Channeling your inner cockroach to put your best foot forward

so it started off

as all good things do at an indian

wedding

i was back home in december 2016

for my first winter break from college

when i saw

my favorite uncle who’s known as the

style icon of the family

wearing his trademark fancy suit but

very bulky shoes

and he looked somewhat timid and

uncomfortable

he didn’t want to get up from the table

and he went right at the back during the

family photograph

so i was curious as to what was going on

so i asked my father and he told me that

my uncle

was recently diagnosed with diabetic

neuropathy

and he hadn’t been the same ever since

so

what was diabetic neuropathy and why did

he have to wear footwear that looked

like that

so i decided to take a step back and i

realized

that every 20 seconds one foot

is lost due to diabetes in the world

today and over

half of these could be prevented if

people

just wore the correct footwear in fact

there are over 425 million

plus diabetics worldwide and over 40

percent of them

will require this footwear so you might

be wondering

how are diabetes and footwear even

related i thought diabetes was a

sugar-related condition

so diabetes causes sugar buildup in the

feet which causes the nerves to lose

sensation

and hence any small cuts bruises or

wounds that take place on your foot

make the foot not able to feel it

because of the loss of sensation

and so it can’t heal it the loss of

sensation is so bad

that one day i remember someone told me

she saw blood on the floor

and she just didn’t know where it was

coming from

later she looked under her foot and saw

that a nail had pierced through and she

just didn’t realize

so to sort of safeguard this foot

they need to wear special kinds of

footwear and this footwear is very big

and bulky and people just

don’t want to wear it i remember during

one of our market surveys

um someone told me hey vlan how can i

wear that

that shoe i’d rather lose my foot than

wear that

this was a joke and a seemingly

improbable possibility

but 14 months later he had two of his

toes amputated

to me this just seems like an unfair

choice

why should someone have to choose

between looking good

and saving their foot there has to be a

better way

so i decided to apply for a research

grant

to create fused diabetic dress shoes

which combine

medical performance and chic style

i went to my faculty mentor dr mark

sivak to understand the design thinking

process

because this to me seemed like a very

daunting task

big brands had tried and the results

were clear for everyone to see

so we wanted to create footwear that was

hyper specific to the needs of

the key stakeholders so thus began

my first phase of research where i went

back

to india and i spoke to 200 plus

patients diabetologists and podiatrists

to understand from all these people what

do they expect from diabetic footwear

then we put it all together and i built

this on top of existing literature

literature to identify four fundamental

design goals

which was to evenly distribute planter

pressure

to accommodate bone deformities to

reduce shear and friction

and to prevent external shock now that

we knew this

i had to put it in a shoe so i decided

to pack my bags

and fly to italy the shoemaking capital

of the world

and i landed in chivdanova market which

is a small little town

which speaks no language other than

italian to learn how to make shoes

i went in without a plan and this wasn’t

a great idea

so i just walk around and talk to anyone

i knew

to ask them hey who can help me make

this diabetic footwear and then they’d

point me to a direction literally so and

i’d walk over or hitch a ride

and continue my quest there in this

process i

i stumbled across a mom and pop factory

which

had been making diabetic footwear for

the last 40 odd years

and uh over there with the help of a lot

of sign language i got a total master

class on how to make diabetic footwork

how to think about materials

leather shoe components fit they knew it

all

so after that i was ready for the third

phase of our research

i went back to india where i was

repeatedly iterating and prototyping

and we gave out samples to doctors and

patients and so on to get their feedback

and for the fourth phase i came back to

school in boston

and i spoke to thought leaders in the

medical industry here

to understand you know are we in line

with where the industry is headed

so we repeated this four phase design

cycle

twice over the course of two years and

at the end of which

we had our solution which looked like

this

now i i remember speaking at a

conference where we had 100 plus people

there and

uh i gave a 30 second introduction to

what we were doing and

a quarter of the audience came up to me

and said you know hey vlan where can we

buy this

for my father for my uncle and so on so

i said okay people really wanted what we

have

so then i said okay let me test some

sales channels and then i spoke to some

doctors and distributors who said

yes this is great when can you get it to

us and i said i don’t know

so at that point i realized that i i

needed to go all in on this

to actually make this big and so i

decided to take eight months off from

school to go back to india to start this

company

although i’d grown up in india i didn’t

quite realize just how

difficult it is to work there

we spent the first four months just

trying to

set up the entity and figure out the

regulatory landscape we were going to

operate in

production was extremely difficult and

had

a lot of delays because yeah we were

producing small quantities and factories

didn’t give us the importance

uh that we needed so it was just very

hard

and for someone like me who’s impatient

and when i want something i want it now

this was very frustrating if i were to

describe a production in india in two

words it was

stuff happens i remember one day

we had 30 plus customers waiting for the

orders and my shoe order was delayed by

45 days

so i called up my factory and said you

know hey what happened uh it’s been a

week

uh it’s been so long when can i get it

and they said sir you know

the ring around your shoelaces the rest

of it is ready we just ran out of those

so it’s going to take a week more so we

had a lot of adjusting to do we had a

lot of learning to do and now we work

with much smaller

factories who are more agile in their

processes and so on

so starting a company is an emotional

rollercoaster because the fortunes of

the company are tied to your own

emotions

so i remember

one day um we we

didn’t we weren’t getting enough sales

in i’d hired the wrong team

and our production was all over the

place so i just came back home and i

dove headfirst into bed and i said you

know

this is it i don’t want to do this

anymore

so then my parents would’ve been my

therapist for the last

for all my life basically they said you

know vadon you’ve gotten this far

only because you kept pushing you just

never

never gave up and you know why don’t you

just go out go get some fresh air

and go for a drive so i went for a drive

and i landed up in the lane of my high

school

so i was sitting there listening to

music and

reminiscing about times past when a

thought struck my mind

would my high school self be proud of

where i was today

and the answer to that was a resounding

guess

and i decided that no i gotta gotta pick

myself back up and bring the mojo back

i often sort of talk about how my spirit

animal is a cockroach

it’s on my linkedin bio i’m not even

kidding

cockroaches have outlasted dinosaurs and

they will survive on hair grease and

glue but they will survive

and i just believe that persistence as

an analogy

to entrepreneurship is just perhaps the

most important virtue that you could

have while starting off

so we decided to pick ourselves back up

keep pushing and today

we’re in 85 plus hospitals and clinics

across a few cities

so the message i’d have for you today is

that

the best time for you to start a company

is right now if you have an idea if you

have something that you’ve been thinking

about

go out go talk to people go build

something and just see if people are

excited about it and if not

fail quickly and get back up again for

me i was in college

around an infrastructure that was

designed to help me succeed

i had phenomenal mentors who cared about

what i was doing

and i had relatively few

responsibilities

i was able to talk to some incredibly

busy people if i

thoughtfully reached out to them and

told them you know why i wanted to talk

to them because

who doesn’t want to help a college

student right so

while starting a company is an emotional

struggle

and i do want to assure you that once

you find

that thing that tugs away at your

heartstrings

it’ll be so so worth it because

at the end of the day you’re only going

to regret the chances

that you did not take thank you