Making Health Checks Accessible + Turning Uber Drivers Into Lab Assistants

Manjinder Virk: [00:00:00] I hired Uber drivers and I trained them to become medical laboratory assistants. So now they have a job for life, and people were like, they're not gonna be able to do this. I was like, they're gonna be able to do this. I was like, gonna show them how to be able to create anything new. You need to be in a position to be able to do that.

Manjinder Virk:We had a lot of family not feeling very well and being unwell when I was younger, so I was like, okay, can I do something to help them? So I went from biomedical scientist to the operations manager, the King's College Hospital, and I was one of the youngest. The only female Asian to do that. We have the knowledge base.

Manjinder Virk:We are biomedical scientists. We could do something to help this. So the whole point is to make healthcare accessible and diagnostic blood testing accessible.

Amardeep Parmar: You ready to  record? 

Manjinder Virk: Yes. 

Amardeep Parmar: Okay, so we're live with The BAE HQ today. I've got here Manjinder Virk, who's the Director of Bioma. They do diagnostic health checks through blood tests with fast and accurate results. If you're joining us for the first time, I'm Amar, and this is The BAE HQ. And we're all about helping British Asians to succeed in business. [00:01:00] And as an entrepreneur. So let's jump in deep, straight away. I'm curious, when you were growing up, what were your ambitions? What did you wanna be?

Manjinder Virk: Honestly, I didn't know. So I knew there was something that I wanted to do. I wanted to obviously contribute to society. I wanted to help people that fundamentally, I knew I wanted to help people.

Manjinder Virk:I couldn't tell you back then. I knew exactly what I was gonna do. You know, a lot of kids grow up and they're like, I'm gonna be a nurse, doctor. Something in the medical field did appeal to me. I knew in that kind of field, but I was always very curious. So I was like, okay, how do things work? And we had a lot of family not feeling very well and being unwell when I was younger.

Manjinder Virk:So I was like, okay, can I do something to help them? And then, you know, medicines would come into the house and I'd be like, okay, what does this do and why does it do what it does? And how much of it does it help? And it became kind of a learned behavior. So then I kind of got drawn into  that field. 

Amardeep Parmar: So, you know, a lot of people get the pressure from their families about becoming a doctoral dentist or something like that. Do you feel like it was more led from your curiosity? 

Manjinder Virk: I was lucky I didn't have that pressure. It was more curiosity on my part. I was like, I just wanted to know how I could help my family for one, and just make people generally feel better. That was my genuine motivation. But then [00:02:00] it's also my curiosity then led to, you know, my degree in computer science, my interest in business, because I wanted to do things a certain way.

Manjinder Virk:There was stuff that, you know, I'd always ask questions. So I like, okay, this medicine's like this, or this person's not feeling because of this. Why is it that they have to go to a GP? Why do they have to go to a hospital? Why? Why are they waiting in hospital for so long? So that kind of motivated me to do things.The way I have done them.

Amardeep Parmar: So when you went into university and studied medicine, was it what you expected it to be? 

Manjinder Virk: So I studied biomedicine.

Amardeep Parmar: Biomedicine, yeah. 

Manjinder Virk:Yeah. Everybody thinks it's medicine. 

Amardeep Parmar: Yeah. 

Manjinder Virk: It's not. No. So my first day of uni, I think a PhD student came out and he was like, okay, this degree is accredited.

Manjinder Virk:Haven't got a clue what that meant. I was like, but that's great. That's good. And then they started going through basics of biology first year for university students who are studying any kind of medicine or science is basically generic and it's all the same. And it's when you get into the second year and third year that you start developing a bit more of a understanding of what the job might involve.

Manjinder Virk:But with biomedicine in the UK and medicine in general, you need to gain a trainee biomedical science position afterwards to be able to get state registered. So [00:03:00] there's kind of a whole pathway that you're not made aware of whilst you didn't degree. So it was lab work, it was lab coats. It was experiments, but it was a lot more theory, but it's not quite what I expected.It wasn't bad.

Amardeep Parmar: Oh, so so you enjoyed that.

Manjinder Virk:I didn't enjoy it.

Amardeep Parmar: Yeah. From there, you then went on to do like a long career in biomedicine, right. Amongst other things

Manjinder Virk:. I was a medical laboratory assistant at Kings when I had, just before I graduated my first degree, literally I'd gone into the lab and I was like, okay, I'm only gonna be here two weeks.

