Over the past two years or so, a quiet but potentially transformative movement has been shaping up in Bengaluru. It’s not driven by celebrity biohackers or billionaires in Silicon Valley chasing immortality. Instead, scientists, doctors, and technologists are collaborating on a far subtler ambition: Rethinking what it means to age. And how to do it well.
AI tools are now being deployed to sift through large datasets and detect subtle biological shifts long before symptoms emerge. (Representational image)
At the centre of this movement are people such as Prashant Prakash and Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw. Prakash, currently affiliated to Accel India and one of India’s most influential investors, believes the health-tech narrative has just begun unfolding. Mazumdar-Shaw, founder of Biocon, is one of India’s most respected figures in biotechnology. Together, they’re part of an ecosystem helping shape a distinctly Indian vision of longevity that differs sharply from the discourse in the West.
There, longevity is often framed as a battle against time. Bryan Johnson, for instance, follows a famously meticulous regimen. He tracks everything from his gut microbiome to sleep cycles in an effort to reverse his biological age. Harvard biologist David Sinclair has popularised the idea that ageing can be delayed or even reversed with molecules, supplements, and cellular reprogramming. They are not on the fringe any longer. If anything, they represent a growing class of first movers who believe death and decay can be reversed.
But the Indian approach unfolding in Bengaluru doesn’t begin with the question how do we live forever? Instead, it reframes the premise entirely: how do we live well for longer? The movement’s focus is not on lifespan, but on ‘health span’.
This distinction has real consequences. For most people, the fear isn’t dying—it’s the slow decline that precedes it. The emerging philosophy aims to delay that decline, or compress it into the shortest possible window. In clinical terms, this is about reducing the number of years spent in morbidity.
One of the places where this vision is being worked on is at BioPeak, a start-up backed by Prakash that brings together medical doctors, researchers, and artificial intelligence experts. It does not resemble a conventional clinic. The underlying thesis here is that ageing does not occur uniformly across the body—a view supported by emerging scientific literature, but still largely absent from most clinical protocols.
As Prakash and Mazumdar-Shaw explain, the skin might show signs of ageing in one’s 40s, while the joints may hold steady into the 60s. The heart may remain resilient while the liver quietly deteriorates. Each organ system follows its own biological timeline, shaped by genetics, environment, and lifestyle. Yet modern healthcare often treats ageing as if it were a single, uniform process.
This oversimplification has consequences. Contemporary medicine is structured around specialisations: dermatology for skin, cardiology for the heart, hepatology for the liver. While this has led to remarkable advances in care, it has also fragmented the understanding of the body into isolated silos.
BioPeak’s model—what Prakash calls Medicine 4.0—proposes a correction. It emphasizes early detection, not just of disease, but of directional decline. AI tools are now being deployed to sift through large datasets and detect subtle biological shifts long before symptoms emerge. For instance, a pattern of low-grade inflammation in the gut may precede cognitive slowdown. Minor sleep disturbances may hint at hormonal shifts that impact bone density.
Patients at BioPeak are now receiving what the team calls a “bio-age map”—a dynamic snapshot showing how different systems in the body are ageing, often at different speeds. In one illustrative case, a middle-aged patient with no apparent symptoms was flagged for early vascular stress. With moderate intervention—nutritional tweaks, exercise, and stress management—the biological age of that system was reversed, pre-empting what might have developed into a chronic condition.
For now, these services are available only to a limited group. But Prakash believes this model has significant long-term value for public health. “If we can shift the focus from treatment to prediction and prevention, we can reduce the overall cost burden on the healthcare system,” he says. For that to happen, he argues, governments must think long-term and support such initiatives through policy and investment.
Interestingly, this system’s view is not new to India. It finds resonance in Ayurveda, which has long viewed the body as a network of interlinked systems where an imbalance in one area can cascade into dysfunction elsewhere. The new science doesn’t mimic this model but echoes it in its emphasis on balance, interdependence, and timing.
The most important shift underway may be philosophical. In moving from a model that chases time to one that respects rhythm, the Indian approach to longevity signals something deeper: that wellbeing isn’t measured in years, but in how those years are lived—alert, mobile, purposeful
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