Gravitas

A HEALTHCARE START UP LED BY 4 YOUNG GO-GETTERS

In the past, the core team of Gravitas, at an individual level, have established businesses in management consultancy and food space before starting this AI business. Throughout their careers as entrepreneurs, consultants and leaders, they have realized gaps, inefficiencies in communications, operations, user engagement which if addressed can work wonders for both business and users. During the course of consulting clients in AI space, they as a team, realized that there was big gap in market with regards to niche AI products in healthcare sector, as majority of the players focus on product development & diagnostics. That's how the idea of Gravitas was born to optimize efficiency of services segment in healthcare.

INSPIRATION AND JOURNEY

Healthcare sector has got a "care" at the end and care is best when it has a human touch. This "care" when provided in an optimal and efficient way can make both providers and patients happy. The think tank of gravitas felt that there are a few solutions in the market who are trying to provide some services but their method is a one way communication coupled with a mechanical response and we appreciate their work. But there is a wider need for digital assistants who can help healthcare providers achieve engagement at optimal cost and effort. The sector needed digital assistants who not only serve the purpose but also can extend human touch to make that connect with the patients, so that it helps the patients realise that they are not only being serviced but also are supported and recognised. To ensure this, Gravitas developed an AI powered prototype and beta tested the market with a number of small to mid-sized players in Jan 2019 in the UK and India. Since then we are making it more robust with focused user research and improving its capabilities, while continuing engagements with their existing and new customers.

THE TEAM

The core team consists of 4 dreamers from diverse back grounds leading delivery, sales, marketing and other areas.

CEO Sumit Kumar has exceptional entrepreneurship experience. Prior to Gravitas, he has established a management consultancy for financial services sector and a couple of food businesses. In the past, he has consulted several fortune 500 clients. On a day to day basis, he provides steer and leadership to the team, along with addressing commercial challenges.

CCO, Mukesh Sinha, comes from a global leadership background. He has launched healthcare products in south east Asian countries in the capacity of country manager, MD and other such senior roles. In his last role, he was the MD - India for Hoya surgicals, a Japanese company and took the sales from ground zero to tantalising heights. He has been recognised healthcare leader a number of times in the last few years. He focusses on managing and on-boarding customers.

Our COO, Aarsh, has extensive experience as senior management executive. He has consulted several clients in their digital and AI journey. He is the most organised in the leadership team and constantly drives the team to improve the operational efficiency. He has a double MBA from Great Lakes, India and Bordeaux, France. He spends majority of his time to develop and implement high impact marketing strategies, and to ensure smooth running of our internal operations as well as engagements with the clients.

Our CTO, Ankita Sinha has led technical teams globally and is the powerhouse behind all technical capabilities in Gravitas. In the past, she has worked in companies such as Accenture and Infosys in technology leadership roles. She has a deep understanding of modern digital technologies. Her focus areas are to steer her team for progressing technical development for Ella, along with strategic and technical planning, laying out product roadmap for Gravitas.

The USP of Gravitas is that it focus on freeing up the valuable time for hospitals and their staff through usage of AI, automation and blockchain, and allowing them to focus on quality patient care.

THE ROUGH SEA ADVENTURE

There were all happy with their regular job, but preferred to sail their carrier ship into the rough weather because of three key reasons:
Opportunity to serve healthcare sector, thereby making lives of everyone involved easy
Visible market gap in healthcare
A vision to build AI driven solutions which can be easily used in sectors other than healthcare

THE DRIVING FORCE

The desire to achieve excellence
The possibility of delivering the best in class solution
The ability to solve challenges in business friendly fashion

Interesting anecdote with this start-up

At a conference, one of the participants advised them that their product was not good enough and that they should introduce changes in order to attract clientele such as ‘x’. They chose not to counteract as everyone has a view and they should respect that. But later, during their presentation, which also had the said participant in the audience, they shared the current client list, which already had ‘x’ as the client.

This led some to good response from the audience. The participant in question came to us and said ‘you didn’t tell me earlier’ and few other compliments. But they accept this milestone with humility and, realise that they have a lot more to do and achieve.

SETBACK MOMENT

They have been working on the next generation range of AI and blockchain solutions. During the course of a major development cycle, one of the agencies they used extensively, chose to close their business. This had a big impact on Gravitas roadmap initially. But the team did extensive planning and started investing in hiring good quality resource in the team and train them accordingly. This event allowed them to take necessary steps in managing knowledge within their company and for their clients efficiently. Through these challenging times, they learnt three important lessons : a) self reliance, b) managing third parties with better control and c) build strong teams to achieve goals.

EUREKA MOMENT

During the time they were running the consulting business, the team had an exceptional track record of solving the challenges that were unsolved for the clients for a number of years. During one such engagement, they collectively realised that they have been building solutions for other businesses. Therefore, it was the right time to start developing for their own business and share it with people in order to help them achieve highest levels of customers and employee satisfaction

Funding so far/awards/associations and affiliations

Largely, they have been self-funding so far as they are still fixing some bugs, but planning to raise funds shortly. They have been AI powered knowledge partner with AIOC, DOS and a few other medical conferences. In a short period of time, they have received awards and recognition from the likes of ASSOCHAM – the leading business association in India, a number of specialist organisations operating in healthcare and AI

3 messages for aspiring entrepreneurs

Dream big. See which dreams are not being delivered in the market. Chase those dreams
Take the risk, it is well worth it
Never give up. But introspect, make course correction as necessary

What not to do

Do not play very safe as an entrepreneur. It doesn’t mean you can be rash. Think, manage, and go ahead with conviction

The inspiration

There are a lot of Entrepreneurs who motivate them with what they have achieved in their lives. But they prefer mostly look inwards to draw inspiration. They look at other challenges that they have addressed as a team and as individuals and then focus on performing better the next time.