In our latest interview, we spoke to yet another passionate entrepreneur Divyansh Srivastava to understand more about his interesting journey as an entrepreneur so far. He is the Founder and CTO at mHeal. He is an experienced tech founder with a demonstrated history of domain expertise. His startup mHeal is an AI-enabled healthcare SAAS Platform, which helps doctors and hospitals in the early-stage diagnosis of diseases with the help of artificial intelligence and medical imaging. Let’s find out more about his exciting journey and the way forward!
Excerpts from our exclusive interview with him:
Talk us through your background and your journey as an entrepreneur, please;
I am from a really small district that goes by the name of Balrampur ( U.P. ). It’s on the India – Nepal Border. I did my k-12 schooling there. It’s the place that has taught me to be firm and to live a simple life. If I had been born in some big metro city I would have been caught by the lavish life there and would have missed a far greater experience that is there in the simplicity of life.
When I was in 5th Standard I got introduced to a personal computer in our School Lab. That was the time when the internet was booming and that instantly caught my eye. I was so soaked into it, the thing that fascinated me was that even though I am living in such a small town I have access to the whole world, just right at my desk. So this intrigued me and I started to learn more about computers. I would just simply sit for hours exploring a lot of things.
By the time I was in my 9th Standard, Programming & Coding had created a special place in my mind. I felt that I can create my own world and mould it as I want it to be. I have a bitter experience with the way our education system is simply trying to feed students with ranks rather than awareness and focus. So by the time I completed the 12th standard I decided that I will not go for a college education because I felt things there would slow me down as I was seeing conditions of people who graduated from college were hunting for job day by day.
Jobs were there, but college couldn’t give them the necessary skills to be fit for the job. Indeed, it was a baffling decision for my family. They thought that I have gone all mad that I chose to skip college. I knew that I was gonna receive this response because in my family nobody ever made such a decision.”
They all were college graduates and working either in government or private sector. But I stood firm on my point, No great work can ever be done without bold decisions.
So I completed 12th back in 2015 and by the time I decided that I will give 2 years of my life to self-learning and I went to YouTube for that. I remember from 2015-2017 I was giving around 12-14 hours of my life to online learning. That was the time which really transformed me and during that time I just decided that I won’t do any job.
I didn’t know what I was going to do but it was clear what I have to avoid. So during that time I learned about Coding, I learned multiple programming languages like Javascript, Python etc. I learned about emerging tech such as AI and Blockchain. It was during that time, an Idea struck me that In healthcare misdiagnosis and slow diagnosis are two really major problems that are there for ages but nobody is able to do anything about it. So I just initially started to create a very minimal prototype of what I was calling mHeal. It was just a simple Machine Learning model which was able to find anomalies from medical images and predict about various diseases.
During that time, I was looking for some projects so that I can have some exposure in professional life. I came in touch with a company in Jaipur, Rajasthan that called me there to work on an Android. There I met Sourabh, who would soon become my really good friend and a partner in my startup.
I and Sourabh had a lot in common and that’s why I guess we really made a strong bond with each other in such a less time. Without Sourabh, I can’t imagine this startup for a single minute. This guy is the foundation that we are able to build this startup. However, After 3 months being in Jaipur, I and Sourabh decided that let’s start something of our own so we quit the company we were working for and switched full time over mHeal.
I worked around 1 year on the tech side to make mHeal more robust and accurate while Sourabh handled all the business side of mHeal like finding doctors to onboard etc. After around one year. We got incubated in India’s biggest incubator iStart and that gave us the opportunity to connect to the audience at the global level and increase our reach.
So we are on that mission since then.
Recently MICROSOFT INDIA selected mHEAL amongst the TOP-10 high potential startup across Rajasthan and recently we got in talks with Government of Rajasthan to deploy our mHeal for Covid-19 Detection across hospitals in Rajasthan.
Why did you choose entrepreneurship over a corporate career?
See, I did not choose entrepreneurship because of passion or some burning desire. It happened eventually with time. It simply happened. I had this belief that nobody would ever hire me for a job because of my behaviour. Like, I can’t just work for someone else. I often feel undervalued if someone commands over me. So I just thought that I will build something for myself and other people to use and see if it can create some value.
How is your product different from traditional products? Tell us more about your product and your startup’s journey this far?
In India, there are just 2-3 successful startups that are doing great with AI and Healthcare combined. It’s such a tough combination and a really difficult domain to change. Because nobody wants to risk the lives of people. So what we did was, we thought how sustainable it would be if instead of changing the entire machinery and equipment that current medical system has, we can just plugin a software-based product, that would give those existing machines a whole new soul. Basically other startups are going for hardware-related approach while we thought how to solve this problem purely through software. And that’s what mHeal really is. It works as an assistive plugin for existing medical equipment. The way it works is, it takes the input data from machines, processes it using some complex AI and Deep Learning algorithms such CNN, GANN etc and outputs an interactive report for doctors where they can make a better decision in a really shorter period of time.
Please share with us some of the challenges you faced in your journey;
1) In India, there are not too many open datasets for AI researchers and Enthusiasts to work on. So this was one of the biggest challenges that we faced in the early days of mHeal. We still face this problem today if we want to onboard some new diseases. We don’t have enough open dataset to train the model upon.
2) After being in this industry for a few years I feel that over years we have created this notion in mind. That entrepreneurship is directly related to IIT(s) and IIM(s). If someone is from really big IIT, all the investors and government as well listen to them easily. While they are trying to secure their money by placing a bet on such elite class entrepreneurs. At the same time, it’s biased. Still, I think sooner or later people do realize that great ideas can come from anywhere. While it may take some time but persistent, bold and great execution will always shine.
What is your Business Mantra: Money or Emotions?
I really don’t know about it till date. I really think it’s my love for coding that is truly driving me. There are days when we don’t earn anything but we still keep on going, At times we are so frustrated and full of rage but will still keep on going at our best. So I don’t think its either Money or Emotions. It’s just our pure devotion for what we are doing.
How do you handle the pressure and manage stress?
If something troubles me a lot I just think about 2 things whether I can do something about it or not. In either of the cases, I come to the conclusion that I can just wait. If I can do something about it, I have to play my shot and simply wait. If I can’t do anything about it well then, I simply have to wait. That’s it.
In your opinion what are the keys to success?
I think it simply needs 3 things:
1) Accept your ignorance – If you really know that you don’t know anything, it opens the door of unlimited possibilities. If you clutter your mind with the fakeness of being an expert, well then nobody can save you.
2) Don’t be rigid – Things change with time, your execution strategy is no different. Ideas are overvalued. Execution is all that ever matters.
3) Wait. Simply wait – There’s a whole lot factor on which your success and failures depend, after playing your shot you simply can’t do anything but wait. If You understand this from the core. You will be at peace.
Follow Divyansh At:
LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/in/divyansheccentric/
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