Meet Innovator Making Millions From Research-Backed Taboo Health Solutions w/ Soum Rakshit | MV.Health

00:00
Soum Rakshit
200,000 patients now.

00:01
Amardeep Parmar
That's Soum, CEO and co founder of MV Health he exited a company as a studentbefore returning to entrepreneurship many years later.

00:11
Soum Rakshit
That is one of the biggest problems is a lot of people have pain, have issues,dryness, etc. But they often suffer in silence, either expecting it to go awayor not wanting to talk about it.

00:22
Amardeep Parmar
We're the company's making millions now. Getting people to back at the startwasn't easy.

00:27
Soum Rakshit
It is one of the hardest challenges to solve is how do you convince investorsto give you money to build hardware which will take at least five years beforeyou know if it works. I think with that one they either relate to it or theydon't. And it's quite hard to convert someone who doesn't, who has not facedany of these issues.

00:50
Amardeep Parmar
Soum's dedication to solving problems that others ignore really shines through.

00:55
Soum Rakshit
And then we had angels and the angels are exactly like you said, they werehappy to lose the money. So we had to go through our fta, we had to do ourclinical studies, we had to publish our papers. I hope to be doing this anotherdecade.

01:07
Amardeep Parmar
Learn more about how we built such a fast growing company in a difficult areathrough the full episode. You've done so many interesting things in your careerso far. Tell me about when you were a kid there. When you're growing up, whatdid you want to be?

01:23
Soum Rakshit
I think since I was a teenager when I first got Internet, which is with a USrobotics modem, maybe the first one was 26kbps, which is sad. And the telephoneline. The first thing I did was get lots of bits and bobs and build a little PClike getting a CD drive and you know, assembling it. And then I started to buybooks to control the LPT one, which is the printer port, what used to be dotmatrix and from there do electrical circuits. So, you know, you're sitting at acomputer but then you're sending current through those 16 little pokey metalthings and then a light goes off and I'm like, wow, it works.

02:16
Soum Rakshit
So that's kind of my first memory of doing something which I thought I wantedto study for a long time, but I didn't really think of it as I wanted to do itas a job because I didn't really understand jobs back then. What I knew is I'dlove to learn, you know, what goes inside because that's far more complicatedwhen you're in school because you don't go that deep, you know how to use acomputer, how to code, but that's all outside the surface. What I was reallyfascinated about is, you know, how does all this work inside? So then, youknow, undergrad electronics. But it just didn't feel enough that you learn inundergrad, then master's PhD, postdoc.

03:00
Soum Rakshit
And by the end of the postdoc, the irony was I finally realised I know nothingbecause, you know, as you study through school, there are certain subjects youlove, you know, like maybe physics. And you learn it and then you do reallywell in exam and you think you're very good at it. And then as you learn moreand more, you're like, okay, 1% is a lot. And I haven't got to 1% yet.

03:25
Amardeep Parmar
And obviously going through that career of undergrad and masters and PhD, wasthat like, do you just thinking, I want to learn more and more? You wantto send...

03:33
Soum Rakshit
Delay getting a job? Like, okay, I've finished my PhD, what else can I do? Oh,there is a poster after post circle like, okay, I really have run out of thingsto study. I have to either become a lecturer or get a job. So that's the pointwhen I had to get a job, sadly.

03:50
Amardeep Parmar
But you also discovered a new technology beginning. You worked a lot oninnovative tech there.

03:55
Soum Rakshit
So the PhD was interesting and you know, went to Bartleiku and I loved being ina university where they, you know, you have so much freedom. You have youroffice, you have you access to your lab. But you're kind of really independent.You just figure out by reading what has been done, searching what is alreadyhappening, going to conferences, learning, meeting people. So, you know, likegood old research and you have many years to figure out what, in our case, weretrying to figure out how to recognise people looking at eyes. And so that wasthe research. And then over those four years, we built a system not just torecognise people, but also to search big databases. So for example, Aadhaar,which is a big ID card system, it's the Indian ID card system. It has over 1billion people on it.

04:46
Soum Rakshit
And one of the biggest challenges back then when it was being created was howdo you search in a big database? Because obviously now it's less of an issuebecause you have so much compute, so much power that searching a billionrecords would take, you know, not even a second but 20 plus years ago. It wouldtake hours to go through and match. So we invented this like fuzzy searchmechanism where the binary of the I would be the address within the databasetable. But to a certain extent it would be, it wouldn't be exact, but let's sayinstead of searching a billion records, you would search 100 million records.It would still be fuzzy, but it would, you know, instead of taking an hour,would take say six minutes.

