Meet the Indian inventor who has 42 patents
In 2005, whenRediff.commet Arvind Thiagarajan, he was 25-year-old young inventor with a couple of patents to his credit. Today, he has more than 40 patents to his credit.
Interested in science and technology from when he was a child, the scientific temper in him got a boost with Dr A P J Abdul Kalam, the then scientific advisor to the Government of India, presenting him with the Junior Scientist Award in 2001.
From then on, Dr Kalam has been his mentor and advisor. It was the former President who urged him to invent and also patent his inventions.
The most trail blazing invention he has is HDFonoDoc, the first device of its kind in the world that can analyse and document heart murmurs in real time.
It is an audio visual auscultation device with an integrated murmur detector. He says HDFonoDoc can be used as a replacement to the mechanical and digital stethoscopes used by doctors worldwide.
Today, Arvind Thiagarajan is the chairman and chief inventor for two companies -- MatrixView and HD Medical Services (India) Pvt Ltd. Both the companies have offices in India, the United States and Australia.
In this interview, Arvind Thiagarajan talks about the most successful products he has invented and also the need for youngsters to invent and patent.
You said when we met five years ago that innovation was a hobby for you. For such a person, you have more than 40 patents now. What is innovation to you now?
Innovation is very important for transforming new business avenues. There are many existing technologies available but if you want to do something differently, innovation is very critical.
To quote my mentor Dr Abdul Kalam, 'Innovation is the key to national economic growth.' He says India ranks only 40th in the innovation index and it has to come within the top 10 to achieve excellent growth.
Innovation can force more economic growth and create more job opportunities. It is innovation that took American companies to a different league.
When did you become aware of patenting ideas?
I was not even aware of what patenting was when I was in college. It was Dr Kalam who opened my eyes to the importance of patenting. He told us that whatever ideas we had, we must patent. It was like fencing a plot of land you have and protecting it from unwanted elements.
In your case, how did you incubate your first idea and from where did the investment come?
When I developed my first idea, I was 21. I had a job offer then but the joining time was delayed by six months. I decided to follow Dr Kalam's advice and patented the heart card I invented then.
The Singapore government was setting up an incubation centre in India. My patent came to their notice and they showed interest in incubating the technology and offered me $1 million.
They invited me to go to Singapore and set up a company. It was a very good experience. I was really fortunate to get funding from the Singapore government.
In 2003-04, when they came out of the incubation programme, I bought back the patent. By then, the technology was proven, so I got some venture capital investors.
By then again, I had my second innovation on lossless image compression. A Korean family and an investor from Australia wanted to invest in the idea. The company was listed on the Australian Stock Exchange also. That was Matrix View.
It was a stethoscope with a visual display. BPL was our distributor. It was well received as a technology. The feedback we got from doctors was about analysing the waves. They felt it would be better if they could take a printout of the analysis.
Based on the feedback, we started developing our new product in 2009. In 2010, we came out with HdFonoDoc.
This product analyses and comes out with an interpretation on whether there is murmur in the heart or not, to help the early detection of cardiovascular diseases. When connected to the printer, you can take a printout too.
How far have you taken Matrix, the lossless image compression product?
A lot. When a file is compressed, it needs less storage space and also its transmission is faster. We found that storage is not a problem for anyone today but everyone requires faster lossless transmission.
A lot of clinics in NHS cluster in the United Kingdom have an in-house reporting radiologist, and what the clinics do is they copy the images onto a CD and courier it to the radiologist.
What we do is, we provide them with an online solution. More than 300 institutions of NHS are using this in the UK. We sell it under the name CIMAR Solutions in the UK as a joint venture. That is the first market we have captured.
In Singapore also, we work with a group which supply to seven neighbouring countries including China.
In Italy, we are selling it as the software (MVIstream).
In India, we work in 90 centres. We are probably the second largest player in the Asia Pacific market.
Once we get the FDA approval, we will go to the US market too. I spent two years in the US learning the imaging market in the US.
Ravi
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