Entrepreneurship
GE Edison challenge
Start of Entreurship Journey
Hailing from the City of Joy, Kolkata, we (my co-founder and I) realized after four years of college life that our dream to work for society by developing technology for mass can’t be fulfilled. Four years of college in a so-called premier engineering institute of India had left us mentally more frustrated than satisfied, just the opposite of what we had expected. For four years of my college life, I searched for a person who had a technical zeal similar to mine and was extremely hardworking. I was unfortunate, but at the end of my college life, a random message on college topics over Facebook became a game-changer. I found my co-founder. Over a cup of coffee, we shared our common likings, common interests, and various science topics on an evening stroll. Suddenly one day during hang-out, they found that their college’s one & only ATM was not working as usual & no money for payment. Sayan expressed his anger in a lighter mode: “What is the need to have an ATM, turn it into a Health ATM?” – The story started. Before asking anything more, she indulged me in a story!!
“One fine morning, you get the worst headache. It stayed 3 days. That’s pretty unnatural! But would you consult a doctor? NO! Why? Expensive, maybe just a headache, and you are trained to ignore those”. Accessing basic healthcare amenities is a real pain in rural India. One has to travel to a nearby town or city for even minor ailments and health assessments. The other side of the coin is that 3 years back, her sister had almost survived during her labor but gave a premature delivery. It was a high-risk pregnancy. She is lucky. But what about others? These two ideas jostled each other. They are not conflicting with each other because the basic reason is the same. Basic amenities for primary healthcare are not available in many villages in India. United nation population report predicts that the world population will hit 8 billion by 2026, with hopping 1.5 billion in India, this increased population demands improved medical facilities, only to realize there are not adequate doctors on role leading to the deaths of nearly 1 million Indians every year, and close to 700 million having no access to specialist care. People have to wait for long in queue due to the greater rush in OPD. Informal healthcare providers provide more than 70% of all primary care in rural India. While technology has the ability to change the status quo of basic healthcare facilities in rural areas, it also has limitations. Human touch is critical to delivering healthcare, and technology has to play an enabler rather than a replacement for doctors or hospitals. Exploring the mix of technology and manual facets, Sayan & Renata floated WECARE MEDSERVICE LLP with two arms: (i) WECARE and (ii) MOTHERCARE.
At the start of summer 2016, I got an invitation for Kalpana 2016 (a nationwide innovation challenge) from his seniors, organized by Tata Centre and IIT Bombay, and urged my co-founder to participate. I was not available at that time because of my pre-occupied job joining issue. My co-founder, with her two friends at college, started working for this competition. With their toilsome effort & my courage, they managed to qualify among the top 10 teams in the final round on 25 th May 2016. Thus, we started our preparations for IIT Bombay. We are flawless at the presentation. We tackled every question with great defense, leaving the judging panel speechless at times with our proposals. The rest is history. We were declared Runner’s Up in the event and awarded a cash prize of 25000 rupees. According to my co-founder’s opinion, “Judged as the Runners Up was just a mere achievement” that occurred just by luck. But, I still believe that there is true potential in the idea. We started our long journey to convert that idea into a product for the market.
IIT Bombay Phase
IIM Kolkata Phase
IIT Kharagpur Phase
Startup journey at HKUST
