300,788 children in India have Type 1 Diabetes. Most see their doctor once every three months. Sugar Sakhi is the physician in their pocket for the other 89 days. 24Γ7. AI‑assisted. Built at B.J. Wadia Hospital for Children, Mumbai.
2am. Mealtime. The school cricket field. Sugar Sakhi shows up where the clinic can't.
300,788 children in India live with Type 1 Diabetes. Most get a diagnosis, a prescription, and an appointment three months later. The 89 days between is where lives are lost.
Type 1 Diabetes is a lifelong, insulin-dependent autoimmune condition. Unlike Type 2 Diabetes, it cannot be prevented. It requires daily, precise management, every meal, every dose, every activity. For children in low-resource settings, this is an enormous burden on families with limited access to structured care.
Primary users: Children and young persons aged 0β18 years living with T1D. Their caregivers, predominantly mothers, carry the daily management burden.
Secondary stakeholders: Paediatric endocrinologists and diabetologists; nursing and diabetes educators; hospital administrators; public health authorities and the NHM.
The paediatric endocrinologist-to-patient ratio in India is critically low. Clinic visits happen every 3 months, or less. There is no structured channel for families to communicate urgent concerns, report glucose excursions, or flag missed doses between appointments. Problems that could be caught early go undetected for weeks.
3 in 4 children with T1D at B.J. Wadia Hospital had poor clinical follow-up (Wadia 2025). There is no digital framework to track glucose logs, dietary calculations, or insulin adherence between OPD visits. DKA, a life-threatening complication, builds quietly when no one is watching. Between 1β10 DKA readmissions per 100 patient-years are currently recorded at Wadia (2026 emergency records).
T1D management education is delivered once, at diagnosis. After that, families rely on printed sheets, informal WhatsApp groups, and a 15-minute consultation every quarter. There is no personalised, language-specific, ongoing education programme tailored to Indian dietary patterns, regional languages, or the psychosocial stress specific to T1D families. 37.5% of T1D children have poor Quality of Life scores (Contemporary Clinical Practice, 2025).
When continuous care is missing, families and the health system pay the price, measured in lives, complications, and rupees.
India has made significant progress on insulin access, through the CDiC programme, RSSDI-Sanofi partnerships, and state-level initiatives in Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, and Gujarat. Education programmes exist (T1DE, Project 1NDIA, ISPAE's IDEAL and BEST courses). Community NGOs provide critical peer support.
But these programmes are fragmented, episodic, and unconnected. No system ensures continuous, real-time, physician-linked care. The digital ecosystem remains the unsolved gap: no widely adopted DKA prediction tool, no AI-driven adherence monitoring, no physician-integrated dashboard designed for low-resource India.
India has programmes for insulin, education, and community, but they are fragmented, episodic, and not connected. No system ensures continuous, real-time, physician-linked care. , Sugar Sakhi Β· the white-space thesis
A short, compassionate explainer for newly-diagnosed families, teachers, grandparents, and employers, not a hospital education module.
Type 1 Diabetes (T1D) is an autoimmune condition, not caused by eating too much sugar, and not preventable by diet or lifestyle. In T1D, the body's own immune system attacks the insulin-producing cells in the pancreas. Insulin is the hormone that allows glucose to enter cells for energy. Without it, glucose builds up in the blood, with life-threatening consequences.
T1D can develop at any age, but most diagnoses happen in childhood. A child with T1D will need insulin every single day for the rest of their life. There is currently no cure.
Managing T1D is a full-time job for the whole family. Every meal, every activity, every illness, every growth spurt changes how much insulin a child needs. It requires constant monitoring, constant adjustment, and constant vigilance, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year.
Families managing T1D in India face a specific set of challenges that no global app has been designed around:
B.J. Wadia Hospital for Children in Mumbai is one of the largest paediatric T1D care centres in India and the broader subcontinent. The Division of Paediatric Endocrinology at Wadia has been running India's longest-standing Diabetes Support Group since April 2005, a model for community-based T1D care across South Asia.
In-depth guides on insulin types, carbohydrate counting, sick-day rules, recognising DKA, and more, personalised for your child's age, diet, and care plan.
Download Sugar Sakhi to access the full library βThree voices from B.J. Wadia Hospital for Children, Mumbai, the clinicians who see what happens between appointments.
Onset of diabetes in childhood, also called juvenile onset diabetes, is a life-changing disease. It needs lifelong insulin therapy and regular monitoring of sugar control. Care of a child with diabetes means holding four things steady at once: the dose of insulin, daily diet, daily exercise, and psychological well-being.
Aiming to optimise all these aspects of care and thus maintaining a balance in sugar control needs commitment, knowledge sharing, and willingness to learn new skills, positive thinking, and team approach to care not only by the physicians but also the parents and guardians.
