Indian youngsters want to ditch cushy jobs, crave challenges
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Contributed by :Staff
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Indian youngsters want to ditch cushy jobs, crave challenges
72% Indians aged 25-34 want to be entrepreneurs (Randstad Workmonitor survey).
In 2014, in a quiet shed within IIT Bombay, a handful of engineers who left their jobs elsewhere started working on innovative medical devices. Youngsters who wanted to take up challenges kept joining along the way. Gradually, a culture of frugal innovation was built at BETiC - Biomedical Engineering and Technology (incubation) Centre, which has started yielding success stories of 'Made in India' products.
Take the case of Adarsha K, who gave up a cushy job at L&T to join BETiC in 2015. His journey started at a medical device innovation camp at IIT Bombay when he met Tapas Pandey (who later left an electronics company to join the Centre). They discovered the unmet clinical need of remote auscultation (listening to the chest sounds of patients in far-away places), where trained doctors are not available. They teamed up and solved the problem by developing a smart stethoscope to record and transmit sounds over mobile networks. Two years later, they founded their startup company Ayu Devices, and have already sold more than 600 devices.
The story of Dr. Vikas Karade's is similar. He quit a corporate job to join BETiC and developed a software to convert x-ray images into 3D models, which can be used for planning orthopaedic surgeries as well as 3D-printing surgical tools. This helps in reducing the time and increasing the accuracy of the surgeries. Vikas was part of PM Modi's delegation to Silicon Valley in 2015, and his company Algosurg is supported by BIRAC, DST and Y-Combinator.
Then there is Nishant Kathpal who declined an offer from blue chip company Intel to develop a low cost portable screening device to avert diabetic foot amputations. His startup company, called Ayati Devices, is already getting enquiries from diabetologists and podiatrists as well as patients of chronic diabetes.
Adarsha, Tapas, Vikas, Nishant and many others are testimony to the fact that 83 per cent of Indian workforce would like to leave their job and want to be entrepreneurs, much higher than the global average of 53 per cent (Randstad Workmonitor survey).
Prof B Ravi, founder of BETiC explains, An increasing number of engineering and medical graduates want to make a real difference to the world we live in. When they realise the constraints of corporate workplace, they start exploring entrepreneurship through innovation labs like BETiC. Such facilities for product engineering along with comprehensive mentoring are accelerating indigenous development of affordable devices suitable for local manufacture and use. We are now witnessing a surge in healthcare startups across the country, next only to e-commerce according to some estimates.
A key catalyst for the innovation eco-system is hackathons, such as the weekend MEDHA and week-long MEDIC organized by BETiC. These events bring doctors and engineers together to explore medical device innovation. They can quickly validate their ideas, identify team members, and obtain expert feedback. Budding innovators, entrepreneurs, mentors, innovation managers and faculty guiding med-tech projects can speed up their innovation journey in healthcare field.
Dr. Rupesh of BETiC adds, "Many new opportunities for research, innovation and entrepreneurship lie at the intersection of conventional disciplines like biomedical, design, mechanical and electronics engineering. We are bringing together like-minded people through platforms like MEDIC to explore such opportunities, and find suitable partners as well as mentors to pursue their ideas further.
The Randstad Workmonitor survey also reveals that the inclination towards entrepreneurship is highest among workers aged between 25 and 34 years - 72% of them favour entrepreneurship over service.
BETiC is supported by the Government of Maharashtra and Ministry of Science & Technology, Govt of India. The 5th edition of MEDIC (Medical Device Innovation Camp) is scheduled from 28 September to 2 October 2019, in the Powai campus of IIT Bombay.
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