05:41
Soum Rakshit
So, so we did lots of really interesting things and this is what I love aboutbeing independent in research, because it wasn't a problem we started with, butit was a problem that came up and then we worked on it separately. And thenalso there were so many discoveries which were completely opposite of what weretrying to do. So for example, were researching on cataract surgery because wewanted to make sure that iris recognition system can still identify you afteryou've had a cataract surgery. And it worked fine. So that itself is not asignificant discovery. It was very useful to have. But what we discovered byaccident is it pre surgery, when they put a drop called atropine, which expandsyour pupils and your iris muscle collapses, it becomes impossible to match.

06:32
Soum Rakshit
So that inadvertently proved for the first time that IRIS was not infallible,which is what everyone taught. Yeah, like, oh, you know, you can never cheat anIRIS system. And we built Iris system and we had to publish it saying that thisis exactly how you. And it's very easy, you just buy it on boots and you dropit and you can cheat any IRIS system, as in you won't get recognised, but ifyou're trying to escape and then you would. So, so that was our first Naturepublication, which is amazing from an academic perspective, but it was alsowhat we had to then figure out as a big factor to tell the world that, look, ifyou're building a whole system based on Iris, this is how anyone can cheat it.So that led to the ID cards in UK becoming multimodal.

07:19
Soum Rakshit
So they were just going to do Iris and then they became, you know, Iris facefingers together.

07:23
Amardeep Parmar
So that's amazing, right? Because you said the technology you did there, yousaid it's okay, you are doing it out of fun, but that's had such an impact inso many different areas where maybe if somebody else didn't do their researchtill a few years later, then is it interesting how the knock on effects thatcame into play and at this point, was it just purely from a researchperspective or you also trying to commercialise or work out that too?

07:43
Soum Rakshit
So my professor commercialised the research and it became a company and thenthat eventually got acquired, but now I can't take any credit on the commercialside because I love the research. You know, it will literally started from ablank piece of paper, like you do with any PhD and then you finish and, youknow, then it's a full system. It was like Iris on the move. You just walkedthrough and the full thing worked. So it was great to see that come to life andbe used. And it's still used in places like Dubai. So that was fascinating. Andthen. And my professor and his business partner commercialised it and theneventually the company got acquired, so which is great because it then gotrolled out globally, which is really what we would love to see research happen.

08:30
Soum Rakshit
But, you know, like, I learned, well everything about coding and Iris andophthalmology, but beyond going to commercial meetings to present the tech and,you know, implemented, integrated, all of that stuff, that's what we did. Notmuch on the commercial side, which is the reason when the company got acquiredand they didn't really need an office in Bath and, you know, we could leave. Ijoined Deloitte because I felt like it's the first time ever I was doingsomething non academic. At the grand old age of 26, I was the oldest person inmy analyst cohort. Everyone looked at me, how slow are you? Like, everyone elsewas 21. And to a 21 year old, 26 is very old. And everyone joins, you know, thesame level as analysts. They're like, what are we doing for the last fiveyears? So.

09:21
Soum Rakshit
But I've gained so much.

09:23
Amardeep Parmar
It's a good, fun fact for the first day at Deloitte, isn't it? Oh, I built asystem that's used across the world.

09:28
Soum Rakshit
I don't think they cared. Also, I made a point to hide the fact I've done a PhDbecause I'd be like, very nerd. I then ended up spending seven years inconsulting. But I learned so much. Even basic things like project management,that's totally outside the scope of a PhD. You know, you research and youpublish papers and you write massive theses, but you do not do projectmanagement or even a calendar. Like, how do you organise meetings? Or, youknow, like, I would meet people and say, oh, what time do you want to meet? Andthen I just go and meet them. They're like, you didn't put it in my diary?Yeah, like, oh, I didn't know there was such a thing.

10:05
Soum Rakshit
So I think the seven years of consulting was so valuable and I don't think whatwe do now, you know, starting MV and building it for 11 years. Yes, of course,the tech is very similar to what we built before. You know, instead of eyes, weWork in neurology. But we couldn't have done this had we not spent significanttime outside learning business.

