Neopenda’s mission is to improve healthcare in Africa and other developing areas. Sona Shah, CEO and Co-Founder of Neopenda, spent time teaching English in Kenya after finishing her bachelor’s degree.
There, she was profoundly affected by the disparities in quality of life she saw. And when she met her future Co-Founder at a Master’s degree class in Bioengineering, the idea for Neopenda was born. They were able to get funding from Columbia University to travel to hospitals in Uganda.
There, they saw at every hospital a boneyard room – a place where well-intentioned first-world high-end medical equipment got junked. Items that no one was qualified to use. Items that they couldn’t get spare parts for. Items that just couldn’t be used without more reliable, continuous power. An item with instructions in German where no one spoke German.
The two left and set out on a quest to make medical devices more usable and more available for eastern Africa. They started with Neoguard, a neonatal vital signs monitor. It doesn’t require continuous power, and doesn’t need spare parts, but that works as well as the first-world alternative.
With a billion people on the continent of Africa alone needing better healthcare, Neopenda’s opportunities are nearly unlimited.
Sona shares with The Savvy Entrepreneur how she & her Co-Founder built the foundation for the company over a period of 6 years. The design, regulatory, supply chain, and other foundational issues were daunting. But the two persisted, believing the work needed to be done.
Today, the company is growing rapidly and has raised multiple rounds of outside capital. It’s an inspiring story. Sona is articulate, passionate, yet engaging and practical.
The following is a transcript of my inspiring interview with Sona. If you’d prefer to listen to the original interview, go here.
Doris Nagel 0:12
Hello out there, all you entrepreneurs & small businesspeople! You’re listening to The Savvy Entrepreneur show. I’m Doris Nagel, your host for the next hour.
The show has two goals. The first is to share helpful information and resources. I have made so many mistakes as an entrepreneur over the past 20 or 30 years. And I’ve had lots of friends and clients make lots of mistakes. So if I can help you up there not make at least a few of those mistakes, then I’ve been successful.
The second goal is to inspire. I found being an entrepreneur, confusing, and often lonely. Sometimes you have no idea if you’re on the right track or not, or where to turn for good advice.
To help with both those goals, I have guests on the show every week who are willing to share their stories and advice.
This week’s guest is Sona Shah. She is the CEO and co-founder of a company called Neopenda, which is doing some very interesting things to help address underserved markets with medical devices. And her story is going to be inspiring and wonderful to listen to.
Sona, thanks so much for being on the show this week. Welcome to The Savvy Entrepreneur Show!
Sona Shah
Thank you so much for having me. I’m really excited.
Doris Nagel
I am too. I think I told you that I’ve spent a good chunk of my career in the medical device world. So I have at least a tiny inkling of some of the challenges you face.
I think the place to start really is to talk a little bit about what Neopenda does. What do you make and sell? And who are the buyers you’re targeting?
Sona Shah 2:02
Absolutely. But if it’s okay, Doris, I might introduce a little bit about my background, because it might help set the stage for why we created Neopenda.
Doris Nagel
Absolutely yes. Because that was the next question I was going to ask you!
Sona Shah 2:15
Thank you again, for having me. I’m an engineer by background. I graduated from Georgia Tech — more than a few years ago — but we won’t go into that!
I did my chemical engineering degree, and graduated a semester early. I thought: why not do something a bit different before starting to work in pharma?
So I went to Western Kenya and was a teacher at a primary school. It had nothing to do with my engineering background, but I loved it nonetheless. I was there for several months and just really, really loved the culture, the community. Everything about it was incredible.
Except for the inequities that I saw — inequities that I was fortunate not to have growing up. And so that stuck with me, and certainly is shaping what I’m doing today.
But fast forward, I had a job lined up at a pharmaceutical company. I entered into a totally different world of research and development at a large American corporation. I was there for a little over two years, using more of that chemical engineering background. I really loved healthcare. I really loved engineering, working with bio reactors.
The medications that we were making were being used in clinical trials. And I got to see a number of really incredible medications go through the pipeline.
But I found myself thinking: my kids in Kenya may never see the medications that I was helping make. And that inequity ate away at me enough that I went back to graduate school to somehow figure out how to provide more equitable access to health care around the world.
I didn’t know I’d end up with a startup. I met my now co-founder while we were both getting our master’s degree in Biomedical Engineering at Columbia University. We took a bio design course together and started thinking about newborn mortality and why it’s so much higher in low resource settings than it is here in the US.
Ultimately, that became our agenda. So [at Neopenda], we design medical technologies for emerging markets. I’m sure we’ll get more into the product and the company and what we do, but just wanted to give you some context to start off with.
Doris Nagel
Wow. What an amazing journey. It looked like from your website that you have a product that you are now selling. Is that right?
Sona Shah
Yes.
Doris Nagel
How did you decide on your first product? Because the needs are just so huge. It’s almost daunting — I’m imagining — to even know where to start.