Manjinder Virk:When you come out of university, first time you're like, oh God, is this it? Is this work? I progressed as I progressed over the years, you know, from medical laboratory assistant, I was a temp and then I became permanent, and then training Biomedical Scientist and then Biomedical Scientists. At that point, when I reached Biomedical science level, I thought, okay, what do I want to do?

Manjinder Virk: Where? What level do I get at? You know, some people are happy being biomedical scientists, BMS ones or twos slightly senior for the rest of their career. They're happy with that, and I was like, okay, this is a career for me. It's not just a job. Okay. Career wise, I want to see how much of an impact I can make, and I know I need to become the Chief Scientist, or [00:04:00] I need to become the operations manager in order to be able to do that,

Manjinder Virk:I looked at Pathology as a whole, so diagnostic testing as a whole, I was like, okay, we have the IT bit, we have the quality bit, the health and safety bit, and the actual management bit. So I then Computer Science, I decided to get my Master's in Computer Science. I hadn't got a clue about Programming at all, but I was like, why can't it be done?

Manjinder Virk:And at that same time, I enrolled in my MBA so I decided to do both together, distance learning whilst working full-time and call work.

Amardeep Parmar: how was that?

Manjinder Virk:  It's not the norm to be done, but I was like, why can't I do it? And it was manageable and it became quite enjoyable because it was like literally organizing yourself.

Manjinder Virk:So I need to do that piece of coursework. I need to do that one. I'm working on call. I might get called at two o'clock in the morning to go and test a donor sample. I'll come back home and then I've got a full day's work, but I can. It kind of fits the bit after it was all done was a bit like, now what do I do?

Manjinder Virk:But I knew I needed to do that in order to be able to get into, even get into an interview to become the Operations Manager. I knew I needed to have the Education and the backing 

Amardeep Parmar: As you progressed to biomedical like career [00:05:00] pathway? 

Manjinder Virk:Mm-hmm. 

Amardeep Parmar: Where did you kind of get to and what was the outcome of that? Like hard work you'd done, obviously you did get those roles that you wanted. 

Manjinder Virk: I skipped a grade, so I went from Biomedical Scientist to the Operations Manager, the King's College Hospital, so I became their, yeah, Operations Manager for infection sciences and I was one of the youngest, the only female Asian to do that, and it was incredible.

Manjinder Virk:It was amazing. To be able to then manage the team that you've kind of grown up with and to be able to help make their lives better and make their roles better. And just for them to then turn to you and say, okay, you know what, if you've done it, we can do it too, and then want to stay there for longer.

Manjinder Virk:And then I, you know, the pandemic happened and it was a good time to be a Virologist. The funny thing was, so I gained my specialist Virology diploma whilst I was the Operations Manager. It's usually not done that way. Usually you go from like the Junior Scientist, you get that diploma to become the Senior.

Amardeep Parmar:Mm-hmm.

Manjinder Virk: So when the assessor came in, he was so confused. It was hilarious. But again, even he [00:06:00] said, why can't it be done this way? 

Amardeep Parmar: What was the actual impact that you actually studying in the work you were doing? What was that making yourself? 

Manjinder Virk: So Virology is a very small discipline. It's very specialized, so it includes, you know, basic screening for Influenza to all the stuff like HIV.

Manjinder Virk:So at King's College Hospital, they're one of the major Virology, uh, diagnostic centers in the country. So the impact of them being motivated and them being happy to be there, them having those skills that, so some of these people were, you know, Junior staff, but some of these people had been there before I'd born.

Manjinder Virk:So, and they're really amazing at their jobs, and they had helped train me. So they're very, very intelligent people. They're amazing. So to be able to then guide them to make their lives easier to then contribute to the field of Virology, especially during the pandemic, and this wasn't our only pandemic as a team, we've been through like five different pandemics as a team and to then help them on a personal level and on a professional level to the point where, you know, they were so happy to be there.

Manjinder Virk:That was the best. And I couldn't have done that unless I had reached that position ‘cause again, being in the healthcare infrastructure, being in that kind of environment, you are [00:07:00] very kind of led by what's already established. To be able to create anything new, you need to be in a position to be able to do that.