Alleviating the fears, anxiety, apprehensions on part of the parents and child, teaching them the skills of insulin therapy and home blood sugar monitoring, empowering them to choose the appropriate diet, types of diet, calorie counting, carbohydrate counting, are some of the basic aspects of care to attain good control. Regular monitoring of growth, pubertal development, glycaemic control, other evolving endocrinopathies or end-organ problems like vision, heart and kidneys are required to have a good quality of life in childhood and as adults.
To address these issues in a common platform, the Diabetes Support Group was started by the Division of Paediatric Endocrinology, B.J. Wadia Hospital for Children, Mumbai in April 2005. The first meeting was held on 16 April 2005, patients, parents, doctors, dietician, invited guests. These meetings continue every 4 months: medical lectures on new developments in care, quizzes for parents and children, an award for the best-controlled child, parents' interaction, and new ideas. With the help of the Management of Wadia Hospital, and the charity and social commitment of the doctors of the Division of Paediatric Endocrinology, the Diabetes Support Group is a vibrant community of juvenile diabetics and their parents, finding friends in times of distress, providing easily approachable medical care during crisis, and adjusting to a life-changing disease.
Acquiring knowledge and skills is an everlasting exercise. Sugar Sakhi ensures that exercise never stops, not between appointments, not between support group meetings, not at 2am. , Prof. Dr. Sudha Rao Β· Medical Director & Head of Paediatric Endocrinology, B.J. Wadia Hospital for Children, Mumbai
I am a paediatric endocrinology fellow at B.J. Wadia Hospital for Children, Mumbai. Every week, I see children arrive at our OPD in DKA, a preventable crisis, because something went wrong between their last clinic visit and today, and no one caught it in time.
It is not because the families aren't trying. They are trying harder than most people can imagine. Managing Type 1 Diabetes in a child is a full-time job, counting carbohydrates in roti and dal, adjusting insulin for a school sports day, staying awake at 2am to check a glucose reading. These families carry this weight every single day. What they don't have is a system that watches with them.
When a child misses an insulin dose, we don't find out until the next OPD visit, weeks later. When a glucose reading spikes after a festival meal, the family doesn't know whether to call the hospital or wait. When a child starts showing early signs of DKA, nausea, fatigue, increased thirst, the family often mistakes it for a stomach bug, because no one taught them the signs in their language, in a way they could act on.
Sugar Sakhi is what I wish I could give every family when they leave my clinic. A companion that speaks their language, remembers their child's patterns, alerts me when something is wrong, and reassures them at 2am when they're frightened and don't know where to turn. This is not a wellness app. This is clinical care, extended beyond the clinic walls, for the children who need it most.
When a child arrives in DKA, I always ask the same question, when did this start? The answer is always the same: a few days ago. We just didn't know who to call. , Dr Aarushi Singla Β· Paediatric Endocrinology Fellow, B.J. Wadia Hospital for Children, Mumbai
I am a diabetes educator and counsellor at B.J. Wadia Hospital for Children. I have spent years sitting with families as they process what a T1D diagnosis means for their child, and for them.
What most people outside the hospital don't see is the emotional weight these families carry. The mother who stops sleeping through the night because she's afraid of nocturnal hypoglycaemia. The father who quietly takes a second job to afford insulin and glucose strips. The teenage child who stops eating lunch at school because she's embarrassed to check her glucose in front of her friends. The younger sibling who learns, very early, not to complain when the family budget is tight.
I see it in every family I counsel. T1D is not just a disease of blood sugar. It is a disease of anxiety, of grief, of isolation. When families leave the hospital after diagnosis, they are given education materials, printed sheets, sometimes a DVD. They nod. They are overwhelmed. And then they go home and face it alone.
The phone calls I receive, at evenings, on weekends, are mostly not about clinical emergencies. They are from mothers who just need someone to tell them they are doing it right. They need to hear that it is okay to feel afraid. They need guidance that is specific to their child, their kitchen, their school day.
Sugar Sakhi was built for exactly this. The psychosocial screening built into the platform means that when a family is struggling, when distress signals appear in how they interact with the app, I know about it. I can reach out before they reach a breaking point. For the first time, my care for these families does not end at the clinic door.
The most common thing I hear is: "I didn't want to bother the doctor." Sugar Sakhi means they never have to make that choice again. , Ms Joanna Pinto Β· Diabetes Educator & Counsellor, B.J. Wadia Hospital for Children, Mumbai
Managing T1D is one of the most demanding chronic conditions a family can face. Diabetes distress, the emotional burden of constant vigilance, fear of complications, and the relentlessness of daily management, is a clinical reality, not a weakness.
