Nyamitse-Calvin Mahinda

Post-pitch story

Nyamitse-Calvin Mahinda's Vital Audio is built on a surprising claim: your voice can reveal your vital signs. Its Sonometrik platform uses short voice recordings to estimate heart rate, blood pressure, heart rate variability and breathing, no watch or cuff required. The company came out of NYU Tandon's venture studio and won $75,000 in seed funding at an NYU entrepreneurship challenge in May 2023. Poets&Quants named it one of 2023's most disruptive MBA startups. Vital Audio then pitched on The Pitch, an appearance it highlights on its own website. The biggest stage came next. Vital Audio was selected for TechCrunch Disrupt 2025's Startup Battlefield. Its TechCrunch profile lists $880,000 raised and a second co-founder, CTO Harsh Sonthalia. The company says it has studied more than 500 clinical participants, hit 96% accuracy and holds three patents. Those figures come from the company itself, and its profile's description of the software as "FDA safety approved" is something we couldn't verify. Regulators will be the real test for any health claim like this. If the science holds up, checking your blood pressure could become as easy as saying a few words into your phone. That's a big "if," and a big opportunity.