Manjinder Virk:So that's where I knew I needed to get there. And then once I got there, I always felt like I needed to be able to do more. So that's, yeah, what's happened

Amardeep Parmar: During the pandemic in the UK and like, well, Global Pandemic of Coronavirus, how did that affect your role? Because obviously you were at the forefront of that.

And you worked with the different COVID test centers as well, right? And you did quite major impact there. What was your role in that situation? 

Manjinder Virk: So myself and my team are Kings, including like my co-founder for Bioma and Sophie came up with a testing method for the UK for COVID testing. So the virus obviously, It's our specialism.

Manjinder Virk:We have Dr. Mark Z Command, Dr. Melvin Smith. So we have really good team there, amazing people. We had to come up with a testing method to be able to high throughput covid testing, which was both accurate, sensitive enough, and timely enough. There's no point in giving people a result when it's, you know, too late for any kind of intervention to happen.

Manjinder Virk:Plus to be able to control and try and control and spread, you know, reduce the spread of the virus. We had to kind of mobilize very [00:08:00] quickly, so within 20 or four hours we had a live test. That we could then give to the government, ‘cause we were asked to, to set up in all the major lighthouse centers within the uk.

Manjinder Virk:And then we were also asked to help with the Mega lab in Leamington Spa, which is 10,000 tests that were just processing per day. So now obviously surveillance testing, we've had quite a big hand in that. 

Amardeep Parmar: A lot of people listening, they might think they've got lot of pressure at their jobs.

Manjinder Virk: Yeah. 

Amardeep Parmar: But then if you are kind of tasked with finding a test that's gonna help like millions of people and it's really life or death, How is it working in that kind of environment?

Cause obviously it's one hand, it's a challenge, but there's so much at risk there. 

Manjinder Virk: There's so much at risk, but you're never doing it alone. You have a team, you know, if it doesn't work, what should we do? There's always that kind of excitement about adapting, changing. We did have a pro, you know, point.

Manjinder Virk:During the pandemic where the MA kit manufacturers and the supply chain issues were ridiculous and they changed a component of the test kit, and that component led to sensitivity issues. But as a team, we were able to then adjust the kind of [00:09:00] formulations and stuff like that to be able to then bring back the sensitivity.

Manjinder Virk:So you will always find that in science anyway. You'll find that in anything you do, you have to adapt because nothing will stay consistent. It's stressful, but it's also exciting because you know you can do something about it. And you know, you have to do something about it. There's a lot of, there's weight of responsibility, but then you are in a position of responsibility for a reason because you've shown some sort of character to or motivation to be able to want to do something about it.

Manjinder Virk:So yes, stressful, but you have that responsibility. It's, it does become fun in a weird way because you're like, okay, you know, we're gonna have to figure a way to do this. Someone thinks that we can do this. We think we can do it. Why not? 

Amardeep Parmar: Let's hear somebody listening right now is like hoping that one day they get into that kind of a role, right?

Manjinder Virk:Yeah.

Amardeep Parmar: Where in these high pressure environments, but they're also like, I imagine some people can be nervous about stepping into that kind of role that you had because there is a lot of pressure on that. What advice would you give them? Like how would they put themselves in that position and be able to take that risk that you did?

Manjinder Virk: I'm not gonna lie to you, so I remember as soon as I got that position, I was actually working on the Saturday there. And I was walking down the corridor and I realized, [00:10:00] okay, I'm going to be the manager of all this. And I was younger and I was a bit kind of like, okay, wow. And I was like, oh wow. But I was like, why not?

Manjinder Virk:You will feel the weight of it. You will, but then the weight also, kind of motivates you a bit more to say, okay, I can do this. I can make that network within my organization to say, okay, if I need someone to help with this, you don't have to do everything yourself. So if I need someone to help with HR, yes, I'll speak to HR manager.

Manjinder Virk:That kind of ensure confidence that you may not have, but eventually will come to you. You'll get comfortable. You'll be able to say, okay, I know who to talk to. I know who to speak to. I know how to put them together. And always feedback from your team. There are things that they want to say. And sometimes they don't feel comfortable saying them or they just feel like they've said things and they've spawned on deaf ears and it's just not working.

Manjinder Virk:So speak with them cuz they, your team will help you grow. Your team will help you feel confident in what you're doing. And if there's something you're doing that isn't working and isn't conducive to your role, they will tell you [00:11:00] and that's what you need. You need those people around you, that kind of supportive structure.