Diabetes distress is the worry, guilt, frustration, and burnout that comes from managing a chronic condition with no days off. Studies show it affects up to 40% of T1D families, and is a key predictor of poor glycaemic control. It is not the same as clinical depression, though both can occur together. Recognising it is the first step.
These are the voices Sugar Sakhi was built for. Every story below is real. The fear. The exhaustion. The loneliness. And the hope.
Names and identifying details have been changed. These composite stories reflect real experiences from Wadia's T1D clinic.
Rohan was diagnosed eighteen months ago. My husband works night shifts. I manage everything. The glucose checks at 2am, the insulin doses before every meal, the school tiffin that has to be exactly right. Last month he had a hypoglycaemia episode at school. His teacher didn't know what to do. I wasn't there. I have never felt so helpless. I call the hospital, then I feel guilty taking up their time when it isn't an "emergency." But every day with T1D feels like an emergency to me.
I hate checking my glucose at school. Everyone stares. Last year I just stopped doing it at lunch. I didn't tell my mum. My HbA1c went up and the doctor was worried, but I didn't explain why. I just said I forgot. I didn't forget. I was embarrassed. I wish there was something that felt like a friend, not a medical device. Something I could use quietly, on my phone, that no one would notice.
We live two hours from Mumbai. We come to Wadia every three months. It costs us a whole day, and a day's wages. Between visits, I pray nothing goes wrong. I do not know enough English to read the papers they give us. My daughter-in-law tries, but we are not sure we are doing everything correctly. Last monsoon, Dhruv was sick for four days before we realised it might be his diabetes. By the time we reached the hospital, the doctor said it was nearly DKA. I still feel guilty. I should have known.
"I used to dread mealtimes. I need someone to help me count every gram of carbohydrate with me." , Mother of a 6-year-old with T1D Β· Wadia OPD, Mumbai
"My son wants an app that feels like a friend, not a doctor. For a teenager with T1D, that makes all the difference." , Father of a 15-year-old with T1D Β· Referred via CDiC network
"When she had her first low at school, I realised: the hospital is hours away. The phone is in my hand." , Mother of a 9-year-old with T1D Β· Pune
"I just need someone to tell me I'm doing it right." , Mother of a newly-diagnosed 4-year-old Β· Wadia OPD
A physician families can reach at 2am. An AI that sees the warning signs before a parent does. A counsellor who hears the distress in how the app is used. One platform. Free for families. Funded by hospitals.
Sugar Sakhi isn't a passive glucose diary. It puts a physician in a family's pocket, 24 hours a day. The platform closes the 89-day gap between quarterly clinic visits with real-time monitoring, AI-driven alerts, personalised education, and psychosocial support. Built for children with T1D in low-resource Indian settings. No CGM sensor needed. No reliable broadband needed.
Real-time physician dashboard. Alerts triggered when DKA risk signals emerge, missed doses, glucose excursions, dietary deviations. Turns passive family logs into active, physician-guided care. No more waiting three months to find out something went wrong.
Predictive algorithms flag at-risk families before a crisis develops. Offline-first architecture, optimised for low-bandwidth and intermittent connectivity across Tier 2 and Tier 3 Indian cities. Designed around glucometers, not CGM sensors or insulin pumps that most Indian families cannot access.
Daily behavioural nudges in 6+ regional Indian languages. Integrated psychosocial distress screening, because diabetes distress is a clinical reality for families, not a secondary concern. Content adapts to individual adherence patterns through AI, not a static video library. Caregiver module included.
Target, not proven outcome.
Living with T1D is different for every child and every family. The insulin regime that works for one child in Thane is different from what another child needs in Mumbai. The carbohydrate content of a Maharashtrian thali is different from a Gujarati one. One-size education does not work for T1D. Sugar Sakhi delivers personalised, adaptive content, in your language, for your child, for your kitchen, directly through the app.
Types of insulin, injection technique, what to do for a missed dose, travelling with insulin, storage in Indian homes with intermittent power.
Download Sugar Sakhi βCarb content of Indian staples, roti, rice, dal, sabzi, fruits, festival foods. Practical, visual guides for families.
Download Sugar Sakhi βHow to use a glucometer, understanding glucose patterns, when to check, target ranges for children at different ages.
Download Sugar Sakhi βSugar Sakhi works like a knowledgeable friend, available 24 hours a day, who happens to be directly connected to your child's physician.
Glucose logs, insulin doses, meal records, all fed to a real-time physician dashboard. Your child's doctor sees what's happening between appointments. No more waiting three months to find out something went wrong.
AI-driven DKA risk prediction flags a crisis before it happens. When something looks wrong, a missed dose, a glucose trend, a sick-day pattern, Sugar Sakhi alerts the family and the physician. Offline-first, no CGM required.