Sona Shah 4:38
I completely agree. So when we were at Columbia, we took this Bio Design course that directed us towards newborn mortality in particular. So we kind of had a narrow focus to begin with.
But there’s really only so much that you can do from a lab in New York when our markets were in Africa. So we got some funding from the university and traveled to Uganda and did a needs assessment.
Most of our time was spent in the newborn wards, the neonatal wards, and we found that there were just far too many critically ill patients and not enough nurses to help care for them.
Doris Nagel
If I can interrupt — what were the biggest limitations? Was it caregivers? Was it power? Was it medicine, all of the above?
Sona Shah 5:22
All of the above, really. The biggest issue that we saw was that there was a room the nurses called the equipment graveyard. And it’s honestly just a room that is full of broken medical equipment.
Equipment gets donated from countries like the US and it doesn’t work because it requires continuous power, which most rural hospitals don’t have. Or I had one nurse tell me that she had a fully functional incubator, but the instructions were in German, and she didn’t speak German, so she had no idea how to use it.
So the equipment graveyard is real, and we found them pretty much in every facility that we went to.
And that was why we created Neopenda: to design medical technologies that actually function in any environment, and that are designed fit for purpose, with an initial focus in Africa.
Everything was severely constrained. At the first hospital that I went to, there were 150 patients to each nurse. So there is certainly a staff shortage in these wards. They also don’t have equipment to be able to care for the patients that actually need it. And medications were also pretty scarce. They didn’t always know what medications needed to be stocked in the facilities, because there just wasn’t access to any of the data or access to any equipment that really can help with these issues.
Doris Nagel
You know, I spent a lot of time with Baxter and Cardinal Health and Fresenius. I even worked, I think I mentioned to you before the show, in the international group, with international distributors for those countries. And I spent a lot of time helping distributors [sell their products] in a lot of countries.
But the big companies just don’t really have a presence for the most part in a lot of African countries, right? Maybe there was a distributor in Egypt and South Africa, but that’s about it. And the big medical device companies. I mean, typically, you’d have a distributor who would teach the clinicians how to use it, and would keep a stock of spare parts and that sort of thing.
Sona Shah 7:30
I think this is changing. And this is certainly not the case for everybody. But I’ve had my fair share of investors, for example, that think of Africa as one country that’s very poor. And that’s a misconception that we work very hard to fight against.
There’s a lot of opportunity. There are over a billion people on the continent. And there’s such a massive need for technologies there.
But to your point, a lot of med device companies have kind of flown over Africa because they don’t see the market opportunity.
So that’s why we’re different. We see the biggest opportunity in emerging markets where these technologies just don’t exist.
We are starting to see a change. Some med device companies are paying more attention to the African continent.
But I think what becomes really challenging is designing a product that actually functions in these environments. Most of the time, we see large med device companies come in with technologies that work in the US and then try to adapt it, but does it actually work?
Doris Nagel
So why don’t they work?
Sona Shah 8:30
Well for starters, we have our vital signs monitor Neoguard. Part of the reason we’re different is that our device doesn’t rely on continuous power.
We’re all familiar with kind of the big, traditional multiparameter patient monitors that you would find in an ICU in a hospital in the U.S. But those all require continuous power.
What happens if you don’t have that power? Can the devices function? What happens if you don’t have spare parts that are locally available? If something breaks down, it often takes months to be able to get a replacement.
So there’s a lot of unique challenges that exist in most of the world, actually. Eighty-five percent of the world’s population lives in low- and middle-income countries.
And their constraints are ones that we designed for. For example, what happens if dust and humidity and environmental conditions impact the products that are in these environments? They often don’t have controlled air conditioning, so in a lot of facilities, dust just gets into everything. How do we design equipment that actually functions for the users that need it?
Doris Nagel
Who are the customers for your products? At some level you need to convince someone to actually buy these products, right?
Sona Shah 9:41
As is true with healthcare stakeholders all over the world, we have several customers. And usually the payers are different from the users. And as you mentioned before, having distribution partners is a common approach.
Our actual customer is a distributor, who then resells it to facilities hospitals.
What we often find in African countries is that the facilities are divided into the public sector and the private sector. Public sector healthcare usually has some kind of government affiliation, whether it’s county level or Ministry of Health level.
And then the private sector is usually subdivided into a private-not-for-profit sector, which is usually faith-based, and private-for-profit, which is the traditional for-profit private institutes that you think of [here in the U.S.].
So there are different types of end facilities that we can target with our system. But in all cases, we sell through a distributor who knows these markets well and has access to all of these different hospital customers.
Doris Nagel
How did you assess the demand for the product? At one level, hospitals in these countries, I’m sure, look at some of these medical products that are on the market and think it would be wonderful to have them. But maybe it’s not at a price they can afford or doesn’t have features that make it sustainable for them.
How did you tackle those challenges?
Sona Shah 11:10
Affordability was one of our biggest design constraints. At Neopenda, we’re very much a for-profit entity, where we equally care about profits and impact. The more devices that we can sell, the more profitable we are as a company, and the more impact we can have as a company
But we care equally about affordability. By design, we have made the system much simpler to use. We’ve taken out a lot of the expensive components and really designed it to be something that is actually affordable for these communities. But still we maintain a healthy profit margin.