10:26
Amardeep Parmar
Was it difficult then to go from that PhD background into consulting, or didyou find it quite easy to?

10:32
Soum Rakshit
It was so difficult waking up in the morning because my PhD life was likeresearch till 4 o' clock in the morning and then wake up at 11 because it justworks better. Like we. We were, all of us in the research team, we just lovedworking very late and you can think and you can research, very quiet and it'sgreat. But then you don't wake up at seven and into like, you know, all thetraining courses in the first few months. They started like 7:30. Yeah. And Iwas the one. I wasn't the only one sleeping, so that was the only consolation.But yeah, it was really, it was.

11:05
Soum Rakshit
And also coming from Bath to London, it was such a shock because I'd lived inthis beautiful little village and it's so pretty and everything is so, youknow, beautiful and calm and then you come to the middle of London, like, ohmy, what is this chaotic city? Yeah. No, it was really interesting, thedifference and the initial shock, but then very quickly after the trainingprogramme was over, which was a couple of months and you get to be in theclient side and then it's so fascinating. Like, I spent quite a lot in publicsector in work and pensions, NHS home office, ID cards, transport, security andthen sometime in like engineering, the canon, then HSBC, Santander, so, youknow, quite a good mix. And each project was significant, like at least a yearlong.

11:52
Soum Rakshit
So you get to go in, build something, make it go live and then leave. So it wasvery. It was very holistic in terms of the knowledge from each project over theseven years.

12:05
Amardeep Parmar
And with the different sections had there. Where did the idea from MD Healthcome from?

12:10
Soum Rakshit
No, so the idea of us getting back, us as in, you know, the same team from Bdays and, you know, getting back to building something in biomedical was alwaysthere because I spend all my life till, you know, Deloitte doing biomedicalengineering, electronics and then biomedical. So that's something I reallywanted to focus on. But I didn't know, having finished ophthalmology, what Iwanted to do next as we spend the seven years of travelling. And the travellingreally helped because often when you're living in a hotel with your colleagues,you know, you don't really have much to do in the evening, so you talk aboutjust general life stuff. And a big part was major life events and often pain,you know, like childbirth, pain after that period, pain, prostate pain.Prostate and cancer was not that talked about back then.

13:02
Soum Rakshit
This is ten plus years ago. But you would know within your friend circle andfamily who has it, because people wouldn't really talk, like obviously now,which is amazing. People talk about it publicly and there's awareness andpeople go get checked sooner and or so menopause, again, exactly the samething. 10 plus years ago no one talked about it openly, but now people do,which is great. So I think because when you kind of live with your colleaguesin a hotel and you don't really have much else to do, you talk about, you know,various problems in life and theme tended to be life event and sexualdysfunctions as a major issue.

13:45
Soum Rakshit
And then when we talk to NHS Clinical Entrepreneurship, which is a completelyfree and great programme run by Professor Tony Young and he happens to be aurologist himself, and he said this is the area that needs the most, you know,help from every angle, whether it's engineering, medicine etc, and this isobviously many years ago. This is such an underserved area, the whole area ofEuro and gyne. There are so many issues that people suffer in silence at home.There isn't that much out there in terms of solutions to anything you do willbe health. So that's kind of the way we narrowed down that we want to focus onsexual health on Eurogyn and then bring in the medical expertise.

14:31
Soum Rakshit
In our case, our chief Medical Officer is the head of Urology at King's Collegeand he luckily had started working on vibration research in the beginning ofhis career. So 30 years ago he was working on vibration to assist patients whohad difficulty passing urine. So he used vibration to help them. So. So there'sa lot of vibration research and both here and published, which made it reallyeasy for us to pick that as a topic in order to then build devices which can bevery effective.

15:07
Amardeep Parmar
Oh, hello. Quick interruption to let you know a bit more about BAE HQ. We'rethe community for high growth Asian heritage entrepreneurs, operators andinvestors in the UK. You can join us totally free@thebaehq.com join. There.you'll get our CEO structure in your inbox every week, which is content, eventsand opportunities. You can also get access to a free startup fundamentalscourse by joining. Let's get back to the show. Were you doing all this researchon the side at the beginning or did you quit your job and then go into it?

