MFine invited a group of journalists to interact with co-founder and chief technology officer Ajit Narayanan on March 22. In a well-appointed boardroom at The Oberoi, Bengaluru, the data-science team of the buzzy healthtech app showed off proprietary algorithms powering its new tool for checking blood pressure and glucose.

Earlier that month, MFine had launched a tool to help users monitor their heart rate and the year before, it introduced a feature to measure oxygen saturation. Updates were basically being rolled out swiftly on the AI-driven platform. The magic, so to speak, wasn’t happening just on the product front. The five-year-old startup was also hiring in numbers, with 40 openings appearing in search results recently. 

All the outward signs suggested its ideas and business were clicking and it was sitting on adequate capital, with no cause for concern. At the Oberoi event, Narayanan claimed it had a good runway. “We are not looking to raise funds at the moment,” he told The CapTable then.

The reality was very different.