The med student founder fighting leukaemia — whilst building a startup
“The good news is you’re 17 and you have leukaemia, but the bad news is… you’re 17 and you have leukaemia.”
Nikhil is the founder of ‘Get to Sleep Easy’, a MedTech startup creating a device which converts a regular bed into a hospital bed for a tenth of the price, complete with sensors that can detect falls and pressure sores. He’s also a medical student and has fought off cancer 3 times (acute myeloid leukaemia). We asked him about his incredible journey and how he navigated the first year as a founder and winning Textbook Venture’s Student Startup Festival 2018.
What was the driver behind your decision to start “Get To Sleep Easy”?
The idea stemmed from my experience with cancer. In late 2017, I lost a close friend to an illness that should not have happened. He was going through leukaemia treatment like I was, and had finally made it through the toughest part. After being sent home for follow-up treatment, he caught an infection, and pneumonia ended up taking him at home. Another friend of mine fell in a hospital. She wasn’t seen for 20+ hours. She ended up having a massive stroke and passed away, at just 29.
I realised that things like sudden falls and infections were very preventable but were still claiming the lives of cancer patients. After tossing up different solutions, the idea of creating a hospital bed stood out the most — as it was core to most patients’ treatments.
What led you to decide that this problem was one that you could solve yourself? Did you ever consider simply pitching this to a larger company or working with them to solve it?
I looked into the idea of the hospital bed and wondered why nobody was doing this. The reason is that traditional hospital beds are expensive. Incumbent manufacturers want to make higher margins (they sell surgical beds for $100K) so they didn’t bother innovating with consumer products. There was definitely interest from people in the industry but nobody was willing to put their hand up and take on the challenge.
Did you do any user testing or market validation around the problem? What did the market tell you you should do?
We did some extensive idea validation before building the product. My engineer and I first outlined features that would be nice to have before we took the concept to people to test.
In order to try our concept, we talked to caretakers, patients, the elderly and hospitals. We even called 150 nursing homes to do user-surveying and got 20 follow-ups. This really helped us crystallise the pain points and our biggest takeaways were:
- A large majority of potential users were elderly who lived at home and were not wealthy
- Our main potential users (elderly) couldn’t afford a proper hospital bed but desperately needed a bed with a lifting function that could reduce falls by 30%
- Pressure sores were also a common issue that occurred in 25% of patients and needed to be addressed
- Patients and caretakers (both family members, and healthcare staff) had no way of knowing if people were safe or not.
We then pivoted our idea and instead wanted to make every bed a hospital bed. We looked into bringing cheaper sensor technologies to the masses. Sensors can help monitor movements and adjust the inclination of the bed to save people. Importantly, it’s scalable and we can get it into the homes of many people.
And we identified another huge market too — people who wanted to get better sleep, and just Netflix in bed without breaking their back. Our product doesn’t necessarily need medical device approval to sell for this purpose. This could get us to market quicker too!
How did you find the right team to build the product?
Very early on, I started engaging with groups of technical people that were willing to make a difference (e.g. ‘Engineers without Borders’).
Some ‘entrepreneurs’ are worried about sharing their early concept but to me sharing my concept was an opportunity to find the right people. Remember that most people you talk to don’t have the propensity to steal your idea. I talked to a lot of engineers to get some tips on how to build the product out.
Eventually, we found an organisation that recognises skilled migrants and refugees from overseas. We got connected and found our first medical device engineer who had come from India. He knew about safety requirements, product development and helped develop the Smart Inclining Bed. Although he’s not an employee, he still consults with us one day a week. He was, in a way, our first technical ‘founder’ and first engineer.
I also found inspirational people at hackathons. It’s a great opportunity to network with other people — you very quickly find people who have the requisite experience. It’s also a good way to find a co-founder — and you can do it all in 2–3 days! That’s how I found our current CTO (Nick) — at ‘Random Hacks of Kindness’, a hackathon to help social enterprises.
Since launching your business what have been some of the major milestones?
- In January 2018, we brought in our first engineer. He helped design our first models and products and we started pivoting away from the hospital bed idea. We developed the product very quickly and achieved market validation by March 2018.
- We won TedX ‘s Kickstart grant and the NSW MVP grant too in the last year. It’s good to get some early recognition and capital from the NSW government.
Looking back on the first 12 -18 months, what guidance would you give to other student founders just starting off or looking to start?
- Get out there and talk to people, especially key stakeholders and experts in your field— do that as early as possible. Find people on LinkedIn and reach out to them by making it interesting and convenient for them.
- Be in constant contact with potential users/customers, lots of people develop something for months and then realise nobody wants what you’ve built.
- Execution is key and it helps turn an idea into a reality. You should pick an aspect that you’re passionate about to get you out of bed every day.
- But the idea is very important too. Solve a problem with a big market and economic opportunity to scale. It’s not (just) about getting rich. You want to tackle a big problem with a big opportunity — that’s what investors are looking for.
- Don’t be dismayed by competitors, and don’t give up after a small failure. After a while you keep on changing and evolving the business model and you’ll get to something that is validated and scalable.
“Get to Sleep Easy” Needs Your Help Launching:
- VOTE: Get to Sleep Easy’s app — ‘Centered Around You’ is in the running for a $200,000 grant! If you live in the suburbs surrounding Randwick, Kensington, Sydenham, Zetland and UNSW, in the “Heffron” electorate, vote for them here (click).
- If you or someone you know or love would like to try out their products, you can sign up to be a beta tester here.
This piece was written by David Zhou of Textbook Ventures — we organise startup events, write newsletters and cater exciting activities for student entrepreneurs across NSW.
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