Doris Nagel
You mentioned something I wanted to follow up on. You have a mission to do good but are also a for-profit corporation.
I happened to notice on your website that Neopenda is a public benefit corporation. Talk a little bit about that form of company, because it’s I think it’s not one that that everybody necessarily thinks about. People mostly talk a lot about LLCs and S corporations, but seldom talk about the public benefit corporation and how you decided to choose that, and what implications that has for your business.
Sona Shah 12:23
Absolutely. Because we care equally about impact and profitability, we structured ourselves as a public benefit corporation, which is a legal structure that allows me as an owner to make decisions both on fiduciary duty but also based on the impact. So there are times that I can legally make decisions that are more impactful or legally make decisions that are more profitable.
And it also signals to our partners and investors and stakeholders the type of company that we have instituted. I’m not a CPA, but my understanding is that, for all intents and purposes, a public benefit corporation has the same tax structure as a C Corp. It allows me to make similar decisions for impact as well as profits.
So it’s largely a signaling thing, it helps attract the right people to the company, not the people that are looking to maximize on profitability with impact just being shoved to the corner. It really makes sure that both go hand in hand for us.
Doris Nagel
Thanks for that explanation. I thought it was worth touching on that, because a lot of my show guests and listeners might be interested, given my focus on underrepresented entrepreneurs, women entrepreneurs and people of color, and people who are doing socially important things.
I thought it was worth chatting about for a minute, because I’m not sure if it’s a structure that is top of mind for everybody when they’re when they’re setting up their company. So if it’s available in your state, which in this case is Illinois, it’s worth looking into.
Sona Shah 14:05
We’re actually registered as a Delaware public benefit corporation. But we are registered to do business in Illinois. And so I would definitely encourage others to consider this structure.
There is also another structure called a benefit corporation. A public benefit corporation, or PBC, is a legal entity. A benefit corporation is kind of a status of a company. So companies like Patagonia, for example, are benefit corporations. They care about a public benefit, but it’s not necessarily built into their legal structure. There’s kind of this rigorous pathway that you would go down to qualify to become a benefit corporation.
And so there is a distinction between the two. If you’re looking at different legal entities, a public benefit corporation is something I’d recommend looking into.
I know in Illinois there are different structures. I think there is also an L3C corporation, which has some elements of impact built into it or public benefit built into it.
Different states have different structures, but public benefit corporation, in my understanding, is one of the more common ones across the US.
Doris Nagel
Thanks for that. That’s very interesting.
I’m curious about how you found distributors in Africa. Was it difficult? What do you look for in the distributors? And how do you find them?
Sona Shah 15:24
Distributors are a really essential component of our business. Because there are 54 or 55 countries in Africa, we don’t want to put a team member in every single country. That’s really expensive, and not really a scalable way to grow.
So distributors are a really good way for us to scale our efforts and not have to have a presence in every country that we’d like to enter into. Identifying potential distribution partners is usually not too difficult because that’s how hospitals typically get their medical equipment.
Where it does become difficult is the vetting process and making sure that it’s the right relationship for the organization. We very much appreciate our distribution partner. We went through a pretty thorough vetting process. We’ve known both of the distributors that we have in Kenya and Uganda for quite some time, and so we’ve built a relationship with them over the years as we’ve been developing the Neoguard system.
But beyond that, as we go into new countries, one of the first things that we do is try to engage with potential distribution partners. That’s a really good way to get to know a new country, as well as just have boots on the ground.
It is one of the more difficult tasks going to new countries — just establishing that type of relationship. But once you do find the right partner, then they’re a really good way to scale your efforts.
Doris Nagel
Yes, a distributor can really make or break your sales and market penetration efforts.
How many countries are you selling in now?
Sona Shah 16:58
We’ve officially launched in Kenya, and our first devices are getting delivered to Uganda next month [mid-2022]. We’re really excited to be formally launching, although we’ve had quite a bit of ongoing work in Uganda. So we’ve had a soft launch there for quite some time.
We also have ongoing efforts in Ghana, Tanzania, Ethiopia, Nigeria, South Africa — so quite a number of countries in Africa. Part of our approach is to conduct pilots or to do some small-scale work in a country to help us figure out whether it’s a country that we’d like to launch in and really start scaling our efforts.
We aren’t focused as much on how many countries can we be in – rather, it’s more of how deep we can go into the countries that we already are in.
So, we’re in Kenya and in Uganda, and then have a presence in about five other countries as well.
Doris Nagel
That’s amazing.
Talk about the production process. With the design process, I’m sure it helped that you’re an engineer, although I’m sure that had its own challenges.
But then you had to figure out how you’re going to get it manufactured, as well as have the supply chain in place.
How did you tackle those issues?
Sona Shah 18:10
By hiring someone that’s way smarter than I am.
