Meet Dr Nayan Kalnad, CEO and co-founder of Avegen

Dr Nayan Kalnad is CEO and co-founder of Avegen: a health technology company that helps health organisations build digital health products that empower patients to better manage long-term health conditions.

Tell us about the founder behind the brand.

I’m a medical doctor by training, with over eighteen years’ experience in pharmaceuticals and digital healthcare innovation under my belt. I started my career in India, working in pharma before starting Avegen in 2015. I’m now based in the UK. My previous roles have included building digital solutions to improve care delivery for HIV-positive patients in India, and leading a digital innovation unit at a major pharmaceutical company, where we developed award-winning cardiovascular health solutions. My clinical background means I understand the challenges facing clinicians, but I am very much motivated by the needs of the patient. I’m also passionate about leveraging the power of data to change lives.

What inspired you to launch your business and what is the end goal?

My work in pharma taught me that the right digital solutions could transform the quality of care patients were receiving. But progress was often slow, and I wanted to speed up the pace of change, which is when I had the idea for Avegen. I teamed up with Neeraj Apte - an engineer with over twenty years’ experience in software development - and we combined our clinical and technical expertise to start Avegen in 2015.

Our goal is to empower patients with long-term health conditions to take better care of their health: from understanding a recent diagnosis, to taking medication correctly and tracking symptoms. We do this by helping healthcare organisations and pharma companies build, scale and deploy highly effective digital health products quickly, so they can deliver better outcomes for patients and transform their lived experience of their condition.

How well versed were you in the planning and strategic growth of your business? Did this come easy to you?

Avegen was my first entrepreneurial venture. So getting the business off the ground was a steep learning curve. We had some idea as to what we wanted to achieve in terms of growth in the early days, but it took us a few years to settle on a model that we were happy with. The business we planned to create in the beginning definitely isn’t the business we’re running today, but I firmly believe our determination to build strong foundations and create a business that could be profitable over the long-term has been central to our success. We were right to keep an open mind, learn from what wasn’t working and iterate our offering in order to create stability for growth.

Working with a co-founder can be tricky, so understanding and compromise is important. How have you both found the process of building a business together? What makes it work?

Building the business with Neeraj has been a joy. We both have very different & complementary strengths, which I believe is key to a successful co-founder relationship. We also have clearly defined roles, which means we both have space and freedom to do what we each do best. Logistically, it can be challenging. We work on different continents - Neeraj in the Mumbai office and myself in London - but we’ve gotten into a good rhythm in terms of communicating across geographies and ensuring we’re each getting the support we need.

How did you fund the business in the early stages?

We’ve bootstrapped the business since day one and have never taken any VC funding. This was really important to us: we wanted to build a strong and steady ship from the outset, and we wanted to be profitable. Bootstrapping has helped us weather a number of financial crises, including the one we’re currently in. Although this is not to say that we won’t explore VC funding in future, as we know that external investment at the right stage will help us scale.

How do you set yourself apart from other businesses in your industry?

We set ourselves apart by being more than just a product development platform. We combine our experience and expertise with cutting edge technology and an incredibly capable and flexible product development platform to build, deploy and scale digital health products quickly, but also support clients to roll-out and embed those technologies amongst the intended user group. We manage the entire process end to end, and the solutions we build are best in class, compliant and built to last. This is unique.

What’s the single most important decision that you made, that contributed to your business?

Pivoting our offering in the early years was crucial. It was daunting at the time, but if we hadn't done it I don’t believe we’d have a business right now.

What do you think gives a brand longevity?

Quality of output, building a brilliant reputation amongst your target market, and being able to continually evolve and iterate your product to respond to changing market demands. To have longevity you cannot become stagnant. As a tech brand, you also need to be able to keep pace with security and regulatory changes to ensure your product remains compliant and future-proof.

Are you a non-tech founder? If yes, how did you overcome the obstacles whilst building your business?

Technically speaking I’m a non-tech founder. My background is in medicine and pharmaceuticals, although I have been involved in digital health innovation in pharma for a number of years. I overcome the obstacles my non-technical background presents by being self-aware about where my skills start and end, and leaning on my technical co-founder and my team on issues where they are better placed to respond.

How is digitisation empowering your business?

Digitisation is at the core of Avegen and empowers us and our clients in a number of ways. We help heath companies kickstart and embed digital transformation by supporting them to build powerful digital health tools. Traditionally, big health organisations and pharma companies are slow to embrace change, particularly when it comes to new technologies. But as digitisation becomes increasingly necessary and normalised in health settings - to speed up care, overcome silos and better connect patients and doctors - we are there to help organisations put plans into action. We firmly believe in the power of digitisation to transform health outcomes - and we have the evidence-base to prove it.

Where do you draw your inspiration from to continue pursuing and innovating in the tech space?

I only need to look at the millions of patients whose quality of life we are transforming on a daily basis to feel inspired. We have helped millions, but we have the potential to help millions more, which motivates me to keep pushing and innovating,