Diabetes is worldwide epidemic. Even though we don’t hear about it as much as cancer or HIV, it is 5th leading cause of death in the world. In India alone, approximately 4 crore people suffer from diabetes. Worldwide there are close to 346 million people suffering from diabetes.
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This is a major problem and this is what Mumbai based diabeto is after. We caught up with co-founder Shreekant Pawar to find out more about diabeto and their plans.
What is diabeto?
Diabeto is a non-intrusive Bluetooth enabled device that connects to a glucometer and transmits data to your phone. The diabeto app in the phone has multiple utilities that can check your blood sugar levels, give history, suggest diet, notify physician and a whole bunch of other essential for diabetes treatment.
What is unique about diabeto?
Diabeto is a hardware and software combination that gives a super personalized experience to users. There are a large number of apps(1000+) available online for diabetes, but a common pain point still remains that of manual data entry. There is no other solution that integrates hardware and software solution to give the best experience to users. This is what we are doing.
Also consider the fact that diabetes is a hereditary problem and there are many families with more than one member suffering from it. Diabeto, one single device can help them all. We are targeting a price point of INR 3000 – INR 3500, which is not high by any standard for a patient to make a reasonable investment.
Bring us to speed about current stage of development.
We have completed hardware product development and the prototype is ready. We have also completed developing the android app for the same and developments on other platforms is on the way. Diabeto will be a free app. However, if you want all functionalities to be activated, you will have to get the hardware device
What is your go to market strategy?
We are currently in talks with major pharmaceuticals company to sell this with their diabetes kits. We are in advances
stage of talks with some pharmaceuticals from Europe about possible distribution in Europe. We are also targeting physicians and other pharmaceutical store chains to sell these at customer’s direct touch points.
What are your future plans?
As I said, we are developing apps for all the major platforms like Symbian, iOS, Windows, Blackberry etc. One thing that I
would like to highlight is that we are also developing the hardware product further so that it is compatible with all the major glucometer models in the world. Currently, we are in talks with a few investors to raise angel investment of the tune up to $1 million.
Tell us about your team?
Apart from me, both my co-founders come with highly entrepreneurial backgrounds. Hemanshu Jain is an alumnus of VTU, has worked at companies like Yahoo, Dell and Media2win over last six years. He was also part of Ajay Devgan and Sajay Dutt’s ticketing venture www.ticketplease.com! Apart from that, our US operation are headed by Amir Shaikh, who was co-founder at yousendit.com and my previous boss! Yousendit is currently a $500 million company and I was one of the early employees there!
Our Verdict:
- Diabetes is indeed a huge problem and it is just about the time where developers are getting started to take a closer look at it and trying to solve it with multiple approaches. As Shreekant claimed the major problem with most existing apps, there are users who agree to the same thing. Take a look at the snap we took from a leading diabetes discussion forum.
- Their approach of tying up with pharmaceutical chains can create problems as it will restrict their independent entry to the market, however, independent entries to such large and diverse markets are always a problem for startups and this looks like a sound approach. They will have to be careful about their decisions but that seems like the only way to scale up very rapidly.
- Diabetes is majorly a lifestyle disease. For those who can afford a lifestyle that can give them diabetes, the price point of INR 3000 – INR 3500 is extremely attractive. If the product catches up, there will be a huge surge of demand in the market.
Update: Diabeto gets selected for 5th batch of startup chile program.