For the manufacturing, we turned to a lot of other startups in Chicago that are hardware focused. We’re also based out of mHub, which focuses on hardware technologies, so there were a lot of mentors that we turned to when we were looking for potential manufacturing partners.
Our manufacturer is based in Malaysia. We were originally introduced through another startup in Chicago that was doing some hardware work in Malaysia as well. As part of the vetting process, we did on site audits, we had third parties go in and do audits, we looked for certain qualifications. ISO 1345, for example, was an important qualification for us as a medical device company.
We also wanted a manufacturer that was able to encompass the full range of product from plastics to electronics and was able to manage that and grow alongside us. So not just be able to handle low volume production, but also high-volume production once we ramp up.
So there were a number of things that we looked at. We vetted quite a few potential manufacturing partners, even in the US, and received quotes, looked at their quality, looked at the support that they would provide, and ultimately ended up with the manufacturing partner that we have currently.
It’s been a really great partnership. But having somebody on our team that is very familiar with manufacturing and supply chain and understands design for manufacturing and has worked with overseas suppliers has been really instrumental for us.
Doris Nagel
You know, Malaysia was one of the first places that a lot of the medical device companies turned to when manufacturing started offshoring. And so even though some of those operations now have been closed, the expertise remains. So it’s interesting how Malaysia and other countries have been able to take advantage of that knowledge and pivot to other things.
How does the supply chain work? Do you dropship the product from Malaysia? Because bringing it all the way to the US and then back around to Africa is maybe not the most efficient, but then if you drop ship, you don’t always have the ability to inspect the product and make sure that make sure that what you think is getting sent is actually sent.
Sona Shah 20:37
We ship directly from Malaysia to the destination [in Africa]. The products don’t come through the US for a variety of reasons, including costs and time, but also all sorts of other things.
To maintain product quality, there’s quite a number of inspections that we do at the manufacturing site itself. So we have come up with our own quality inspection records that the manufacturer has to fill out and complete.
Upon receipt in country or distributor also does a number of quality inspections, both upon receipt and before they deliver to our end customer. And we have access to all of these records, so we review those in parallel from our manufacturing site and our distribution partners.
But to answer your question, the supply chain is directly from Malaysia to the end destination.
Doris Nagel
That’s amazing! I’m not sure if everybody listening on the show actually understands what a feat that is to set up and put in place. I’m impressed!
Talk about some of the regulatory issues. Most health care companies complain about the FDA and all of their regulations. So I guess that’s not relevant for you, since the products don’t touch the US.
But I’m guessing there still are probably some regulations in place. How did you sort through those?
Sona Shah 21:56
We hold ourselves to the same level of safety, efficacy and quality that you can expect here in the US or any other high-income country, even though we do not have to go through FDA. We have the CE mark, which is the European version of FDA.
Most of our markets in Africa are more familiar with CE Mark, and it was a more suitable pathway for our product, which is a wearable vital signs monitor. For CE mark, this is a class 2 B product. It would be a class 2 product here in the US as well.
There is a pretty rigorous process. It took us six years to go from initial conception to get the CE Mark. But to be fair, [Neopenda started] while we were still in grad school. So if you knock a year off of that, it’s been five years full time. We did the R & D from initial concept all the way through getting clearance.
The actual submission part was relatively painless. But that’s because we had spent the beginning years really creating our design and development process, getting our ISO 1345 certification and [putting in place our] quality management system.
Those were really important for us going through many iterations of the product, as well as many clinical trials, both in the US and in Africa. So once we were ready for submission, it was really just a lot of writing and the culmination of our technical file.
But yes, it took quite some time. And again, to be fair, a lot of it was because we were building things for the very first time. So now that we’ve got our system in place, and we are ISO 1345 certified, we have our manufacturer qualified, our next product won’t take us that long, because we’ve already developed this system already.
Doris Nagel
Yes, there’s a lot of foundation that you put in place. It’s like the frame of the house, really. And now you’re just, framing out a new room, basically, as you expand to different countries.
But I am just astounded, though. Again, for people who aren’t in the medical device world, what you’ve accomplished is truly astonishing. And people may or may not appreciate it, because you make it sound so easy!
Sona Shah
There were many, many trials and tribulations along the way. So it’s certainly worth it. But it was not painless!
Doris Nagel
I’m sure not. And the process took a long time. And I know that medical devices are an expensive area to make headway. Talk about how you found funding for the products and for Neopenda.
Sona Shah 24:34
Yes, definitely creating medical devices for the African continent creates a lot of challenges in the funding realm, because we are a highly-regulated business that involves hardware in a geography that a lot of people don’t understand.
So when we talk about funding traditionally for medical devices, I dare to say it would be pretty simple if you had a medical device that was focused on the US, because a lot of people understand the US markets, and so it’s easier to go through the process.
But as soon as we throw in the African context, a lot of people who understand devices don’t understand that market. And on the flip side, a lot of investors that do understand Africa don’t understand med devices. They don’t understand the regulatory piece. They don’t understand hardware.
