Back when he was a doctor of pharmacy (PharmD) student, Surya Maguluri spent long hours poring over case sheets and counselling patients. Years later, that deep clinical exposure would spark an idea about using light as medicine.
As so was born Curapod, a wearable light-therapy device developed by Litemed, the startup Maguluri co-founded with Sri Velliyur. Built on photobiomodulation (a form of light therapy), the device, launched in 2023, challenges conventional approaches to pain management.
“When I started in 2008, the course (PharmD) had just been introduced in India,” he says. “There were no clear career pathways.” That uncertainty pushed him to look beyond textbooks—he would attend conferences, network with industry experts and try to understand where health care innovation was headed.
A recurring piece of advice stayed with him: find a problem and solve it.
His first attempt was not in medicine, but in tackling air pollution. He built early prototypes, including an “Ambient Air Pollution Curtailer” and a bike-based device called “Pollution Zero”. But real-world testing exposed fundamental flaws. A filter attached to a vehicle’s silencer, for instance, restricted exhaust flow and affected engine performance.
The failure forced him to rethink the very nature of solutions. “That’s when I started thinking about ‘formless’ approaches—solutions that don’t physically obstruct systems,” he says. Chemical interventions were explored and discarded. Eventually, he turned to light. “I realised that light could influence biological processes. That’s when the idea clicked—light could be used as a form of medicine,” he says.
This led him to photobiomodulation, a technology with an existing body of research but limited consumer applications. At its core, the science is straightforward: when cells are stressed—due to injury, inflammation or chronic conditions—their energy production drops, triggering pain pathways. Light, when applied at specific wavelengths, stimulates mitochondrial activity, restoring cellular respiration and ATP (Adenosine Triphosphate, the primary energy-carrying molecule) production. The result is reduced pain and improved healing.
But translating this science into a usable product posed challenges. Photobiomodulation devices typically struggle with three factors: penetration depth, coverage area and personalised dosing. Lasers penetrate deeply but cover limited areas, while LEDs offer broader coverage but typically lack depth.
Litemed’s solution, says Maguluri, lies in a proprietary approach called “constructive superimposition”, which enables deeper penetration while maintaining wider coverage.
If the science was complex, manufacturing was even more so. Moving from small batches to mass production required redesigning processes, strengthening supply chains and implementing rigorous quality controls. Shrinking the technology into a compact, wearable device without compromising performance added another layer of difficulty.
The company claims to have more than 25,000 daily users of the product—priced at 8,399—which targets over 30 musculoskeletal conditions.
The company now has a multidisciplinary team—engineers on the product side and clinicians who feed real-world insights into development. This feedback loop, says Maguluri, is critical to refining both the technology and its applications.
Looking ahead, Litemed is working on what it calls an adaptive pain management system, in which the device can personalise treatment based on factors such as body metrics and user feedback. The company is also preparing to enter global markets, and is confident of taking this Indian solution to the world.