Manjinder Virk:And you will build that. If you feel intimidated by something that you want and you don't know how to get there, break it down to little steps and say, okay, I knew I needed to get these degrees to, for anyone to even look at me for a management position, I needed this education. And longevity wise, I knew in this profession it's never just gonna be health diagnostics, blood tests all the time is gonna be tech, it's gonna be management, it's gonna be business, it's gonna be all this kind of stuff around it.

Manjinder Virk:And I need a student have a knowledge base in each of it to be able to inform, to be able to speak confidently about it. And it kind of piqued my interest. So do that research, say, okay, I need to do these kind of things. I need to speak to these kind of people. Because management is responsibility. People need to understand that it, it's not, I am in this position.

Manjinder Virk:I have power. It's not power, it's responsibility. Like you're responsible for a lot of people, for a lot of different things. They will come to you and they will confide in you about what's helping, you know, helping them tick, what's motivating them, what's demotivating them. They'll, you know, confide in you.

Manjinder Virk:That's a lot of responsibility. You want to help them. You obviously keep, you know, professional [00:12:00] limits, but you also want to make sure that they are happy because you spend most of your time at work anyway. So, you know, my team was always happy and that was, that made me feel good and it helped me stay in that position.

Manjinder Virk:It helped me develop that position and change it into something new. I was like, this is what an operations manager needs to be. What if a chief scientist should be someone that's approachable, someone that's, you know, science isn't just in the background, Pathology is just in the background. We are trying to make an impact.People need to know we exist. 

Amardeep Parmar: So how many people were you in charge of? Like, just to give people an idea of the scale.

Manjinder Virk:. So Virology was found, it started off around, so when I first got there, we were chronically over, like short staffed, right? So we had about 18 people and then it grew over the pandemic.

Manjinder Virk:Obviously it was like 80 people from different industries. So during the pandemic I noticed, you know, people in different industries who were losing their jobs. So I hired Uber drivers. And those people I knew that were gonna lose their jobs and I trained them to become medical laboratory assistants. So now they have a job for life.

Manjinder Virk:Right. I remember being at the like airflow cabinet teaching them how to do pipetting and people were like, they're not gonna be able to do this. I was [00:13:00] like, they're gonna be able to do this. I was like, gonna show them how. So now they're amazing. Those people are amazing. They're in those positions.

Manjinder Virk:They've been at kinks since I left. A couple years ago, and they've moved themselves up into procurement positions, different positions within the healthcare industry. So they're still contributing, but now they have careers. 

Amardeep Parmar: As I, as you mentioned there, you left Kings a couple of years ago. Yeah. What was behind that decision? Where did you go onto?

Manjinder Virk:, so with Kings, I got to a point where I felt like I'd done everything I needed to do. I'd become, you know, their ops manager. There wasn't anywhere else to go. So then private pathology, I had no experience with private pathology in the UK so I was like, okay. So Eurofins Diagnostics, they approached and they asked for help setting up their COVID test labs and their clinical diagnostic pathway in the UK and I was like, I can do that.

Manjinder Virk:Let me go and try and build a laboratory from scratch. And we, um, traveled across the country helping them set up their, you know, diagnostic pathologies. A lot of that work was changing whatever the that lab was doing previously into something new. So, for [00:14:00] example, forensics had to switch to Covid testing.

Manjinder Virk:That's very different. So training those people to be able to do that. So it's interesting and they were able to do a lot more because their resources were a lot more than the NHS. So you 

Amardeep Parmar: So you got the taste of the private sector there. And seeing how, obviously you said where I guess you got less checks and balances or less bureaucracy maybe, which means that you can get more done with the resources you had as well.And how long after that was it when you started Bioma?

Manjinder Virk: So within six months. So the idea was always there. So during the Covid Pandemic, obviously there was a lot of laboratories mobilizing a lot of people who had no scientific experience or kind of went in healthcare. Were just setting up Covid Labs as a business.

Manjinder Virk:Obviously healthcare is a business. There should be an ethical motivation behind it. Always, within six months of being at Eurofins, I was like, okay, you know what? I can build a laboratory. There's a different kind of way we can do things. So the idea was always there. Once I left Eurofins, within six months, I had obtained the funding.