So it’s been a really tough balance to find that funding. Fortunately for us, we’ve been able to secure a few million dollars at this point in funding, through both non-dilutive sources and dilutive source.
Early on, we were able to do to get funding from competitions and prizes. For example, Vodafone, America’s Foundation, Cisco, and a lot of the large corporates were really interested in the work that we were doing and infused, non-dilutive capital into us to just kind of get going with the idea.
Doris Nagel
By the way, I don’t mean to interrupt you again, but the list of prizes on your website that you’ve won through competitions is astounding. Good for you! Congrats!
Sona Shah 26:03
Thank you. We certainly wouldn’t be where we are without the support of some of the early investors that really took a gamble on us and the idea that we had, even in the very early stages. And we’re certainly grateful for that support.
Doris Nagel
It also looked like you have done some crowdfunding at one point, or maybe are still doing some through Republic?
Sona Shah 26:34
Yes, we did do some crowdfunding, which originally was actually a way to also crowdsource ideas from people. We did it just to get other people involved in our efforts, and then it took off.
So it was actually a pretty great way to fund some of our initiatives as well. We did go through Republic. We also went through a couple of accelerator programs early on as well, like the TechStars Founders Factory Pulse MS Challenge.
There have been a number of different programs that infused capital into us. More recently, in the past couple of years, we have gone down the investor route as well. We value both the impact in the monitoring and evaluation that comes with grants, but we also value the business acumen that comes along with investments. We very much appreciate kind of that dual approach of dilutive and non-dilutive capital.
But recently, we’ve been doing more traditional funding rounds,
Doris Nagel
You have tapped into almost all of the major different kinds of funding sources. What have you learned along the way? What advice would you offer to people who are trying to be successful at pitch competitions or pitching to traditional investors or crowdfunding?
Sona Shah 27:56
Know your audience is the first piece of advice that I would give. Do your homework, do your research on who is in the audience when you are pitching. An investor or a grant organization are looking at different elements.
And so while it’s still your company, and still your business, maybe for grant purposes, you focus more on the impact that you can have. And for investors, you focus more on how you can make investors money.
Of course, the impact will be embedded into the story that you tell investors and the sustainability into the story that you tell grant funders. But knowing your audience is one of the biggest pieces that I would recommend early on. And catering what your messaging is to those audiences.
The second is: don’t be afraid of doing a little education. A lot of people may not know your space, and you know your space better than they probably ever will. And so, just know that when people are asking questions, it’s not necessarily to be condescending to you; it’s really to try to understand your markets a little bit better.
So build that into your pitch narrative – provide answers to the questions that you commonly get from people when start your pitch and your story and your narrative, because those are the questions that everybody will be asking.
And the more you can address those head on, the more it appears that you know what you’re doing, and [they will assume] that you have tackled some of the bigger issues.
Doris Nagel
Were you good at doing that just by doing it over and over again, or was it because you found a good accelerator to give you the right feedback, or did you practice with friends that give you feedback?
Sona Shah 29:35
I hate pitching in front of friends. So I wouldn’t recommend that!
Some people really do much better in a room of strangers than if it’s a room full of a friendly audience that they know. But I think that’s a personal preference.
And I do think accelerators are a really great way to gain some of that experience and expertise. There are some accelerators that really focus on a demo day and gear you up for a pitch. I’ve literally been in some pitch practices where people are throwing napkins and all sorts of things at you just to get you into the realm of just keep going and keep pitching no matter what. Yes, quite literally! So accelerators can be really helpful for that.
I will just caution you that pitching isn’t the only thing that matters. It’s also about the content that goes into the pitch. Because it’s great if you can exude confidence. But if there’s no actual meat, if there’s no substance behind what you’re pitching, people will see right through it.
So accelerators are good for pitching and getting you into the mindset of what content is important. But you still have to do the hard work of actually generating the traction that is necessary to go into a pitch.
I do recommend rehearsing, whether it’s with yourself or with friends or in various pitch competitions. And be very receptive to feedback. So anything that people ask you and give you questions on, think, “Oh, is that a real legitimate question that I can actually use to grow my business? And therefore my pitch? Or is this something that is this an indicator that maybe this isn’t the right funder for me?”
Parsing that out is really important. But the good feedback can actually help you grow your business.
Doris Nagel
I’m particularly curious about the crowdfunding piece. I have spoken to a lot of entrepreneurs who think that crowdfunding is something easy — that you just sort of throw your site out there, and people are going to throw money at it.
The manager and creator of one crowdsource funding platform who was a guest on the show told me he finally closed his platform down, because he said so many entrepreneurs were so unrealistic about it, that it was just very frustrating.
Talk about how the crowdfunding process differs from traditional pitching, and some of the things that you need to think about to be successful there.
Sona Shah 32:08
Yes, you’re reaching a different audience there. You’re reaching an audience that may not know much about investing that may not know much about the markets that you’re in. But they are in some ways, an easier target in terms of just being able to sell them the vision of why you’re doing what you’re doing.
