Mumbai-based Raghuveer Surupa, founding father of Stemtech Scientific Gadgets, created the Eva Scalp Cooling Machine to lend a hand sufferers experiencing hair loss all through chemotherapy. The gadget, designed to give protection to hair follicles, used to be showcased on Shark Tank India and gained a Rs 30 lakh funding.
In India, it’s estimated that each and every 9th particular person would possibly increase most cancers of their lifetime. With most cancers circumstances projected to upward push to 15 lakh via 2025, sufferers incessantly hesitate to go through life-saving chemotherapy because of issues about hair loss.
Chemotherapy, an crucial a part of most cancers remedy, no longer handiest goals most cancers cells but additionally damages impulsively dividing wholesome cells, together with hair follicles. Research point out that roughly 65 % of sufferers enjoy vital hair thinning or loss because of chemotherapy.
“This downside has been continual because the creation of chemotherapy. There may be an immense stigma hooked up to hair loss and most cancers. If a lady is going bald all at once, then individuals are fast to gossip about it. But even so, there are such a lot of social or private tasks the place folks want to retain hair — from holding the situation personal from society to short of a way of normalcy for his or her circle of relatives to call a couple of,” Raghuveer Surupa tells The Higher India.
“If a affected person has an upcoming marriage ceremony or large match, then additionally they have a tendency to prolong their chemotherapies. It’s unlucky that folks prolong life-saving remedy for the concern of hair loss,” he provides.
To take on this unavoidable downside, Raghuveer has advanced a novel scalp cooling gadget that alleviates the trauma of chemotherapy-induced hair loss. Recently, his innovation ‘Eva Scalp Cooling Machine’ is put in in 18 hospitals throughout Telangana, Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Maharashtra, Gujarat, and Delhi. He says greater than 3,000 a hit classes had been performed up to now.
We sat down with Raghuveer to grasp extra in regards to the novel software and the way it can remedy considered one of chemotherapy’s maximum difficult unwanted effects.
Working out the scalp cooling mechanism
An engineer via training, Raghuveer pursued his upper training on the Indian Institute of Control, Ranchi. In 2013, he joined the pharmaceutical corporate Pfizer and later labored with Roche the place he used to be a release lead for the breast most cancers drug in India.
Impressed via his paintings enjoy in oncology, he based his personal startup ‘Dignite’ for most cancers care. Even though it didn’t be triumphant, Raghuveer learnt in regards to the urgency of dealing with the unwanted effects of chemotherapies — hair loss.
“I remembered the enjoy of my aunt when she used to be recognized with ovarian most cancers. I noticed her dropping self assurance and being not able to get via together with her lifestyles. That truly brought on me. I began in search of answers and that’s once I got here around the scalp cooling approach,” stocks the 34-year-old.
Speaking in regards to the availability of scalp cooling units, he says, “An organization had made silicon-based caps that are available in 3 other sizes — small, medium, and massive. The downside of such caps is they can not are compatible a wide variety of scalps completely, as scalps have an overly difficult anatomical construction.”
“Chemotherapy destroys all fast-growing cells like cancerous tumours. At the side of this, it additionally destroys fast-growing hair follicles as it may well’t differentiate between wholesome and cancerous cells. So, if the cap doesn’t are compatible correctly, then all of the scalp might not be cooled, inflicting top probabilities of hair loss in that house. This destroys the principle goal of the gadget,” he explains.
So, Raghuveer determined to design a cap that would accommodate all head sizes. In 2020, he introduced his corporate Stemtech Scientific Gadgets and innovated ‘Eva Scalp Cooling Machine’ the place a common cap used to be designed to give protection to hair follicles from chemotherapy injury.
“Our design used to be impressed via a lotus or a crown. Similar to they may be able to be totally closed, our cap is wrapped across the head of the affected person, and the cap can also be adjusted the usage of the velcro as consistent with the desire,” he provides.
Raghuveer informs {that a} affected person must put on this cover half-hour prior to the chemotherapy infusion, all through chemotherapy infusion, and between half-hour and two hours post-chemotherapy. The software reduces the temperature of the scalp from 35 to 16 levels Celsius.
Whilst running at the software, Raghuveer additionally focussed on decreasing the price of the software. “Our competition rate about Rs 25 lakh for his or her software. We decreased the price vastly in order that sufferers in growing nations may just additionally have the funds for this care. Hospitals should buy our software for anyplace between Rs 13 lakh and Rs 16 lakh relying at the variant of the software. The hospitals thereafter rate between Rs 1,500 and Rs 4,000 consistent with affected person consistent with consultation,” he informs.
Gained Rs 30 lakh Funding in Shark Tank India
Raghuveer says his objective is to make certain that sufferers can get throughout the treatment with out the usage of a wig or a shawl.
“Put up-chemotherapy, virtually all sufferers enjoy entire hair loss. Even supposing the affected person loses 30 or 40 % of the amount of hair when it comes to density, they nonetheless can get via with their daily lifestyles. So the objective is to get to that time the place a affected person doesn’t depend on wigs or scarves to hide their hair,” he stocks, including, “Round 50 % of our sufferers have skilled certain effects with our software, and a few have even skilled a greater charge of hair regrowth.”
Lately, Raghuveer’s startup featured in Shark Tank India Season 3 and bagged a deal of Rs 30 lakh. “It used to be nice to look on Shark Tank. We were given 3 sharks on board — Aman Gupta, Namita Thapper, and Ritesh Agarwal,” he says.
Greater than the deal itself, what excites Raghuveer is the good fortune of the software. “4 years in the past, there used to be no transparent answer to be had to this downside. Now, I will be able to see that sufferers have an answer in a minimum of 18 installations,” he says with satisfaction.
“It isn’t only a beauty software. A most cancers affected person already offers with a plethora of issues. Having the ability to take away one burden and upload positive price to a most cancers affected person’s lifestyles offers me an enormous sense of contentment. My position is small however the pleasure that I am getting out of it’s immense,” he provides.
(Edited via Pranita Bhat. All footage: Raghuveer Surupa)