Amardeep Parmar: What was the actual step? You took that, right? Cause you had, you mentioned co-founder earlier. What was the steps like, okay, we're gonna do this, and then what [00:15:00] happened next? Like, how was that, what was the, I guess, a turning point for that decision to do it together as well?

Manjinder Virk: So, me and my co-founder, we have worked together for, since Kings many, many years.

Manjinder Virk:He was a training officer. He helped me become state registers biomedical scientist, one of the best scientists in the country. It was him, it was our clinical director, Dr. Mark Zuckerman from Kings. He was also and Dr. Melvin Smith. So we, we come as a team. And we always kind of, no matter where we are, we're always talking to each other, to, you know, different types of, in the scientific community, just different types of things that are coming out.

Manjinder Virk:What do we think of this? You know, we always meet up and we talk about it. It got to the point where in private pathology, again, I'd got to that stage where their labs were set up, they were running, and it was like, now what? It kept getting to the stage of now what I, I always feel like I'm not done. So I was like, okay, we can do this.

Manjinder Virk:There's a different way of doing this. It should be more accessible to people. So then it became about what does a community need? Okay. There was a backlog post covid, very kind of into the second lockdown. Mm-hmm. You know, we were sitting there and we were chatting and we were like, okay, COVID will wane.

[00:16:00] It will become one of those routine viruses that is part of our, you know, yearly cycle. You'll get the flu, you'll get Norovirus. You'll get covid. Okay. It's gonna get to that stage. Post covid. What happens? Post Covid, we have locked down our healthcare infrastructure. We don't have people attending appointments.

Manjinder Virk:There's gonna be a massive backlog. What can we do and what is the NHS gonna be able to cope with? And what are the private pathologies that have opened up that are just doing covid testing, gonna be able Manjinder Virk:to cope with, mm-hmm. We have the knowledge base, we are biomedical scientists. We could do something to help this.

Manjinder Virk:So that was that switch. We're like, okay, what do we need to get there? And I was speaking to someone at work, um, one of the other managers at work, and we were talking about funding. We were talking about different types. So this guy, he was the financial director of many, many. Companies, including I think some biscuit manufacturer.

Manjinder Virk:So he is like, have you thought about angel investment? Nope. I had to Google it. 

Amardeep Parmar:Yeah. 

Manjinder Virk: And even then it was still about, okay, what do we need to have this kind of business? What we need a building or do we wanna do a mobile lab? Do we wanna have a lab in a van? So there was a lot of brainstorming of [00:17:00] different types of ideas.

Manjinder Virk:How much would we need? Because, you know, equipment during Covid, obviously the prices is inflated, and then people trying to sell off that equipment afterwards. We want brand new. What testing would we go with first? What, you know, all that kind of research went into it, and then it was, it was very kind of quick.

Manjinder Virk:It was a quick pitch deck. I find if you spend too much time overthinking something, you overwork it and you're not able to explain it correctly or you're not be able to, you start doubting your own ideas. So came together, I did a pitch deck, quickly put it on an Angel investment website, and then was very lucky in the sense that people just kind of latched onto the idea and then again, on the other end where you are then skimming all these kind of interests or these kind of messages, looking at who's kind of gonna actually help you or is is intimidating.

Manjinder Virk:But I did find, you know, I've recruited thousands of people. 

Amardeep Parmar: Which which Angel platform was it of interest? ‘Cause some people, it seem like now might be trying to raise money. 

Manjinder Virk: The Angel Investment Network. So there's actually an Angel Investment Network platform. [00:18:00] Literally you upload your pitch deck and fill in all the information and then see what happens.

Amardeep Parmar:That money that you then took on board, right? So, You've got the idea, you've got the team, you've now got the money, and then now you need to execute. Right? Yep. How is it from going from being where you're working for somebody else to now being the one who's completely in charge? Was there any differences in the way you worked or things that you now to consider that you didn't have to consider before?

Manjinder Virk: There were things like, for example, you obviously you need to purchase the building or you need to. They take on a lease, those kind of things. So those very kind of material things that you needed to consider. Electric electricity suppliers and all that kind of stuff you need to think of. Besides that, again, recruitment's the same.

Manjinder Virk:HR is the same, those processes, but the fact that you get to build those processes yourself rather than following something that someone's already got in place. It's very different. So it's like, okay, in an ideal world, and you can spend too much time overthinking this, how would I want HR to run? How would I want my recruitment process to run?

