Amidst the chirps and cuckoo calls of his garden, Dr. Rupam Das, entrepreneur, scientist, teacher, father, husband, and a good friend to many, was willing to share his philosophical side to Gomathi K Reddy, as she prods him to share his deeper insights about life.
Acculi Labs of Dr. Rupam Das
Dr. Rupam Das is the Founder/CEO of Integrated Ideas and Acculi Labs, based out of Bangalore, Karnataka. He works with highly innovative and intelligent teams in Delhi, Bangalore, and across various thought points in India.
Acculi Labs is making waves in the startup space as their App, LYFAS has earned support from the Government of India as a non-invasive early diagnostics mobile tool for doctors detecting COVID19/Corona asymptomatic and symptomatic patients. Acculi Labs now works with the Centre for Augmenting WAR with COVID-19 Health Crisis (CAWACH), an initiative by the Department of Science and Technology (DST), Government of India. The LYFAS COVID score is gaining traction as a reliable COVID risk assessment profile.
Acculi Labs works with NGOs and medical practitioners in rural areas, empowering rural health checks and enabling women empowerment in rural areas.
In the Bangalore – Mysore road, Dr. Rupam Das is busy at his home office pouring over data coming from across his testing sites for LYFAS. Now and then, he looks up and smiles at his favorite little birdie, that cuckoo in his garden, calling out to him to respond.
The man is wearing many hats. Dr. Rupam Das shares, “I am not much of an urban guy. That small-town feeling is probably genetic. It has been like this for the past 10-15 years. We’ve been working remotely for as long as I can remember, and the lockdowns have not made any big difference to our operations. We don’t want to replicate stereotypical corporate cultures in our startup. We want to build a different approach to creating solutions, and that starts with how you treat your people. My people don’t work FOR me, but they work WITH me. To me, a startup is not a smaller version of an established corporate. We all innovate at every level.”
Quiz him on what got him, a doctoral scholar in Computer Science, to start developing apps for healthcare. Dr. Rupam Das shares, “It’s probably a very personal thing. Most of my childhood was spent with my grandparents. When I came to live with my father much later in life, I was very much set in my ways of life, but he still was a massive influence on me. He was an Indian Air Force officer, very disciplined about Everything in life.
But his retired life was ridden with many health issues because of a lack of proper diagnostics. He suffered a lot from the callousness of our healthcare system. From 2003 – 2008, I saw him go from one debilitating health condition to another. I spent a lot of time and money on his recovery but still lost him in 2008. That hit me hard. I was almost vengeful if I can use that word in the system. That got me working on enabling patient-centric healthcare.
The starting of Acculi Labs
Acculi Labs was started in May 2017 by Dr. Rupam Das to empower the patient – To offer everyone at the bottom of the pyramid, to take control of their healthcare diagnostics and not leave it to the diagnostic labs.” He says, “I do ruffle a lot of feathers in the established healthcare ecosystem,” and laughs out loud.
Talking more about Acculi Labs, Dr. Rupam Das shares, “LYFAS is an affordable and portable single-lead ECG device. It is bio-signal processing, analysis, and streaming platform. It can extract multiple parameters from a patient and stream data live to doctors, performing real-time and cloud-based analysis. LYFAS finds application across various touchpoints in healthcare delivery by acquiring pulse signals and combining them with data to derive blood pressure or non-invasive blood sugar readings or respiratory signals.
LYFAS can integrate even with fintech applications for efficient medical underwriting – It is beneficial to insurance companies too. It has exceptional use cases like sportsmen, people with diabetes, and pregnant women too. LYFAS is rated as the most sensitive tool to pick up subclinical atherosclerosis. Besides COVID19 and Atherosclerosis, Lyfas provides early diagnostics for Diabetic Cardiovascular Autonomic Neuropathy(CAN).
“That seems like quite a mouthful for a non-tech person,” quips Gomathi, and Dr. Rupam Das laughs his heart out at that and adds, “Everything about life is innovation, and genuine innovation happens when you use technology and tools to get to the root of the real problem. I’ve worked with doctors and surgeons across many disciplines, including cancer, cardiovascular diseases, etc. One common thread among all these ailments is, we are not curing anybody. We are only managing a disease — Be it cancer, diabetes, or COVID19.
But God is not crazy like humans. He designed our bodies to keep us healthy and full of vigor. Now we use masks to cover ourselves from a virus, and we reduce the amount of oxygen intake. COVID19 is not as damaging as we perceive it to be. The real damage comes out of our so-called preventive measures.
This social isolation and lockdowns are going to create a more anxious society. Women may suffer from increased PCOD, PCOS issues, and disturbed sleep patterns, while men will find it challenging to manage their stress levels, leading to increased heart attacks and suicides. The post-pandemic era is going to be much more complex than the pandemic itself. Today, we need to coordinate, co-operate, and co-exist.”
This philosophical scientist-entrepreneur adds that “To be an entrepreneur, at whatever level, you shouldn’t allow success to go to your head.” We must work for the value we are creating for society. We must understand that the “valuation,” i.e., the monetary gains is just incidental. It is essential to program your mind to your belief systems and purpose, which must be noble.
Your mind is like a pet – It can be cute and intelligent if you train it well. Or, you can allow it to behave like a street dog and bite you. We all want certainty in life; random events and incidents aren’t palatable to even the most adventurous ppl. It’s the same thing with the mind – it needs to know where it is going. So you train it, discipline it, and that discipline automatically creates disciplined outcomes. That’s what we call certainty.
Life is about a few fundamentals. It’s not about skill or talent, but it’s about staying disciplined and being consistent. You’ll get to the next level automatically.
To reach the next level, your goals must be large – What I’d call the “Infinite Goal” – There must be somebody to compete with, somebody to look up to, and somebody to guide you to your infinite goal.
Your Infinite Goal attains the most excellent value when you have the Plus (somebody to look up to), Minus (somebody to compete), and Equal to (somebody to guide) sorted out. You need all three. When executed with discipline and awareness, every small step in your life will take you to your Infinite Goal. That’s life.”
On that note, Dr. Rupam Das leaves Gomathi wanting more coverage about the catalysts and the equations he had to deal with in life. But Dr. Rupam Das smiles with an all-knowing that’s-for-another-interview look and bids adieu for the moment as he heads to share a loving cup of tea with his better half in Everything, Mrs. Moumita Das.
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