind it, he identifies very different environmental realities, from air pollution in urban areas to the continued use of traditional cooking arrangements in rural communities.

The problem also extends beyond the availability of specialist doctors. Outside major urban centres, access to appropriate respiratory assessment can still be difficult, particularly for people who cannot repeatedly travel to specialist facilities.

That is where Respirit’s technology ambitions enter the picture.

The first device Dr. Deka and his team are preparing to launch is an integrated monitoring device for pulse rate, oxygen level, and temperature. The company intends to deploy it through a B2B model, rather than expecting individual patients to purchase the device themselves. Dr. Deka believes the product can be offered at roughly one-fifth the price of imported alternatives. The larger objective, he says, is to create an indigenous solution and reduce dependence on imports.

The affordability argument is significant. However, price alone cannot determine whether a medical device succeeds. Clinical reliability, regulatory compliance, ease of use, validation, and the willingness of doctors and institutions to trust a new product will matter just as much. That is where the next phase of Respirit’s journey will be tested.

The device is only the beginning

Perhaps the most interesting part of the conversation with Dr. Deka was that he did not speak about the device as the final destination.

The company’s larger ambition is an AI-powered, cloud-based solution that can analyse respiratory-health information. Eventually, it aims to provide predictive insights and early warnings. In his vision, the technology journey moves from simply monitoring a patient’s condition towards creating a more intelligent system, one capable of helping doctors identify deterioration earlier.

That distinction matters.

A device that measures physiological parameters is useful. But an intelligent healthcare platform has to do something more: turn data into clinically meaningful information and, ultimately, help a doctor make a better or earlier decision. That is a considerably harder challenge than building the hardware itself. It is also where Respirit’s ambitions will face their most important test.

For now, however, Dr. Deka sees the combination of indigenous hardware, affordability, connectivity, and AI as the foundation for a larger respiratory-care ecosystem.

The difficult part of building from Guwahati

The story becomes more interesting when one considers where Respirit is being built.

Guwahati is not generally the first city that comes to mind when people discuss India’s deep-tech ecosystem. Yet Dr. Deka does not see his decision to remain in Assam as a sacrifice. The clinical and consultancy operations, he says, have given the company financial support and the peace of mind to continue pursuing its MedTech mission.

That does not mean the journey has been easy.

One of Respirit’s early technical leads at IIT Guwahati died suddenly. Dr. Deka describes it as a major blow to the project. The company subsequently received technical support from IIT Kharagpur, while two other key team members left during the development journey. Deka’s response to these setbacks is remarkably matter-of-fact. These things, he says, are part of professional life.

There is something revealing in that attitude. Deep-tech entrepreneurship rarely follows the neat progression that startup presentations tend to suggest. People leave, technical problems emerge, funding takes time, and products take longer than expected. The ability to keep going can be as important as the original idea.

Respirit has also benefited from the wider incubation ecosystem. The company has raised around ₹2.5 crore through a combination of equity and debt, along with grants received under various central government schemes through its incubators. Deka acknowledges that the ecosystem is improving, even though he believes there is still a long way to go.

From Guwahati to the world

Dr. Deka has apparently never viewed Respirit as a company that should remain confined to Assam.

From the beginning of his MedTech journey, he says, he believed that a healthcare problem experienced in the Northeast could have relevance far beyond the region. The company’s participation on international platforms, including Slush in Helsinki, has reinforced that belief.

There is a useful lesson here for the region’s emerging startup ecosystem. Building from the Northeast does not necessarily mean building only for the Northeast. In healthcare, particularly, some of the problems that appear most acute in less-served regions can eventually become globally relevant problems.

The real question is whether the technology can make that journey — from a regional clinical problem to a nationally validated product, and then to a globally trusted healthcare solution.That journey has only begun for Respirithttps://thequantiq.com/waheeda-rahman-assamese-jewellery-creative-entrepreneur/

A valuation is a milestone, not the destination

The company has already crossed some important milestones. Dr. Deka said Respirit became profitable through its clinical setup in 2024, and that the company was valued at ₹33 crore last year. More importantly, he measures the company’s progress not only through valuation, but through the people it has already reached.

Through its clinical operations, he says, Respirit has already impacted around 15,000 people across Assam and Meghalaya. His larger ambition is to build an IP-led MedTech company that addresses one of the world’s major health challenges. The device, and the planned AI-powered solution, are meant to eventually create an impact beyond India.

That is a much more demanding ambition than simply building a successful clinic network. It also explains why the word IP matters so much in Dr. Deka’s description of the future. He does not want Respirit to be remembered merely as another healthcare service provider from the Northeast. He wants the company to develop technology that can stand on its own, solve a significant healthcare problem, and compete beyond its home market.

Dr.Deka’s bigger proposition for Guwahati

Towards the end of our conversation, Dr. Deka moved beyond Respirit itself and made a larger argument about Guwahati.

He strongly believes Guwahati should be promoted as a major medical-tourism hub, particularly at a time when the healthcare sector is expanding rapidly. But he also believes the opportunity should not stop at attracting patients. If healthcare services are becoming an important economic sector for the city and the region, he argues, then medical-equipment manufacturing should receive serious policy attention too.

That is an important distinction.

A city that merely treats patients captures one part of the healthcare economy. A city that can also design, develop, and manufacture medical technologies captures a much larger part of the value chain. It creates opportunities for engineers, clinicians, researchers, entrepreneurs, manufacturers, and investors to work within the same ecosystem.

Dr. Deka believes state government policy should recognise this opportunity and introduce appropriate measures to encourage medical-equipment manufacturing in Assam.

And perhaps this is where the Respirit story becomes bigger than Respirit itself.

The company is trying to prove that a sophisticated healthcare technology can be conceived and developed from Guwahati. If that experiment succeeds, the implications extend beyond one startup. It raises a much larger question for Assam: can Guwahati evolve from being a place where healthcare is delivered into a place where healthcare technologies are designed, developed, and manufactured? https://thequantiq.com/category/innovation-startups/

What Covid left behind

When I began the conversation with Dr. Nihar R. Deka, I expected to hear about a medical device, a startup, and the technology behind it. What stayed with me instead was the chain of events that brought him here: a doctor witnessing the frightening unpredictability of Covid, a husband separated from his pulmonologist wife by work, two medical professionals deciding to build something together, and a clinical practice that became the financial and practical foundation for a much more ambitious technology journey.

Respirit’s device is still to be launched. Its AI-powered respiratory platform is still taking shape. The larger promises around predictive healthcare, scale, and global impact will ultimately have to be demonstrated in the real world. There, medical technology earns trust through evidence and performance, not ambition alone.

But perhaps that is precisely what makes the journey worth following.

Dr. Deka never left medicine, and he still practises today, alongside his wife, at the clinic that gave Respirit its start. What changed was his belief about what serving healthcare could mean. After Covid, he began to see treating patients as only one way of doing that, not the only way.

The next chapter of that belief is being built in Guwahati. And if Respirit succeeds, the story may not end with a device at all. It may become part of a much larger story: what Northeast India can build when its doctors, entrepreneurs, technology institutions, and policymakers look beyond the boundaries of healthcare delivery, and towards the creation of healthcare technology itself.