15:44
Soum Rakshit
One of our co founders, Rob, he has his own lab in Surrey which we then, youknow, built into a big Centre. So he was back then working at BritishAerospace. Rob built the hardware back in, you know, when were doing thesoftware for the iris recognition. So I've worked with Rob from 20 years ago.And when we had this idea, I told Rob, can you build stuff and see what it is?Because it's quite hard to quit a job without knowing that you have somethingwhich is at least workable. I mean, you won't note that it works on a patient,but we needed to know that it can be built from engineering perspective before,you know, he would leave BAE and I'd left Deloitte and, you know, all our otherteam members would leave their big corporates.

16:38
Soum Rakshit
So I think we did it for a year of tinkering on the side in the weekends. Andthen we got to a point where we had a fully working prototype and it was like,okay, this could work. And my bosses were so helpful, they said, you know, thisis such a good idea. Go back, go and do it. If it doesn't work, come back. Andthey said, joke. Because a lot of my old bosses at Deloitte are my investorsand they still joke. I'm on sabbatical 11 years later, so. So that was a greatway for us is, you know, okay, fine, let's go and try it. Maybe a year or twoyears max.

17:11
Soum Rakshit
And if it doesn't work, because we had no idea when then and we didn't raiseany money initially, so we thought, okay, if it doesn't work, we've lost ourtime and money, but that's fine, you know, we're happy with that. And if itdoes work, then we'll raise money and, you know, we'll build it and if itdoesn't, we'll just go back.

17:29
Amardeep Parmar
You mentioned about raising money as well, because hardware is such, like, it'ssuch a divisive point sometimes when people talk about raising money for itbecause, yeah, as you said, it can make such a huge impact. But people alwaysworry about, well, devices and work and it's a different model, say, comparedto other models. And obviously, because you're able to have the background youdid, the prototyping have been a lot easier for you versus some other foundersor other people who tried to take in the same problem. And you said your oldbosses then invested in you. How did that work? How did you convince them tocome on board? Was it just their belief in you?

18:00
Soum Rakshit
Yes. No, that's 100%. And I would say hardware and medical hardware isincredibly hard to raise money and for good reason. To solve that. So ourprofessor and his colleagues at King's College have set up a medtechaccelerator because it is one of the hardest challenges to solve is how do youconvince investors to give you money to build hardware which will take at leastfive years before you know, if it works on, you know, a big patient trial likeso the, and then, you know, it might take 10 years before it can be monetizedand you know, it returns. And most VCs wouldn't have that kind of a timelinewhen they make an investment at early stage to wait 10 years to know if itworks.

18:46
Soum Rakshit
So, so the challenge is you can either fund it to grants to a certain extent orangels or self. You know, that's basically it because at that early stage isreally hard for a VC to invest. So in our case we self funded initially andthen we had angels and the angels are exactly like you said they were. Theywere really keen for us to solve this problem and they believed that, you know,we would. No, actually even beyond that, they were happy to lose the money. Ithink that is the real way to look at it is it's not even, you know, the teamor the concept, it's at that stage it's like, how much money am I happy tolose?

19:33
Soum Rakshit
Because I want this to happen and I do believe the team will do everything theycan to make this happen, but there is a 99% chance that I lose my money. So Ithink that is the key at that early stage. You know, I'm talking about whenyou're, when you have a prototype and nothing else at that point. Which is whygrants make a lot of sense. Because you have to go in thinking, you know,whatever that amount is, it could be, you know, 50k or 100k, but it's like,this is the money. If I lose, it will make no difference to my life. But ifthey can build something significant, it would be amazing.

20:07
Amardeep Parmar
And the other thing you mentioned, obviously because of the area you're in,sometimes that can be quite difficult to talk about too. So for example, if youtold a bit delight, you told your bosses what you're working on. Whereasthere's some people who, as you said, especially in the past, they feel veryawkward about talking about sexual health and those kind of topics. How are youable to navigate that and to try and get people to one believe in what you'redoing. Also to open up about, for example in customer research, to get thosekind of feedback and people to be open about something which so many peoplehave a taboo about.

20:35
Soum Rakshit
I think with that one, they either relate to it or they don't. And it's quitehard to convert someone who doesn't, who has not faced any of these issues to,you know, yes, you now see it more in the social media but then you wouldn'treally invest in something that you don't personally relate to or somebody inyour family has struggled with. And whereas, you know, everyone who investedeven to this day, you know, has somebody in their friend circle or family whostruggles with, you know, pain after childbirth or pelvic pain or period painor you know, going through menopause or has had prostate cancer in the familyor themselves. I think that is still the case because we are 100% angel fundedand angels really invest in things they passionately believe in.

