Getting sued for €25M was the best thing to happen to this award-winning inventor

Chaos isn’t a pit. Chaos is a ladder,” says the character you hate to love and secretly admire for his dangerous desire to rise to the top, on HBO’s Game of Thrones. The story you are about to read exemplifies this quote. Humble beginnings in a small town, starting several businesses even before starting-up was cool, trundling up to the big city life and living in a one-room apartment with his new wife, innovating in a field that wasn’t his own, getting sued for millions, staging a walk-out from a company he had built, brick by brick, do not sound like the ingredients of a success story. Yet, this is how Manish Doshi, pioneer of a technology that will help drastically strengthen the odds in heart surgery, made the climb.

Startup trendsetter A textile engineer from Baroda’s M.S. University, Manish grew up in Anand at Amul housing, as his father worked at Amul. “I was determined that I will have my own business of import-export, in spite of having no knowledge of it.” He conjured up this beautiful dream two decades before the Great Indian Startup Dream was a thing. He joined Mafatlal Fine at Navsari and worked there for five months. Looking for any trading opportunity that would provide him an entry point, he started up in Anand supplying raw materials for the paints industry. This soon turned into a chemical trading business for the textile industry, which took him to Surat. Newly-wed, he lived in a one-room apartment with his wife, until things picked up. What followed was a string of other successful ventures: laser sheet metal cutting workshop and an amusement park, but Manish felt lacking. He wished to do something more meaningful. The wow and the vow It was 1998 and angioplasties were gaining prominence over bypass surgeries when Manish came across the sneaky little devices called ‘stents,’ that would go on to change his life forever. Used in surgical procedures for the heart, these stents were small spring-like components, that, bafflingly, no Indian company had manufactured till then. “I sacrificed all my other businesses and dedicated myself to this life-saving device that was disruptive and had global potential. I wanted to establish the first coronary stent manufacturing company in India,” he explains. With help from his partner in his laser business, Manish found out that though it was cheap to manufacture, stents were sold at staggeringly great margins. Establishing a board of medical veterans, their newly floated company Sahajanand Medical was in business. The duo imported the machine to manufacture stents. With the first batch ready, they were all set to market their product at a fourth of the price of its imported counterpart, only to find doctors turning skeptics at the indigenous product, fearing a low price means inferior quality. It may shock you, but the team’s decision to rebrand and increase its price gave it a spot in the race. This enabled the company to rise to a level where the Indian stent was accepted and known for its quality over more than 40 countries. Improvisation was the name of the game for the next few years, to progress from the bare metal stents they had started out with, which served the purpose of unblocking coronary arteries at that time, combating the blockage of arteries and reducing it from 30-40 percent to around 15-20 percent. Subsequently, players like Johnson &Jonhson entered the race, bringing down the percentage of blockage sharply from 40 percent to less than 10 percent and, in some cases, none at all. While J&J’s stents were made of polymers, Manish’s company invented biodegradable stents that, in future regulation, came to be mandated in procedures, thus surviving the competitive scare. His life’s biggest lessons To increase acceptance among the continued skepticism from the Indian medical fraternity, they started participating in clinical trials. When they received the CE approval for their stent, they did small clinical studies in the Netherlands. Then Boston Scientific and Angiotech Pharmaceuticals in the industry decided to file for patent infringement and sued them for €25 million. The judgment was not in their favor but, fortunately, they only had to cough up only €1,400, as they hadn’t commercialized the product yet. “Although we paid less, for me, it was a €25-million lesson, which was learned really well,” Manish says of the experience. The day soon came when Manish, who held 10-percent equity in the company he had helped build from scratch, had to leave overnight following clashes with his business partner. He was frustrated but knew he walked off with a robust network of veterans, influencers and opinion leaders in the medical fraternity backing him. “The Brazilian distribution company of my previous company and their founder members became my friends over the period. When I left my company, they showed their willingness to do something with me. This time I didn’t want to create just a product, but something revolutionary, which can change the way we did things. I got together with a team of scientists and started an R&D lab. And that’s how our MagicTo such technology was born.” The MagicTouch of starting up again An alternative to using stents during surgery was balloon angioplasty, and just like the stents, the balloon also had to be coated with a drug that helps the body accept the implant. Under the newly christened Concept Medical, the MagicTouch technology was a sirolimus-coated balloon to treat coronary artery blockage without the help of external scaffolds like a stent. Supported by his Brazilian friends, Manish incorporated Concept Medical, a cardiovascular device business that advances innovation and develops next-generation products in the field and protects technology with patents in USA, Europe, and Japan. Sirolimus-based drug-eluting stents have been proven as more favorable compared to Paclitaxel drug-eluting stents. Currently, all drug-eluting balloons manufactured by companies like Medtronic, B Brown, Euro core, etc., use Paclitaxel. “Sirolimus is difficult and challenging to deliver from a balloon catheter and is difficult to coat on to the balloon. It is also very tricky to retain the drug in arterial walls for a longer period to treat the disease. Many companies tried to develop this technology but failed. So at present, we are the only company that makes this product,” Manish explains. They used nanotechnology, and the entire development was done in-house. Learning from past mistakes, he had made sure that everything they created is not just innovative but also protected with proper IP. “Today we have 23 patents granted all over the world, many pending and many more to becoming,”

