Deepak Gaddipati: If you’re over 65, that person is 33% likely to fall. Of the 33%, 20% will get a major injury, about 6% will have falls with major injuries. Once you have a fall with a major injury, your immediate cost is about $34,000 for treatment. If a person falls – not just falls
Sramana Mitra: How many nursing homes are using the product? Deepak Gaddipati: We did a lot of trade shows. In 2018, we got connected with Ziegler, which is an investment banker that does underwriting for hospitals and nursing homes. Whenever you want to build a new nursing home or a new hospital, they put out
Sramana Mitra: When you raised angel financing, did you already have these nursing homes working with you on the pilot? Deepak Gaddipati: No. First, we developed the product. We looked for the biggest physical therapy conference. There was one conference in Vegas within three days. They had a booth open, so we bought it. We
Sramana Mitra: What year are we in now? Deepak Gaddipati: 2012. In 2013, we licensed some of the technologies we developed and started Virtusense. The single objective when I started was to prevent falls. I was very passionate about it. I really wanted to figure out a solution. We didn’t have a solution, but we
Deepak has built a capital-efficient fall-detection company from Peoria, Illinois with a backend engineering team in Rawalpindi, Pakistan. It’s an impressive entrepreneurial journey with a mission-driven company that is making real impact in the lives of seniors with fall risk. Sramana Mitra: Let’s start at the very beginning of your journey. Where are you from?