21:28
Soum Rakshit
Which is very different from, you know, if I raise money from a vc it will bedriven by a thesis and you know, projections and tam, et cetera, which is allimportant. But in this case, because it is a very personal thing, you know,health care generally and in this case sexual health care to if they orsomebody in their friends and family has, you know, hysterectomy, etc. Theyknow the impact and they know how little solutions exist. So they want to fundthese solutions to come to market.

22:01
Amardeep Parmar
And then on the customer side, how are you able to get this first customers andto get the word out there as well?

22:07
Soum Rakshit
So initially we did a lot of press and this goes back 10 years. So initially wedid a lot of press but there's a limit to how much you can get through press.So then we started doing direct marketing using paid channels. So you know, thestandard meta, Google, etc. But the big piece was we had to be a medicalcompany first. So we had to go through our fda, we had to do our clinicalstudies where to publish our papers. So were, went through the route ofadvertising which is also very regulated but it's a very structured process.Whereas even to this day it's really hard to talk about sexual health from apleasure perspective. It's generally not. Most social media wouldn't allowthat, which makes it very hard to scale and get customers.

23:00
Soum Rakshit
So in our case we only talk about clinical conditions that we already publishon. You know, let's say pelvic pain, you know, where we have multiple papersand we can talk about it and we have, we work with doctors and patients. So andthat's how we got 200,000 patients. Now what is so good about that is it's alldirect. They email us about with questions and feedback and we can email themasking for feedback. And that gave us the confidence that it works for 95%,which, you know, it doesn't for 100. But then we could iterate and optimiseeach device, the shape, the size, the way it works over the last 10 years inorder to make it adaptable. So it does work for 95%.

23:44
Amardeep Parmar
And also that's incredible, even able to do that when you started out. Soobviously did you ever think that one day you'd be able to say that you've beenable to build this device that 200,000 people are using and 9% efficiency? Whatwas the goals in the early days? How did you see this going?

23:58
Soum Rakshit
No, and I think the big thing in medtech is assuming that you'll have to do itmany times before you'll get to 80%. 80%, I would be very happy with 80%. Whenwe launch a new product, we want to continue to work to get to 95. But thething is, often, and this happens to even products now we would spend, let'ssay two years to get to a product which is now human usable. Yeah. Which takesa long time. And then after it's been used and you don't even need that many,let's say even 50 people use it and you already know it's not good enough. Andthen you go back to the drawing board, but you can't know that till you havemade it so that 50 people can try it.

24:44
Soum Rakshit
And once 50 people have tried it, you often and you know, same for us, go backto the drawing board and start all over again and say a year later, then you'relike, okay, this is good, but it might still not be good enough. And then, andthen a year later and a lot of our products, they easily take five years fromthe day we say, okay, we're going to make this. So for example, right now wejust working on a period pain belt and we started that more than three yearsago and I think it will come out later this year or early next year.

25:15
Amardeep Parmar
So those timelines are so long compared to other types of companies. Butobviously it's paid off in so many different products you've created. How doyou keep the motivation going and how do you keep the team motivated? When youtry some count, it doesn't work.

25:28
Soum Rakshit
Again, it was very hard because when you have one product and you've got it outin the hands of, you know, let's say a few hundred people and you know, itisn't Good enough, but you still need to get it out there more to get morefeedback, but at the same time you want to keep building, to optimise it andmake it really good. So. And that's really hard when you have one product and Idon't think there is any easy way around it beyond just giving yourself timeand have the patience to optimise it, to get to the point it's really good. So.But by the time we got to second product and one product was really good, thenwe had enough time and now six products are fully out there, you know, beingused and really good.

26:15
Soum Rakshit
It gives us the time to do them, do the 7 product properly where we don't. Andalso the bigger challenge is now we work with so many hospitals, doctors,clinics, etc. Now our credibility is really important. Whereas, you know, whenyou just start and you have one product, you have nothing to lose, you can getit out there, get feedback, whereas now we wouldn't really launch anythingunless we are 100% certain it's very good.