Daily nudges in 6+ Indian languages. Personalised education adapts to your child's patterns. Psychosocial distress screening means your counsellor knows when to reach out, before the family reaches a breaking point.
Sugar Sakhi is free for all families.
The app isn't live yet, join the waitlist and we'll let you know the moment it is.
Sugar Sakhi serves two audiences with one platform, patients and the clinicians who care for them.
We believe that financial barriers should never stand between a child with T1D and the support they need.
Sugar Sakhi gives clinicians something they have never had: a window into how their T1D patients are doing between appointments.
Several digital diabetes management tools exist globally. None are designed for paediatric T1D in India's low-resource settings.
| Feature | Sugar Sakhi | mySugr / Dario | BeatO (India) | DigiBete (UK) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Paediatric focus | β | β | β | β (partial) |
| AI-assisted risk prediction | β | β | β | β |
| Psychosocial distress screening | β | β | β | Limited |
| Multilingual (6+ Indian languages) | β | β | Partial | β |
| Low-bandwidth / offline-first | β | β | β | β |
| Free for patients (B2B model) | β | β | Freemium | NHS-funded |
| Physician real-time dashboard | β | β | β | Partial |
| LMIC-ready (no CGM required) | β | β | β (glucometer) | β (CGM/pump) |
| Regional Indian diet logging | β | β | β | β |
A curated, India-specific reference. The full directory lives inside the app.
India has reasonable insulin access, but families need to know which types are available, how to store them, and what to do when supply is interrupted. The following insulin types are commonly available through government hospitals, Jan Aushadhi stores, and private pharmacies:
| Type | Examples | Form | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Rapid-acting (analogues) | NovoRapid, Humalog, Apidra | Injection / Pen | Taken before meals; expensive; not always on government list. |
| Short-acting (Regular/Soluble) | Actrapid, Huminsulin R | Injection | Available in govt hospitals; older formulation. |
| Intermediate-acting (NPH/Isophane) | Insulatard, Huminsulin N | Injection | Widely available; commonly used in low-resource settings. |
| Long-acting (analogues) | Lantus (Glargine), Levemir, Toujeo | Injection / Pen | Gold standard for T1D; cost a barrier; biosimilars available. |
| Pre-mixed (not ideal for T1D) | Mixtard, Huminsulin 30/70 | Injection | Less precise for T1D; sometimes used where analogues unavailable. |
Source: RSSDI, ISPAD, CDiC India. Verify current government formulary before publication.
Sugar Sakhi is designed for families using syringes and pens, the reality for the vast majority of Indian T1D families. CGM is not required.
State-by-state insulin access programmes, government hospital T1D clinics, support groups, insurance guidance, and school accommodation templates, all inside Sugar Sakhi.
Download Sugar Sakhi to access the full library βSugar Sakhi was founded by clinicians, paediatric endocrinologists who see the consequences of poor T1D care every day. Our team combines deep clinical expertise with digital health innovation and patient advocacy.
CEO, B.J. Wadia Hospital for Children, Mumbai. Institutional champion and strategic leader for Sugar Sakhi.
Medical Director & Head of Paediatric Endocrinology, B.J. Wadia. T1D clinical lead.
Paediatric Endocrinologist. Clinical protocol design and research lead.
Paediatric Endocrinologist. Patient care, clinical data, and outcomes tracking.
Paediatric Endocrinologist. Coordination, operations, and implementation.
Diabetes Educator & Counsellor. Family engagement, psychosocial screening, education module design.
Bio to be confirmed by the team. (Pending headshot & role detail.)
Brings the technology and AI architecture behind Sugar Sakhi, from offline-first design to physician dashboards and DKA risk models. MondelΔz International, IIM Calcutta '17.
For every child and family learning to live with T1D, Sugar Sakhi is an intelligent and constant companion. , Wadia Warriors Team
Families, hospitals, researchers, Sugar Sakhi welcomes all three. Tell us who you are and we'll route you to the right team.
If you are a family caring for a child with Type 1 Diabetes in India, we want to hear from you. Sugar Sakhi will be free for patients. Join our waitlist to be among the first families enrolled in our Wadia pilot.
Join the waitlistWe are actively seeking hospital partners to join our pilot network. The onboarding is simple, we come to you, train your team, and provide full clinical dashboard access. First pilot revenue is expected at Month 12.
Partner with Sugar SakhiSugar Sakhi is generating one of India's first longitudinal, anonymised paediatric T1D datasets. We are open to research collaborations, grant partnerships, and data licensing discussions with NIH, Wellcome Trust, Gates Foundation, and aligned institutions.
Explore research collaborationPrefer email? Write to hello [at] sugarsakhi [dot] com.