People have different reasons for why they would go into a crowdfunding campaign, or why they would give money, whether it’s a donation or through an equity platform. There’s different reasons why people do it. And you have to figure out what are those reasons are.
So building that narrative is super, super important. Crowdfunding takes a ton of work. It’s not just kind of the upfront time of creating your pitch to a variety of stakeholders or the audience that might be out there.
There’s kind of the ongoing media presence that you have to have. There’s providing updates through along the way. There’s the aftermath and all of the legal aspects of what you’re doing. So it’s a ton of work.
Whenever people ask me now about crowdfunding, I tell them don’t it if you aren’t willing to spend at least 50% of your time. It doesn’t have to be everyone on the team. But there has to be at least a dedicated person for the crowdfunding campaign. If you’re not spending 50% of your time, you’re probably not going to do super well, unless it’s kind of a home run idea.
Doris Nagel
Wow. That should be sobering for people listening who think it’s a slam dunk way to raise a bunch of crowdfunding money.
Sona Shah 33:34
Yes, it’s a lot of work. And it’s definitely worth it. In some ways, I think all of the campaigns that we’ve done have been really beneficial for us.
But every time we consider a crowdfunding campaign, we do consider what’s the opportunity cost, I could be spending all of this other time growing my business and doing other aspects – for example, the media articles are still really good even five years later.
But ask if it is worth going through all of those efforts, because it is a lot of time that you’ll have to take in developing your social media plan, and developing how you’re going to reach out to people and follow up with them and just keep the momentum going.
The other advice that I had gotten early on, which I would certainly give to others, is if you are planning on doing a crowdfunding campaign, I would recommend getting to 30% of your goal even before you launch.
So whether that’s all from your circle of friends and family or other people that you know, finding people who are willing to contribute that first day that you launch is really, really important. Find people that are willing to do it on day one, because the more momentum and excitement you get on day one, the more that the platforms will feature you and you’ll get picked up by news articles and other all sorts of other things.
Doris Nagel
Nobody wants to be the first. They want to know that they’re onto the next hot thing, right? Those are great pieces of advice.
So far, what’s been the best part about having your own business?
Sona Shah 35:01
There’s a million things that I love about it. But there’s a million things that are challenging because it never leaves your mind.
But I think one of my favorite parts of it is really being able to define the strategy and pave the way for things that just haven’t been done before. Of course, we lean on the backs of all sorts of people that have shaped the space.
But not very many people are focusing on medical devices in Africa. And so everything is new and challenging. But that also means that you’re doing something that is drastically different and making a difference. And that has been really exciting for us. Having that for profit entity that cares about impact has been really great.
I can wake up every morning and still say that I’m doing this because I can help improve quality of care for patients around the world. And I actually see the impact of that when I see devices on patients and hear the stories that nurses are telling us.
I know that we’re making a difference, I know that we’re solving a real pain point. And it’s not just another gimmick, another tech that’s cool, but doesn’t actually have a problem that needs it.
So I love having a company where you can guide and shape the vision of it.
But of course that comes with all sorts of anxiety. Because you’re shaping it, you can’t fail. Because you’re not only setting precedent for Neopenda as a company, you’re setting precedent for medical device companies in Africa, and for other female-founded companies and all sorts of other things. So it adds a lot of pressure.
Doris Nagel
Having worked in healthcare, I agree with you — I think people who work in health care — all aspects of it — are genuinely motivated by the fact that they’re helping people.
But most of them never get to see how they help people up close and personal. But I’m imagining you hear stories from patients or caregivers that really help remind you probably every month or every few weeks that you’re really making a difference.
Sona Shah 37:12
Yes, that part is really nice.
I’m normally based in Chicago. But now that things are opening up again, I travel back to Kenya quite frequently. And one of the things that really rejuvenates me is just being in the hospitals and spending time there. And just seeing how the devices are being used.
Not all feedback is going to be positive feedback. But there is a ton of positive feedback. And I think that’s what keeps us going. Just being with our users, and being able to interact with the parents and the users of the devices has really been what keeps a lot of us going.
Doris Nagel
Are you able to track any sort of metrics on in terms of things like number of infants that whose lives were saved, or life expectancy or any of those kinds of things? I’m sure over time the numbers would be pretty persuasive if you could collect them accurately.
Sona Shah 38:12
Absolutely. And that’s definitely something that we’re working towards. But we’re always very cautious about claiming live saved because of a vital signs monitor. While it’s absolutely essential, it still also requires nurse intervention.
My monitor can tell the nurse that this patient has low oxygen saturation, but the nurse still has to intervene and provide oxygen to the right time.
And we’re really careful about claiming anything around lived saved, because there’s a multitude of different things that have to happen to actually save a life.
Of course, there are anecdotes of “I wouldn’t have known that this patient needed to be resuscitated without the device.” And so there’s a lot of anecdotal stories around that.
