Can you please give a brief description of your enterprise?
BEMPU Health develops life-saving health technologies for children in low-resource parts of the world.
In India, 1 out of every 3 newborns is born low-weight (under 2.5kgs). These babies are at risk for a number of complications, two of which are hypothermia and infection, which are large contributors to injury and death of newborns.
To address this, our team developed the BEMPU Hypothermia Alert Device - a novel bracelet which monitors a newborns temperature continuously. If the newborn is hypothermic at anytime, the device sounds an alarm to wake the mother so she can warm the baby with skin-to-skin kangaroo care well before any injury or death can occur.
At what stage in Bempu’s journey did Aditya join you?
Aditya joined us in September 2014 when Bempu was still at a concept stage. He was one of the first mentors for BEMPU and has been involved with our growth since.
How did he add value to your enterprise?
Aditya has immense experience with distribution in the private market, and also working with the government. Being involved since the beginning, he helped us early to align the business model, pricing, market introduction strategy and more so we know how our business would be running, and kept the end goal in mind. Once our product was ready for market, he stepped up and bought units himself to help us in reaching the customers throughout Gujarat. Following that, he helped us meet government officials in Gujarat and go through the government's process to evaluate and implement our intervention for the government's babies.
Has Aditya also impacted you on a personal level?
Absolutely! Aditya is an experienced Zen meditation teacher and has a very calm and composed way of handling various issues - I have a lot of respect for the way he works and interacts with others. I've learned a lot from him in how to manage complex situation, stay calm and I have even started taking up meditation myself as a result!
What is your take on Villgro’s mentoring program?
Were it not for Villgro and the mentors, it would be extremely difficult or impossible to find and recruit such experienced and relevant mentors who actually wanted to add value to our mission. I had Aditya and many other awesome mentors from Day 1 and that accelerated our growth immediately. Thanks to the program, we've now served about 10,000 babies in 2.5 years!
So, want to create some impact? Join us!