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Prateek Madhav is the co-founder and CEO of AssisTech Foundation (ATF), India’s first assistive technology focused organisation that promotes innovative disability technology start-ups.
A Bengaluru-based nonprofit, ATF’s goal has been to create more awareness about the world of disability and bring about a positive impact through the start-ups they nurture.
Prateek spoke to indianexpress.com on his tryst with assistive technologies, the startup network that he has created, the challenges and the opportunities in the assistive tech space, and the way the ecosystem of assistive tech is being built in India. Edited excerpts:
Prateek Madhav: We see impact in assistive technologies in India happening on three axes. First, we run an accelerator, and so far we have had five cohorts go through our accelerator. Forty two startups have benefited from our initiative and they spend around 4-5 months of intensive learning experience with us, where we bring in technologists, mentors from business development and behavioural sciences to help these startups.
Over a period of time, we have built a network of 450 assistive tech startups across India and have impacted around five lakh people through more than 100 products of our startups. We look at mentoring them on monetisation, technology and provide them with shared spaces and test beds for experimentation. We also help them in building financially viable startups and organisations. ATF is also building the first Atal Incubation Centre for assistive tech startups, which would be a gamechanger in this space.
Secondly, ATF is partnering with groups and organisations across the worldIt was the only Assistive Tech ecosystem enabler from India in the Moonshot Disability Accelerator Initiative, a coordinated global disability innovation ecosystem. Moonshot has 10 global accelerator partners in six countries that leverage principles of inclusive and universal design and accessibility in their models. Interestingly there is also an initiative to raise a disability impact fund to the tune of USD 20 million, which will invest in assistive tech startups globally.
Thirdly, we are building an online platform, which will be a one-stop shop for anything to do with assistive tech. ATF also runs an awards event for startups in this space, which is in its third year of operation.
Prateek Madhav: There is some very exciting work going on in fighting vision impairment issues, using AI for mobility. In some cases, these tools or devices take video and audio input and give audio feedback to the visually challenged person through an implant near the ear. Now tech can read facial profiles and features, remember the same, and give feedback to the visually challenged person.
Such tools can also read any text and translate it in the language of choice. We have also seen a lot of progress in tech in making physical documents accessible. There are tools now to scan documents and read it aloud in real time, in any language of your choice or store it in audio files, so that you can listen in at a time of your choice.
Tech has improved a lot in the field of reading handwriting and then saving it and making it searchable. There are also tools to make sign language audible, ie, if a person speaks in a sign language, the application scans it and then reads it out in real time to enable a conversation.
We are seeing a lot of progress with bionic materials. Smart wheelchairs and alternate and augmented communication methods to help children in the cognitive impairment spectrum using virtual reality and gamification of content are some of the areas where there is a lot of traction.
Prateek Madhav: We have built the Assistive Tech foundation awards where we give awards to startups and other enablers in the ecosystem, including educational institutions, corporates and governments. Some interesting startups and collaborations have come out of these awards, for eg, there was a startup working on battery-operated scooters and it is now working with Zomato to provide these to physically disabled gig workers.Around 400 of these scooters are on the road now.
We are working with various government agencies to sensitise them on assistive tech providing advisory services on interventions, and also policy advisories in the disability space. With some state governments, we are working on the potential for direct procurement from assistive tech startups, or from disabled entrepreneurs. We are also working on policy advisories for some state governments, and with corporates on how their CSR funds could be used better in the assistive tech sector.
Prateek Madhav: There are quite a few startups that are part of our portfolio.
SHG technologies has built a smart vision glass, an assistive device for the visually impaired. It uses AI, machine learning and machine vision to make a difference and facilitate advancement in their lives. This device can help the visually challenged become aware of their surroundings, read a book of their choice in languages known to them, identify Indian currencies, apart from face recognition and storage of facial data.
Another of our startups works in assistive oral care, where people with extreme disabilities or elderly are unable to do something as simple as brushing their teeth. Sociodent has come out with an assistive oral care device. It is a novel mouthpiece for dependent individuals.
Lifespark Technologies creates solutions for care in chronic neurological conditions such as stroke, Parkinson’s disease, spinal cord injury, and more. Their solutions span the domains of AI/ML, medical devices, mobile applications and web applications.
Robo Bionics has developed a 3D printed prosthetic hand with a sense of touch and multi-grip control. Made in India, their product is lightweight and affordable. Battery-powered prosthesis now available in the Indian market for people with below elbow amputation.
Glovatrix designs affordable wearable technology products which help speech and hearing impaired people communicate effectively. One of their products is an AI-powered smartwatch which converts gestures to speech and text. It is easy to use and the microphone converts sounds to text or image format. It also enables learning of the Indian sign language with a real-time feedback mechanism.
Trestle Labs takes on the issue of accessibility of physical documents. The machine scans the text and it starts reading in real time, in any language. storing it in their mobile and then reading it out in any of the 60 languages. It can also save handwriting and makes it searchable. It is making schools, colleges and offices digitally inclusive.
Prateek Madhav: Vifr Tech is harnessing the power of virtual reality for training and educating neurodiverse young adults in a fun way. Their product, Halara, is a complete virtual reality special education platform to train and teach young adults with autism and other neurodevelopmental conditions. There are children with extreme disabilities where even communicating something as simple as pain in some part of the body takes a lot of effort. It is for such conditions that these virtual reality platforms are making a difference.
CogniAble is another startup which is a machine learning-driven assistive tech for early detection and treatment of autism spectrum disorder. Founded by researchers from IIT-Delhi, they assess the child and prepare an individualised education plan.
Avaz is a startup which uses picture and text-based Alternate and Augmented Communication applications to empower children and adults with complex communication needs to express themselves and learn.
Prateek Madhav: We see the assistive tech ecosystem containing the following parts:government, nonprofits, people with disabilities, researchers, startups, investors, and global institutions.
We think that the investment climate has become slightly mature with our efforts. We are constantly promoting these technologies and bringing them to the market, exploring other use cases, and looking at possibilities for sustained business enterprise.
With our intervention in the Atal Incubation Centre for assistive tech, we think that it will lead to 100 more startups in the space. We have so far impacted five lakh lives with our startups. We hope to impact around five million lives in the next five years. There are some trends that the 450 startups in this space in India are likely to take. Some of the startups with a strong IP driven tech will continue their journey, move into adjacent sectors and find monetisation and commercial use cases.
Secondly, some of them would become full spectrum companies providing a suite of products within the disability arena they operate. Thirdly, there could be someone building platforms for this kind of tech. It could be a kind of a consolidation, building a range of products and becoming a platform.
It might appear that assistive tech is not a big market, but there is an Israeli company Orcam which is a unicorn, and there is Microsoft which is spending a lot of time, money and focus on building assistive tech products.
We see that India could, in due course, become the global hub for assistive tech, with our startups playing a major role, and also because our focus is on affordable products, which India specialises in.The global south could be a market for such affordable products.