One of the things that we look at more immediately is utilized the real utilization of devices: are nurses actually putting these devices on patients, and for how long?
We know that vital signs monitoring improves patient outcomes. There’s lots of studies that show vital signs monitoring does that, and also decreases length of stay in a facility.
So what we are proving is that our vital signs monitor that has equal impact as other vital signs monitors on the market, and potentially even more, because the markets that we’re operating in are where they don’t have access to vital signs monitors. S
o there are kind of proxies that we can look at. We care very deeply about utilization. If the nurses like it, they are obviously seeing value. Otherwise they wouldn’t be using the product.
And then we are doing longer-term cost-effectiveness clinical impact trials. We have one that’s ongoing right now, for example, in Kenya. It’s a yearlong study. And so there’s all sorts of trials that we have planned for ongoing impact metrics.
Doris Nagel
What’s next for Neopenda? Where do you see the business being maybe two to three years from now?
Sona Shah 40:00
We would like to become known as the medical device company for emerging markets. We envision the Neoguard to be many products. And we’re well on our way to adapting the Neoguard for different use cases, but also creating a pipeline of complementary products.
Of course, that’s not going to happen in a year or two years. But we are well on our way to developing that pipeline. So that in five years from now, when maybe I’m on this show again, I can talk a little bit about that journey of becoming a multi-product company.
Doris Nagel
There’s so many different ways you could grow that I’m sure you have to be really careful about how you manage the growth. There’s so many countries that could use your products. And there’s lots more products that are needed.
But that takes bandwidth. Talk about your strategy for growth.
Sona Shah 40:59
It’s a combination of geographic expansion and product development.
We’ve got both a robust business team and a robust R&D team. The R&D team is kind of focused on managing customers and making sure that the product is meeting their needs.
But now they’re also starting to transition into what’s next in terms of what new products can we be working on our business team is, of course, also very in tune with our customers, and making sure that we are serving their needs beyond the products, but just more generally, and we’re looking at how do we expand from one country to two to five to 10?
Doris Nagel
As you’ve said, the foundation you’ve built will make every incremental country or incremental product that much easier.
I’m sure there’ll be challenges, but the first enchilada was a pretty big one. And now you’re into a really exciting phase of the business.
Sona Shah 41:59
Yeah, it absolutely is. I think we’re at a fun transition now where we can start thinking about what’s next. And how do we grow?
In the past, it was all focused on how do we launch Neoguard? What is it? What does it mean to go from idea to how do we make money? How can we keep money coming in? And have customers that are paying, that sort of thing?
And now it’s actually transitioning to “Okay, we have a product, and we know people like it, and we know how to sell it. And we know how to be sustainable. How do we amplify that? How do we grow as effectively and quickly as we can?”
Doris Nagel
One of the reasons I really was excited about having you on the show, Sona, is that you’re the CEO and co-founder in the MedTech world. And today, still — although there are lots of women who work in Med tech companies and in healthcare in general — there are still very, very few women CEOs and founders of medical device/MedTech/healthcare companies.
Why do you think that is?
Sona Shah 43:03
Good question. And I think there’s a number of different factors.
I think generally in the healthcare space, you do see a lot of females — not necessarily in the startup ecosystem, but certainly in the healthcare space, we see a lot of females just because there is kind of that impact and empathy element to the healthcare industry.
I think one of the things that has really helped me is having a really supportive community around me. My husband has been a huge advocate of Neopenda since we started, and this was before we were married.
Having a partner that really empowers me to be the person that I want to be, to grow the company that I want it to grow into, has been really instrumental.
And I think that sometimes it’s difficult for other females to have that support network. It doesn’t have to be a partner. It could be a co founder that’s been really instrumental as well, just having somebody to bounce ideas off of and know that we’re not going through it alone.
Just finding that network can be challenging for other females, especially at different stages of life.
And as females, we do get different questions from investors. For example, we all know the statistics about how many female founders actually get a funding versus male founders.
Doris Nagel
It’s ridiculously low, and I think the numbers keep going down. Now, it’s less than 2%, which is to me, it’s just absolutely outrageous. I’m dumbfounded.
So talk about that, what? How is the experience different than your opinion?
Sona Shah 44:44
You know, it’s really difficult for me to answer to that, primarily, because we are such an atypical company. Again, med devices in Africa is not something that most people know about. Most investors don’t have a thesis for that.
Thankfully, we found some new investors that have that kind of focus as to God. Capital, for example, is one of our newest investors, and they’ve been super supportive because they understand this base, but most people don’t.
So for me, it’s really difficult to parse out when you get to know from an investor, whether it’s because there is any sort of bias with gender, or if it’s just they don’t understand.
Doris Nagel
Right. Because they don’t understand it, or they think it’s not viable, or they think it’s crazy, or just throwing money out the window or whatever.
Sona Shah 45:27
I will say, though, that I have gotten my fair share of inappropriate comments during the investor pitches or kidding operation. It’s not the greatest, but there’s, thankfully only a handful of them, but a handful more than there should be.
