Going Global The Art Of Knowing Where To Launch

Stasis Labs found its first market overseas. What’s its best next move?

- Leigh Buchanan

IN 2012, DINESH SEEMAKURTY was studying biomedical engineering as a prelude to medical school when his career plans jackknifed. Seemakurty, then a student at USC, was visiting relatives in India when his grandfather fell ill and checked into the hospital. But there was no medical supervision there, beyond nurses looking in every six hours, and no one noticed that his grandfather’s condition had destabilized until it was too late. 

As a former emergency medical technician, Seemakurty knew that lives often depend on the information medical workers get about a patient and how quickly they get it. “In these emerging countries—and even in impoverished areas of the U.S.—you don’t have that access to patient information,” says Seemakurty. “When you don’t know, you can’t conduct treatment.”

In 2015, Seemakurty, then 21, and his classmate Michael Maylahn, then 23, launched Stasis Labs in Los Angeles. The company makes systems that monitor vital signs and deliver data to clinicians’ smartphones. Stasis expects to offer products in the United States. But it first went where it was most needed—far from home.

• The right features

U.S. companies that spy opportunities in developing markets often strip down products to make versions that can be produced cheaply enough to sell there, and Seemakurty and Maylahn thought they could succeed with an inexpensive, bare-bones machine. To make sure, Seemakurty asked the physicians he met in India a question. The top manufacturers of vitals monitoring devices are GE and Philips, whose products cost as much as $10,000. “We said, ‘If we gave you a Philips monitor for $500 rather than $10,000, would you buy it?’ ” says Seemakurty. 

The answer, surprisingly, was no.