Mini Suri's father had a brain tumor doctors missed in 2016. She left corporate AI jobs at Uber and Citi to start WellMini, which uses AI to analyze dental X-rays and scans. The company just got FDA clearance and needs $1 million to hire staff and reach 206,000 U.S. dental offices.
Chapters
In 2016, I still remember the day when my mom called that my dad could not go to his boardroom. You know, things were not looking good, so they had to take him to the hospital, and the scans, his scans did not look good. 4 months back, his scans were taken and everything looked good according to the doctors. But this time I told them to come to U.S. They were both in India and I told them to come to U.S. and I took them to Sloan-Kettering and they found out it was grade 4 glioblastoma. So 4 months back when we looked at the scan, it was quite obvious that there was something and if this would have been caught at that time, glioblastoma could have been— wouldn't have progressed that that fast. It changed my life because I could not believe that this could be so easily missed or misdiagnosed.
In Silicon Valley, Mini Suri and her team at WellMini are advancing dental care with AI that enhances diagnostic precision beyond conventional methods.
I actually went to MIT to do my MBA. In 2016, I still remember the day when my mom called that my dad could not go to his boardroom. Things were not looking good, so they had to take him to the hospital, and the scans, his scans did not look good. 4 months back, his scans were taken and everything looked good according to the doctors. But this time I told them to come to U.S. They were both in India and I told them to come to U.S. and I took them to Sloan-Kettering and they found out it was grade 4 glioblastoma. So 4 months back when we looked at the scan it was quite obvious that there was something and if this would have been caught at that time, glioblastoma could have been— wouldn't have progressed that fast. that fast. It changed my life because I could not believe that this could be so easily missed or misdiagnosed. And when I went back to MIT, I knew I had to do something different. I started taking healthcare certification along with MBA. My MBA project became electronic health record for rural India. I came out, went back to Citigroup, back to my job, but something changed. I was made the head of building the AI platform for Citi and then moved to Uber and then to the AI company. And then it so happened one of my dear friends who's a serial entrepreneur said his cousin who's a dentist didn't know what to do during COVID time. And I said, look, I do AI all day long. How about we build, you know, a scheduling, rescheduling bot? Because I knew how to build the AI bots. And that's where Velmini started.
Beyond X-rays to 3D scans, Velmini elevates dental diagnostics to new levels of accuracy.
Hi, I'm Minni Suri, CEO and co-founder of WellMini. Interestingly, WellMini stands for robot in Icelandic, AI for automation. So WellMini is a dental AI company. We do AI on all kinds of radiographs, whether they are flat X-rays, cone beam, or CT scan X-rays. intraoral images, or any kind of x-rays or scans that help the dentist to identify the problems. We have our headquarters in Palo Alto. We do have a couple people in Palo Alto, I mean California. We have a team, we have a decentralized team. We have an R&D center in Orlando and also in India. My team is global. We are a happy virtual team. We do meet every now and then in the location of our choice, but the team works around the clock. So what would the opportunity to work with Tim Draper mean for your company right now? I've met Tim many or multiple times at Tycon. He's such an iconic figure who has really gone above and beyond to help founders and startups like us. What Tim has started, this whole Meet the Drapers show, is so phenomenal. He's given us launchpad to companies like us. For me, this, this is an important launchpad for me, what Tim has created for us. And I'll tell you why. Because at Valmini, our mission is to really help 1 billion people improve oral health. Oral health is the gateway to general health. I couldn't have asked for a better platform than what I have got here at Meet the Draper, because your show goes around the globe. You touch people where I couldn't have reached.
Where compassionate care meets breakthrough technology, Mini Suri's Velmini ensures every patient receives the excellence they deserve.
What would a million-dollar investment mean for your company? So a million-dollar investment would mean for us, for us, is kind of very critical for us at this point. The reason is we just got FDA cleared, and FDA, before FDA clearance, we could not sell our software, or they call it software medical device, which is an AI product. Post-FDA, we need, we need funding so that we could hire marketing, we could hire sales, we could build support team, and we can start selling our product to a lot more dental offices, dentists in the United States. There are about 206,000 dentists in the U.S., and we can take the market if we have the funding. So this show and this funding would be very critical for us at this point to really expand our outreach. If we win, the first person I'll call is my mom here. It's just because she understands, and not that the second person I'll call is my husband, but my mom, because this journey started with my dad and this was his dream. But I must say that, you know, they say there's women behind every man. I would say there were 2 men behind me. One is my dad and my husband. I have promises to keep, and the promise that I've given it to my dad. So, Valvani keeps me going. I, I eat, live, and sleep Valvani.
