In 2003-04 there was an Brad Pitt, Orlando Bloom, Peter OToole and Eric Bana starring movie titled TROY. The first scene has a young boy who runs to a tent to wake up Achilles who has just finished making love to a handful of pretty young women. And the boy says Hey Achilles, you are such a great warrior and you were supposed to be at the battlefield to fight for Agamemnon against the giant of the enemy. Do you think you can do that..........if I were you I would be scared and would run away. To this Achilles says In that case no one shall ever remember your name. Although, my conscious mind was still focus on how Brad Pitt was fortunate and so was Achilles. My sub-conscious was wondering that if I had to be successful then I needed to do something that was really challenging so that I gain more experience even if I fail and if I do well then myself and the society at large could benefit. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- In 2003-04 there was an Brad Pitt, Orlando Bloom, Peter OToole and Eric Bana starring movie titled TROY. The first scene has a young boy who runs to a tent to wake up Achilles who has just finished making love to a handful of pretty young women. And the boy says Hey Achilles, you are such a great warrior and you were supposed to be at the battlefield to fight for Agamemnon against the giant of the enemy. Do you think you can do that..........if I were you I would be scared and would run away. To this Achilles says In that case no one shall ever remember your name. Although, my conscious mind was still focus on how Brad Pitt was fortunate and so was Achilles. My sub-conscious was wondering that if I had to be successful then I needed to do something that was really challenging so that I gain more experience even if I fail and if I do well then myself and the society at large could benefit. When I met Nagraj sir and saw one of his newsletters (yes sometimes books choose you and not the other way around) it mentioned that hardly any private or public entity was interested in commercializing hyperthermia machines. As side by side I was also operating a small consultancy firms with my friends from IIT with whom I wrote a business plan and won. I knew that such endeavors could be leveraged with a little heavy lifting. So, as private sector found it a little less profitable to do R&D we decided to explore government R&D labs for joint development of a prototype and out of BARC, ECIL and SAMEER (Dept. of Info Tech, GOI) Only SAMEER was the viable option because they were into wireless communication (RF, Microwave) and did develop some medical instruments as well such as sterilization equipment using microwave heat. Although, many people at SAMEER were initially not convinced about hyperthermia; nevertheless the preliminary market research done by me via interviewing various doctors and getting them to sign forms showing an interest that they would buy a machine if it was appropriately priced. The biggest gap was that SAMEER did not understand much about hyperthermia even if they were experts in RF/Microwave and we at Nanavati were clinicians and researchers but not electromagnetic experts (BTW we do have good knowledge as well). So a common ground was built in which I had to study some engineering stuff and photocopy suitable papers from hyerhermia journals which gave some shcmatics on the electrode design and this helped bridge the gap. The real missing link was that we at Nanavati needed a person who had Nagraj sir wisdom but the hot blood of a youngster (who is irrational enough to be fanatically inclines towards achieving something awesome) and I provided that hot-blooded mindset but took me a while get step into Nagraj sir’s shoes and build wisdom of his level or at least be a cheap imitation. Trust me one cannot imitate wisdom even if one can imitate style. Fortunately, we did have access to overseas experts in hyperthermia and once there were a few lectures and a few rounds of the SAMEER engineers who cam and studied the machine at Nanavati, we had a strong case and after which a proposal was written with Nagraj sir as the Chief investigator because we negotiated well enough to be the prime movers and stakeholders of the project. Even after going to the US I did follow up with SAMEER and even coaxed Nagraj sir as well but later rest is history.
Posted on: Mon, 09 Jun 2014 06:34:21 +0000
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