26:43
Amardeep Parmar
It's interesting you said that because sometimes people think the beginning isthe hardest bit, but I just. As you get a bigger reputation, then you've nowgot more to live up to.

26:51
Soum Rakshit
Yeah.

26:51
Amardeep Parmar
And obviously, again, 10 years now, how has that journey been for you and howhave your emotions and relationships in business changed?

26:58
Soum Rakshit
I think the bigger challenge when you have a lot of different products, a lotof different doctors, a lot of different research studies running in parallel,is you want every single piece to still have 100% attention that you would, asyou did early on, you know, you don't want any of them to be less. So, forexample, deciding how many studies we do in a year and making sure that thestudies are distributed between the different conditions and is so importantbecause, you know, it's very easy, let's say, to get more patients in erectiledysfunction just because there are more, whereas there, it might be much harderto get that many patients doing a study in vaginal dryness, which is verycommon after menopause. So the.

27:44
Soum Rakshit
But, but that doesn't mean that we wouldn't put in more effort to do that justbecause it's easier to do this. So, I think that's the biggest challenge iswhen you have multiple products in multiple areas, is you cannot ignore one atthe price of the other.

28:05
Amardeep Parmar
And obviously you're expanding the range all the time. How do you choose whichis the next best product to go into the next best problem to solve? Becauselike I said, there's so many different types of problems in this area.

28:16
Soum Rakshit
This one's easy because we built what the Dockers and patients, you know,feedback. So, for example, the next product we're working on is on mastitis,which is breast pain during breastfeeding or, you know, generally. So a lot offeedback over the years has been this is a big area where there aren't anysolutions. And almost every breastfeeding moms have breast pain. And thecurrent solution that, you know, a nurse would tell you is putting a hot toweland then that's pretty much it. So working with the doctors and, you know,understanding how we can solve it is with heat and vibration and building thatinto a really seamless device which can stick on the breast and stay there andbe able to, you know, you can keep it on, wear your clothes on top and, youknow, get on with your day.

29:09
Soum Rakshit
So that's what we're working on. But again, you know, it's not something wecome up with because we would not be able to come up with. The problems aremuch better understood by the clinicians and then the best thing we can do isbe out there. So we do over 20 conferences and exhibitions in Uruguayan andbeing there, meeting doctors, meeting the same doctors again and again, meetingtheir friends, meeting new doctors, meeting hospitals. And that's what gives usthe constant feedback beyond the official route, which is clinical studies andpublishing papers, that's what gives us constant feedback. And then we canextrapolate what we see as the big problems across a lot of clinicians.

29:55
Amardeep Parmar
And what do you enjoy most now? Because I think you said just now you've beenback from a conference, been talking to customers all the time. You also have avery clear technical background as well, and you've got different skills, whichis the one that you like going into, which what do you enjoy?

30:09
Soum Rakshit
I like the most is learning what we need to solve from doctors and patients andthen working with our R and D team to build it. It's that the marriage of thetwo is my favourite bit. And often I think that's the favourite learning frommy consulting days, because it's very different from my research days isresearch days. You have a problem and you know that one problem, and you kindof live in your own world and solve it. You don't talk to anyone else, youknow, generally.

30:42
Soum Rakshit
Whereas what we do now is actually much more similar to consulting, where youdon't know, you know, certain things, but then you know, you would only becalled in because the client needs an external help which they don't have inhouse where you figure out what they know really well and what you know, youneed to build and then build it. So, so I feel in that I love the most islearning from the doctors and patients what is a big problem that has currentlyno or not very good solutions and then figuring out how to build it.

31:21
Amardeep Parmar
So you mentioned earlier as well, so 200,000 patients, 95% efficacy. What otherthings are you really proud of on this journey? Because it's been 10 years,it's a long time.

31:31
Soum Rakshit
We work very proud of our publications. We just published in Nature last week.And the thing is, it is not about, it's not about the actual journals. But whatit improves is all the work we have done over the last 11 years is peerreviewed by the leading doctors and is considered globally unique, which hasnever been done before. And that's what excites us so much, is the work we havedone will then be used by other researchers in the future to build on top of itand make even better products than us.

32:09
Amardeep Parmar
It's clear as well that even though like a decade for many people haven'tworked in the startup for a decade, but it's very obvious that you're stillvery passionate about and you still really enjoy what you're doing. What's thefuture look like? What are you excited about going forwards to?