Manjinder Virk:So we're fully compliant, but it's easier, you know, what kind of internal IT system do I want? How am I gonna make sure I'm regulatory compliant with everything in the easiest [00:19:00] way possible? Or is there a new way of doing things? So, you know, you'll go from NHS, they do it one way. Private pathology does it another way.

Manjinder Virk:You've had exposure to both. Can you create a hybrid solution? You'll find you do get caught up a lot in the fact that you think you can create something brand new. You don't have to create everything brand new. There's a lot of stuff already out there that you can use and then you can approve over time.

Manjinder Virk:‘Cause um, there's a lot of stuff you'll buy in and over time you will need to change anyway. You'll need to adapt. So never kind of fall into the trap of thinking, okay, I've got this and now I've got it for the next 10 years. No, ‘cause you'll spend, you'll waste a lot of time overthinking. Over analyzing. All I would suggest to everybody is build your team and make sure you have reliable and kind of people that you can just feed off of or kind of bounce ideas from.

Manjinder Virk:Once you have that, everything moves very quickly. Besides that, things to consider if you've been in any kind of management role, you'll understand that you do manage everything, not just the people. You do manage all the little bits, the maintenance, the um, suppliers, the supply chain, all that kind of stuff.

Amardeep Parmar: So you mentioned there about picking the right people, right? [00:20:00] 

Manjinder Virk:Yeah.

Amardeep Parmar:And how important it is. How do you pick the right people, right? Because everybody knows how important it is, and even what we're doing right now, right? I'm trying to, I'm interviewing people, trying to get the right people on board, but obviously it's very difficult to self from an interview process.

Amardeep Parmar: How do you know that you've got the right people on board so that people listening can make sure that they get the right people too? 

Manjinder Virk: They have to be the people you can work with. So you know yourself, who can you work with because you're gonna be all working towards the same goal. So can you communicate with that person effectively?

Manjinder Virk: Is that the per kind of person that you'll be happy to see every day and you will be able to speak to quite openly and discuss with, and would they feed into the same goal that you have? That's all you need to know. 

Amardeep Parmar: Obviously I went to by myself, got my test done, and I could see you guys like laughing about together and things like that, and having a bit of laugh and sometimes at my expense, which I won't hold a grudge against.

‍

Manjinder Virk: You can't, you can't, you, we kind of stabbed you with the needle, so it's all right. Yeah. 

Amardeep Parmar: Yeah. So, But I could, I could see the evidence of that, right? So me just walking in there as a patient to test out, see what it's about, [00:21:00] and I could just hear you in the reception, like everybody, like laugh making jokes, I own exposure jokes, and your poor humor,

Manjinder Virk: but got nothing to throw at you.

Amardeep Parmar: So I, how, so how long has it been now? Since when? When exactly did, um, by start, 

Manjinder Virk: So we officially opened end of January. 

Amardeep Parmar: And  what's the progress been since then? 

Manjinder Virk: So since the end of January, we're growing our team, we've grown our skillset. We've got a collection site in Knightsbridge and we have a collection site in Birmingham as of couple of weeks ago.

Manjinder Virk:And we are working with a lot of good kind of health clubs and gyms and we're meeting a lot of people cuz there's, health is obviously attributable to every industry. There's a lot we can do. So it's, it's still going. We're thinking of new ways to do things. The whole point is to make healthcare accessible and diagnostic blood testing accessible.

Manjinder Virk:The number of people that come to us and just ask for a blood test and they don't know what blood tests. So we've gone into that C P D educational aspect. We've applied to the Institute of Biomedical Sciences to become accredited, to be able [00:22:00] to train our own scientists. So we're doing a lot of different things.

‍

Amardeep Parmar: And like, let's say, obviously making healthcare accessible is such a huge goal. What would you see, like in say, five years time? Where would you really hope that BIOMA has got to?

Manjinder Virk: So we need to have at least one clinic in every major city within the country, and that's within five years. Beyond five years

Manjinder Virk: We need to be everywhere in terms of training. We need to be creating a new healthcare infrastructure, which supports the NHS. We're not here to replace, and again, there's a lot of new tech coming out. Health tech, we can feed into that. We can feed biomarker data into that so people can have a lot more autonomy for their health.