Source: YourStory
Publication Date: 13-may-2016

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Your privacy is very important to us. This Notice sets out the way in which we process your information when you use our Website or other digital platforms in accordance with data protection laws.
APPLICABILITY
This Notice applies to individuals visiting our Website. The Notice applies only to the information we collect through our Website, in email, text, forms and other electronic communication received through or in connection with our Website.

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Communication – We may use your information to administer and provide services you request or have expressed an interest in, to communicate with you in case of any inquiry or support, for sending newsletters, updates and promotional materials, for seeking your opinion and feedback and personalize, to notify you about changes to our service, and/or tailor any communications that we may send you.
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CHILDREN’S PRIVACY

We understand the importance of taking extra precautions to protect the privacy and safety of children using our Website. The Services are not intended for users under the age of 16. We do not knowingly collect any Personal data from children under 16 or market to or solicit information from anyone under the age of 16. If we become aware that a person submitting Personal data is under 16, we will delete all the information as soon as possible unless it is with the consent and involvement of a parent or guardian. If you believe we might have any information from or about a child under 16, please contact us at privacy@conceptmedicals.com.

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CHANGES TO THE NOTICE

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Your rights and your personal data

We will respect your legal rights in relation to your data. Below are the rights granted to individuals located in the General Data Protection Regulation, and CMI is committed towards protection of the same.

The right to access information: At any point you can contact us to request the information we hold on you as well as why we have that information, who has access to the information and where we obtained the information from. Once we have received your request we will respond within one month.
There are no fees or charges for the first request but additional requests for the same data may be subject to an administrative fee.
The right to correct and update the information: If the data we hold on you is out of date, incomplete or incorrect, you can inform us and your data will be updated.
The right to have your information erased: If you feel that we should no longer be using your data or that we are illegally using your data, you can request that we erase the data we hold.
When we receive your request we will confirm whether the data has been deleted or the reason why it cannot be deleted (for example because we need it for our legitimate interests or regulatory purpose(s).
The right to object to processing: You have the right to request that we stop processing your data. Upon receiving the request, we will contact you and let you know if we are able to comply or if we have legitimate grounds to continue to process your data. Even after you exercise your right to object, we may continue to hold your data to comply with your other rights or to bring or defend legal claims.
The right to data portability: You have the right to request that we transfer some of your data to another controller. We will comply with your request, where it is feasible to do so, within one month of receiving your request.
The right to withdraw your consent: to the processing at any time for any processing of data to which consent was sought. You can withdraw your consent easily by telephone, email, or by post (See Contact Page).
The right to object to the processing: of personal data where applicable.
The right to lodge a complaint: with the Data Protection officer at privacy@conceptmedical.com
How long do we keep your personal data?

We retain personal information for as long as we reasonably require it for legal or business purposes. In determining data retention periods, CMI takes into consideration local laws, contractual obligations, and the expectations and requirements of our customers. When we no longer need personal information, we securely delete or destroy it.