Doris Nagel
How do you think we should address that? You’ve been through all sorts of different funding approaches and been through a lot of different experiences. How do we make it better for our fellow women?
Sona Shah 46:01
I think the education piece is really important. If you’re not directly in a startup and pitching to other investors, but you know the space quite well, I think educating other investors about the importance of having gender diversity and thinking with a gender lens. Even if your fund isn’t female focused, at least making sure that you’re cognizant of the biases. If you end up with 10 startups that you invest in, and none of them have a female lead, there’s a problem in your sourcing. And there’s a problem throughout your whole process.
And so I think there’s just more education, more advocacy needed for investors, and encouraging them to look at their numbers and look at their statistics and make a conscious effort to include diversity – in all aspects of the word — in their process.
I think that’s really important. If you are a female founder, I would say, you know, just keep going. Don’t let the don’t let the handful of people that are naysayers for some ridiculous reason, or another be the Debbie downers for, you just kind of move them to the side and say, “Well, I can’t wait to prove you wrong.” And don’t let them get to you. There’s enough people to tell you no, but all you need is that one person who’s going to tell you that you can do it. And there’s plenty of those people out there who can help you.
Doris Nagel
That’s great advice.
Looking back on your journey so far, what advice would you give to your younger self, if you knew what you knew now?
Sona Shah 47:33
Good question. I think one of the things that has certainly stuck with me from the very beginning is to find a problem that’s worth solving. It seems very intuitive once you say it, but I think a lot of people start with really cool tech. And then they find a problem that the tech is applicable for. It sounds so ridiculous saying it, but so many people do that.
[My advice is to] start with a problem. Figure out what problem you want to solve, and then create technologies or leverage technologies to be able to solve that problem.
So it’s not necessarily advice for doing something different. But I do think that I would give that advice to future entrepreneurs: find a problem that’s worth solving, and then just be very, very resilient. Because there’s going to be so many people that throw hurdles your way, there are so many challenges.
But if you’ve really found a problem that’s worth solving, you’ll find way to move mountains. And I think resilience is something that I’ve had to learn over time.
I am sort of glad that I didn’t know what was required to create and sell a medical device. So I think that learning journey has made me much more resilient. If somebody told me from day one that it would take seven years to get to where we are today, well, that’s a pretty long amount of time.
But I don’t regret any part of it.
Doris Nagel
How do you become more resilient? Do you think? Because I think that is an important piece of it.
In fact, I was just reading a book on sports and just general performance, and they talk about how resiliency is such a key piece of success in sports performance or performance in the arts, for example.
And here, you are saying is with respect to entrepreneurs, and I believe all of it.
So, how do you become more resilient, do you think?
Sona Shah 49:30
I think for me — and this isn’t true for everybody — I am uncomfortable with stability. And so I think that if we’re in a stable place, we’re not taking enough risks.
Taking risks also means that we fail, and failing fast, failing quickly and learning from it is one of the best ways that I’ve learned to become resilient.
That doesn’t mean that everything we do is a failure. But in everything we do, there is a learning opportunity. If we do it well, great. If there’s a way that you can do it better if you fail, that’s fine as well.
Focus on what we can we learn about that process to make sure that we don’t make that mistake again, or that we can apply [the learning] to something else.
So just failing fast and not shying away from taking risks, I think is a really good way to become resilient because it will help you identify some of the challenges or the problems with the way that you’re approaching something.
Not everything is going to be a slam dunk, and you’re not going to get it right on the first try every time and that’s okay. But I think what builds resilience is trying something — not being afraid to take that risk. Knowing of course, what the consequences are — don’t do something stupid, but know what the consequences are, and take risks that that are appropriate for whatever stage you’re at.
Doris Nagel
Yeah, I love what you said about if you’re in a comfortable place, you’re not taking enough risk as an amazing quote.
Sona, let people know how they can learn more about Neopenda, whether they’re interested in the good work that you’re doing, or want to invest in the company, how should they connect with you and learn more?
Sona Shah
Email is probably the quickest way. It’s sona@neopenda.com. And either way, if you’re an aspiring entrepreneur, feel free to reach out. There’s plenty of mistakes that I’ve made along the way and lots of lots of things that I would love to share with any of you, so feel free to reach out to me if there are any questions.
Doris Nagel
That’s a very generous offer. And thank you so much for your time today and your insights and your inspiration. It was really a delight having you on the show.
Sona Shah
Thank you so much for having me. It was wonderful chatting with you.
Doris Nagel
It was wonderful. I agree. Now, thanks to all my listeners, you’re the reason I do this. You can find more helpful information and resources on my consulting website, which is globalocityservices.com as well as my new radio show website, thesavvyentrepreneur.org.
My door is always open for comments, questions, suggestions, or just to shoot the breeze. I’d love to hear from you. Email me at dnagel@thesavvyentrepreneur.org. I promise you’ll always get an answer back from me.
Be sure to join me again next week, but until then, I’m Doris Nagel, wishing you happy entrepreneuring!
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