A chess tournament typically presents as rows of hyper-focused players making their moves while hushed spectators pay close attention.
Much of this was true at ‘Battle of Brains’, a hybrid chess tournament at the IIT Madras Research Park recently, but for one small twist.
While the 24 highly skilled players calculated their moves, a curious-looking device rested on their heads, tracking changes in the players’ brain and heart activity.
Separately, in a different room, spectators could see a futuristic dashboard on a large display, with the players ranked – not by their chess scores – but by their ‘cognitive endurance’.
The smart headband, Orbit, is the flagship product of Chennai-based deeptech startup Neurostellar. Built onto the device are minute EEG (Electroencephalography) and PPG (Photoplethysmography) sensors that measure brain waves alongside heart rate and breathing patterns to provide real-time insights into stress, focus, and mental fatigue. No diagnosis is made with the device.
“In the chess context, what we are essentially trying to calculate is the ‘cognitive endurance’. It is essentially a measure of how long a player can sustain focus,” said Karthik Raghavendran, Co-founder and CEO, Neurostellar.
“It all happens in real time,” he added. The data collected by Orbit’s sensors are fed into proprietary algorithms designed in collaboration with scientists at National Institute of Mental Health and Neurosciences (NIMHANS) which can churn out a player’s endurance score in a matter of seconds.
Neurostellar is co-founded by Karthik Raghavendran and Dhanushya Sree, both biotech graduates of SASTRA in 2019.
While it might sound like a niche product for eccentric biohackers, Orbit has had some high-profile users including South African-born cricket coach and former cricketer Patrick Anthony Howard ‘Paddy’ Upton as well as Chess Grand Master Vishnu Prasanna who is part of the Neurostellar team as its Head of Performance and uses it as part of his chess coaching process.
The company, backed by Ather co-founders Tarun Mehta and Swapnil Jain, is just one among the many players in India’s wearable tech space which has evolved from budget mass-market smartwatches to specialised devices.
Companies like Ultrahuman, Temple and NeoSapien have developed or are in the process of developing advanced health-tracking wearables.
Orbit is currently in the pre-order phase with Raghavendran suggesting that the device, priced at $250, is being shipped batch by batch. “We already have top athletes, CEOs and biohackers as customers,” he said.
Beyond just measuring the endurance scores, Orbit’s complete offering included an app with specific sections for problem solving and deep work as well as a coaching programme to improve these cognitive scores.
Published on August 25, 2026