Manjinder Virk:So they can literally look at their app or look at their phone to see what's happening. So where people feel a bit more empowered to look after themselves. It's all about proactive healthcare. And as much as we can do within the next five years to be able to promote that. We were happy to travel internationally to bring in tech from everywhere else, bring in health, you know, kits and everything from anywhere, just to see what we can do to support what we have here and to help improve things.

Amardeep Parmar: So we're running outta time [00:23:00] now, but I know that you do a lot more than just by humor as well, right? So from what I know, so you design computer games, You're on the board of a football club. 

Manjinder Virk:Yeah.

 Amardeep Parmar:And there's a million other things that you told me that I've probably forgotten. So like

Manjinder Virk: I've forgotten as well.

Amardeep Parmar: Like what, I guess what I wanted to hear is like the range of different things you can do while also achieve what you've done in the medical field, but just showcasing to people listening that you can be hyper successful in one field, but also have those hobbies in other areas or even hobbies because it's also making an impact in different areas at once.

Manjinder Virk: Yeah. 

Amardeep Parmar: Could you give us a quick like overview of that? 

‍

Manjinder Virk: Okay, so I'm on the Board of Royal Southwark FC, and again, it's also feeding into the fact that there's people that want to be football players and you know, unfortunately they end up on the pitch and they collapse because they have an undiagnosed condition.

Manjinder Virk: This is about trying to feed into that kind of healthcare infrastructure into sports and say, okay, fin, we'll do a blood work analysis. You may find something, but you, you know, we'll help you, support you to find another career within the football industry that you [00:24:00] can still do. You can still be part of something you love, but we can find another way for you to do it.

Manjinder Virk: So that's something, that's a passion project. There's also some charities I work with because there's a lot of people that need help. There's a lot of people that come to us for, you know, help guidance and support, and any way we can find to do that, I find that enjoyable. You can do a lot of different things.

Manjinder Virk: If you, I've say this to my team all the time. If you want to speak to someone, there's nothing stopping you. You know, obviously be polite, be courteous, be you know, give them information. Never kind of force yourself on someone, but there's nothing, never hesitate. Why? Why would you hesitate anyone's capable of anything?

Manjinder Virk: You just have to try and you start building up this resilience, which allows you to bring on more staff and be able to do more. And I think you only get one life. You should. 

Amardeep Parmar: So who are three British Asians, you'd love to shout out?

Manjinder Virk: Okay. Jasminder Singh, he's the OBE. He's um, the CEO of the Edwardian Hotels in London.

He's one of the, um, country's first sikh, uh, billionaires. James Caan, obviously recruitment, and he was on Dragon Stand. The fact that he's still doing a lot to support people. Amazing. And there [00:25:00] is Aday Hasan who's gone into energy bulb. 

Amardeep Parmar: Very nice. So next one is, if people listening right now could reach out to you for help or guidance.

Manjinder Virk:Yeah, of course. 

Amardeep Parmar:What should they reach out about? 

Manjinder Virk: Anything they need help with, basically, but it anything kind of business related or anything when they're starting off, if they need some help or guidance on how to do things. People get overwhelmed with pitch decks, I think a lot. And they overwork them or they overdo them.

Amardeep Parmar: And on the flip side, is there anything you need help with? With by you mean need help with right now.

Manjinder Virk: We just want people to be more aware of their health and be a bit more proactive. We don't, you know, wherever you get tested, just make sure you get tested and you keep on top of it.

Please look after yourselves. 

Amardeep Parmar: Thanks so much for coming on today, and thank you for testing me as well. Have you got any final words of the audience?

Manjinder Virk: I just wanna say to everyone, just try and be motivated. And there are industries that you don't have to just stay in one industry. You don't have to just stay in one field.

Manjinder Virk:And if you aspire to do something and rather than be something, then do that. So you want, you aspire to do million other things, different industry, different things. Just try and you'll build that [00:26:00] resilience and, um, It could turn into something massive.

Amardeep Parmar: Hello. Hello everyone. Thank you so much for listening. It makes a huge amount to us and we don't think you realize how important you are because if you subscribe to our YouTube channel, if you leave us a five star review, it makes the world of difference. And if you believe in what we're trying to do here to inspire, connect, and guide the next generation British Asians, if you do those things, you can help us achieve that mission and you can help us make a bigger impact.

And by doing that it means we can get bigger guests, we can host more events, we can do more for the community. So you can play a huge part. So thank you so much for supporting us.

‍

‍