32:22
Soum Rakshit
Currently not 100% and I hope to be doing this another decade. The big piecewe're working on now is sensor technology because now we have devices in thingsthat has never had devices. So for example, a big area we work on is prostatepain. So prostate pain is obviously very common and you know, and prostatehealth, if not looked after, can often lead to prostate cancer, which again isvery common. So one of the things we are working on is introducing sensors inthe prostate device which hopefully, and again we don't know till we haveactually built it, run it with patients, done studies which will hopefully beable to alert the user when they might have something like enlarged prostate,but they don't know yet.

33:08
Soum Rakshit
And even though we won't know, we will hopefully have a way to guess from thevariations in the pressure, for example, the, that this is unusual for thisperson and they should go see a doctor and that might save lives. So that, sothe diagnostics piece is what we're focusing on for in say the next five years.

33:34
Amardeep Parmar
Let's say someone listening to this and they've got a scientific background,they've been really inspired by what you've been talking about today, whatadvice Would you give them, if they want to then take that background and tryand solve real problems and create a business out of it.

33:46
Soum Rakshit
I think especially in medtech, the best thing they can do is work with theuniversity in the early years. You know, like King's has accelerator, I thinkImperial has one too. It just gives you that ecosystem which makes it so mucheasier to get to the next stage. So you'll have access to doctors, you'll haveaccess to patients, you'll be able to do trials. Yeah, you'll have people helpyou write grants. So all of these things are skill sets that you don't need tolearn. You know, like writing a grant application is hard, but it needs to bedone. But a technical founder is probably not the best person to write that andthere are people who are so much better at it.

34:27
Soum Rakshit
So I think the, you know, especially in medtech because you, there are so manydifferent pieces that you need to solve at the same time and 90% of them havebeen solved already. So you can use that ecosystem and then go so much furtherquicker. So that's why I would recommend being either in the university alreadyin and working with them or joining a metric accelerator within anotheruniversity.

34:54
Amardeep Parmar
So really enjoyed listening to the story. We're going to go to quick firequestions now. So first one is who are free Asians in Britain you think aredoing incredible work and you love to shout them out?

35:04
Soum Rakshit
Definitely have to mention our Chief Medical officer, Professor Dasgupta, whois the chair of surgery at Keynes. I think he has single handedly contributedmore to prostate health than anyone else I know. And he's a fellow Bengali fromKolkata  so I'm biased. I'd also say our very first invest, you know, likeyou asked me, how did you get investment? And I would say the first and theearly investors, they take the biggest risk and they basically put in the moneyexpecting to lose it. So Akash Walia, who's our very first investor, who wasone of my bosses at Deloitte, who not only invested but also then raised a lotof money for us through other investors I think would be the, would have beenthe hardest decision for him to do.

35:57
Soum Rakshit
And then our, you know, our common connection, Rina, because Rina has been sohelpful in not just with, you know, fundraising and being a very prolificinvestor for us, but just, you know, connecting the dots, helping withhealthcare generally, understanding various things like helped, she helped usrecruit our QA manager because QA is an area which is really important, buttechnically I don't understand, you know, what are the nitty gritties of ISO13485, which she does. And she helped us with interviews and getting the rightpeople. So. So yeah, I would say those three people.

36:38
Amardeep Parmar
Awesome. And if people want to learn more about you and what you're building,where they go to?

36:42
Soum Rakshit
Oh, very simple. It's MV health. MV has two meanings. Mystery vibe, which wasthe idea of having a bit more mystery back in your life after major lifeevents, and MV medical vibration, which is what we do. It's very simple.

36:56
Amardeep Parmar
And is there any way that the audience listening today could help you?

36:59
Soum Rakshit
Just talk more about problems you have. Go see a doctor much sooner than youthink you need. I that is one of the biggest problems is a lot of people havepain, have issues, dryness, etc, but they often suffer in silence, eitherexpecting it to go away or not wanting to talk about it. But you know, if theygo sooner to a clinician they would have so much better quality of life.

37:24
Amardeep Parmar
And thanks again so much for coming on. Any final words?

37:27
Soum Rakshit
No. Thank you for having me. We love every opportunity to talk about this somore people can talk about it.

37:35
Amardeep Parmar
Thank you for watching. Don't forget to subscribe. See you next time.

‍