Stop complaining and find a solution

with Dr. Shambhavi Naik and Pushkar Potdar

Gist

In the age of fast home delivery of goods to food, the lack of timely delivery of life science supplies and lack of tracking seems like an obvious gap that pushes research back in developing countries like India on the timeline that developed countries follow. So, what would you do if you are facing the most common problem of material supply faced by almost every Indian scientist and researcher? This was the situation faced by Dr. Shambhavi Naik, when she moved from University of Leicester to pursue her Cancer research in India. Baffled by the slow supply of the basic life science material she collaborated with her most trusted partner, her husband- Pushkar Potdar who is a mechanical engineer and supply chain professional. His work focussed on using technology solutions to make goods move faster in the supply chain across the world. Together, they came up with a solution called CloudKrate to tackle this long-standing problem in life science research in India. Listen to this Scikonnect podcast by Biopatrika to follow the inspiring journey of this power couple in entrepreneurship. Indulge in the functioning of this life science-based start-up with our hosts Charu and Nikhil.

EP#7: Stop complaining and find a solution with Dr. Shambhavi Naik and Pushkar Potdar

Transcript

Charu:

Biopatrika. Your very own online science communication brings science closer to you in so many ways. Today SciKonnect by Biopatrika welcomes all science enthusiasts to a career highlight podcast. I, Charu Gupta, my co host Nikhil Kumar Tulsian and our amazing podcast Intern Parvathy, have been given the honor to trace the story of an entrepreneurial couple who started walking different roads to ultimately walk the same one hand in hand.

Nikhil:

For our third episode, we have an enterprising power couple. Dr. Shambhavi Nayak and Pushkar Podar with us. Pushkar, an engineer by training, moved to India after completing his ME degree from Cornell and worked with GEP and Accenture. Dr. Shambhavi, a PhD from University of Leicester, was chasing a cure to breast cancer, and when in 2016, they both decided on something even bigger. Let’s hear their story in their own words.

Shambhavi:

Okay. Sure. Hi, I’m Shambhavi. As you said, I did a PhD from the University of Leicester in cancer biology and moved to India, and I spent three years at postdocing. I think basically over ten years I tried to kill cancers, as in a petri dish. That is my definition of trying to cure breast cancer. Until I realized that there were a lot more difficulties in doing cancer research in India as compared to when I was in the UK and getting access to supplies was one of them. And that’s when Pushkar and I decided to put our brains together and see if we could try and come up with a solution which led to the birth of CloudKrate. Pushkar.

Pushkar:

As I said, I’m a mechanical engineer by training but have been a supply chain professional for most of my nine years before starting CloudKrate. As a supply chain professional, a lot of my work was around using technology solutions to make goods move faster in the supply chain across the world. When Shambhavi brought me the problem of lab supplies reaching scientists in time and that being a major barrier to research in India, what I tried to do was to use my experience from designing supply chain solutions across the world and try and bring it back to something which could help Indian life sciences. And that was the direction to which I started contributing to the birth of CloudKrate.

Charu:

Yeah. So was there a specific event that or was it like all this lifelong journey that brought you or like there was this one incident that happened with either of you and you were like, you know what? There’s a definite need for CloudKrate, for the solution and we have to do something about it.

Shambhavi:

I think the idea was always there. When I moved from the UK to India and being at NCBS, which is like a very premiere Institute and still having to wait for weeks for things to turn up, I found it very strange and everyone seemed to be used to that kind of environment. Everyone seemed okay with it. They were like, how you just have to pre plan stuff. And I was not okay with it. And it dragged on for a few years. And I could see that everybody was suffering because of it and not just at NCBS, all across India. So we did a survey and we found that everybody has the same problems. There was this particular product. I remember it was HPLC grade water that we ordered, and it took nine months to come. And my immediate reaction was that people have babies quicker. And I honestly don’t know how people would be okay with those kind of leaked times. And that kind of thing just triggered the idea that we have to do something about this. This is just not okay. We can’t be, as Indian scientists, okay with this kind of behavior. I think that, for me, was the trigger that, hey, something has to be done.

Pushkar:

For me, I think back in 2016, 2017 was when we had started to see the birth of very interesting startups like Swiggy and introduction of Uber to India, where you could see how technology intervention was changing the way we were doing very very normal things, like booking a cab or even ordering food. And the one particular aspect of Swiggy, which absolutely blew my mind was the visibility into knowing where your food actually was. So which kind of got over the ten phone calls? Like, Where is my food? So that was sort of the Eureka moment for me as to how even simple solutions could be derived from the usage of technology. And that was essentially the spark which said, hey, if a technology can tell you where your food is, why can’t you get your products faster from the suppliers back to your lab?

Credits

Hosts: Charu, Nikhil, Parvathy

Editing: Samriti Sharma, Nikhil Tulsian, Virender Singh, Salma, Disha, Albertha Joseph-Alexander

Social: Charu Gupta, Salma, Albertha Joseph-Alexander

Music by Aditya Sutar

Meet the Hosts

Charu Gupta

Expert in hematological diseases and malignancies, Dr. Charu Gupta is dedicated to improving the quality of patient life. This multi-talented cancer researcher enjoys creating content for her food blog “The Indian Food Explorer”, travel, horse riding and swimming.

Nikhil Tulsian

Dr. Nikhil Tulsian is a postdoctoral researcher whose work is central to understanding infectious diseases, antibody characterization, virus dynamics and regulation. Being a SciKonnect podcast host enables him to fulfill his interest of inculcating the spirit of science in people.

Parvathy Venkateswaran

As Parvathy Venkateswaran pursues her B.Tech Biotechnology, at SASTRA University, she is driven by a passion for unravelling the mysteries of the molecular world. Pravathy also finds time to explore the field of Science Communication with SciKonnect Biopatrika.

About the SciKonnect podcast

SciKonnect Podcast provides a glimpse of daily life in academia and industry. Our hosts from different countries take you on a riveting, emotional & insightful journey that bares it all on how we do science and how we succeed. These are the stories you ‘want to learn’ rather than ‘had to learn’.

Stop complaining and find a solution

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