Frugal Sphere Innovations, Co-Founder | Trimbak Kawdikar, PT

This week’s spotlight features Trimbak Kawdikar, PT. who works in the medical device innovations industry. He has worked in IIT Bombay to develop India’s first 3D printed prosthetic trans-femoral socket. Trimbak is Co-founder and COO of Frugal Sphere Innovations pvt. ltd. and Owner of Ergonomic Clinic, Indore. Read this spotlight to know more about his unconventional career path and his journey.

What is your name, job title and workplace?

Trimbak Kawdikar, PT

Co-founder and COO of Frugal Sphere Innovations pvt. ltd. and Owner Ergonomic Clinic, Indore

What is your educational background?

Bachelor’s of physiotherapy (BPTh) – D.E.Society’s Brijlal Jindal College of physiotherapy. The graduation year 2014

What did you do soon after graduation?

I worked in Pune at Dr. Rajiv Sharangpani’s Ergonomic Clinic. I worked there for about two years. After that I worked in Mumbai starting Dec 2015 at IIT bombay.

How did you hear about a work opportunity at IIT Bomaby?

When I was working in Pune, I wanted to do something different, something that included technology. I somehow wanted to connect 3 basic sciences, Biology, Physics and Chemistry.

In Aug 2015, one of my professor, Dr. Rajani Pagare, gave me a brochure for a 5 day course, Medical Device Innovation Conclave, at IIT Bombay. It later turned out to be a 5 days and 4 night’s course. I attended that in September 2015.

Tell us more about the Medical Device Innovation Conclave held at IIT Bombay in 2015.

I got to learn more about CAD, CAM, manufacturing, designing and technical side of things.

The 5 day course was more of a hackathon. We were asked to meet people we did not before. Then, we were asked to form teams. Each team was given an existing medical problem. We were expected to design a solution for that problem and present that to a panel of Jury on the last day.

We got to learn how important the problem is and how effectively we can solve it if we are using all the domains of our minds. The event wasn’t just for medical professionals. There were 3-4 people from medical background. But many were electrical, electronic and mechanical engineers, people from computer science background, and few of the management guys.

Medical professionals were required to explain the problem to the team. I mainly had to address the language barriers. As a team, we worked on a problem, conceptualized a solution and presented the solution on the last day. There were around 15 such teams working on different problems.

How did you end up working in IIT Bombay?

After the 5 day event, I kept in touch with the people I met there. A few days later, I dropped in a mail to one of the professors at IIT saying that if there is any opportunity to learn or any opportunity to work, I am interested.

I got a response after almost 10 days. They asked me about my plans. I told them that I want to work on developing devices. Couple of months later they called me for an interview.

Tell us more about your job at IIT Bombay

There is a lab in IIT Bombay called BETIC. It was established under Prof. B. Ravi in Mech. Dept. for medical device innovation. I worked over there as a researcher.

We worked towards redeveloping the above knee prosthesis in an efficient way.

What problems did you address with your job in IIT Bombay?

Traditionally HDPE sockets require Wrapping, profiling, molding, casting using POP and HDPE pipes at 216 degrees. It is not as user friendly. POP itself is not friendly to work with. It also has environmental hazards. This process needed to be changed.

There are big problems at ground level. For example, if a person in rural India loses a limb, he needs to travel to big cities like Mumbai, Delhi, Jaipur to get a prosthetic limb. Now, the government facilities in these big cities may provide the prosthetic limb at minimal to no cost, but there are other logistical problems.

For example if the person reaches the center at 11 am in the morning, the traditional Jaipur Foot prosthesis would take 8 hours or longer to be prepared. By the time it is ready, the center would be closed. Now this person from a rural area needs to find accommodation in a big city for one night. It can be pretty costly. Travel costs can be high too.

Tell us more about how you developed India’s first 3D printed prosthetic trans- femoral socket

I helped in developing above knee prosthesis sockets using 3D CAD and 3D printing. 3D printing was new in India back in 2015. Although there was a technology for below knee sockets, there was nothing for above knee sockets. Me and my colleague Shrishail, both of us started working on that project. The team also included other colleagues from lab and the team at Ratna Nidhi Charitable Trust in Mumbai.

It was a pretty big project. We also received the google impact challenge 2016 award in disability. Google has provided the funding to develop the technology and provide it to people who cannot afford it.

We collaborated with IIT Madras and IIT Guwahati to develop polycentric knee joints. In house we started the project to have more movement at the ankle joining of Jaipur foot.

We worked using Jaipur foot itself since we did not want to increase the cost. In the end we were able to produce a prosthesis that was cost effective but had the best quality. The socket we fabricated was India’s first 3D printed prosthetic trans-femoral socket.

We tested our prosthesis at the lab in MGM, center for human movement science. That is where I met Dr. Yuvraj Singh. MGM has a state of the art facility for gait analysis. They have force plates coupled with the vicon nexus system and as well facilities for measuring VO2 Max for energy efficiency. Anything we developed, we ran a trial at their lab under the guidance of Dr. Rajani Mullerpatan.

They had 3 courses in clinical biomechanics: Basics of clinical biomechanics, Advanced clinical biomechanics and clinical biomechanics for engineers. I completed those three courses. There was a lot to learn.

What were the other projects you worked on in IIT Bombay?

There was another project for tracheostomy patients. Sometimes between the suctions these patients can develop a blockage. We developed a device to detect the blockage that may happen in between suctions.

This was the project we got at the time of conclave. We did produce the solution at the end of the event. We later continued working on the same problem and developed an even better solution.

I got to learn about 3D scanners and printers, laser cutters, mechanical and electronic tools and software. There was something new to learn every day. The process of innovation itself, design, develop, deliver, deploy was fascinating. Interactions with people from other domains, engineering department and our own department were always insightful.

Later work at IIT became more streamlined and I was aiming to continue clinical practice and innovations side by side. So I moved to Indore and started my own practice. Three of my colleagues, Shrishail, Anwaar, Shailesh and I co-founded Frugal sphere innovations pvt ltd.

Tell us about your practice at The Ergonomic Clinic.

Couple of months after moving to Indore, I started looking for a space to open my clinic. My practice is slightly different from others in that I have no equipment as such. I never really went to other physicians to ask for referrals. I banked on patients coming, getting better and spreading the word.

Tell us about your journey at Frugal Sphere Innovations.

Me and my three colleagues from IIT Bombay started Frugal Sphere Innovations. We had a meeting in Bombay when we decided what we wanted to do. How to approach people. And what problems to address with our projects. We straight away started with the projects we already knew as crucial problems waiting for better solutions.

What are some of your projects at the Frugal Sphere Innovations?

It started as an innovation company. We are also skilled in design and manufacturing. So we started providing services to clinicians who have innovated the equipment but need assistance with manufacturing and designing it precisely.

We have been working with Dr. Suresh Deshpande, an excellent laparoscopic surgeon. He himself has 4 or 6 patents on his name. He has a voice control operation theater. Two of my colleagues, Anwaar and Shrishail went ahead to help him out with his projects.

We have a couple of in-house projects. One of them is vein finders. We are working on making a vein finder capable of helping counter prevention and cost efficient.

Another project is for lymphedema prevention post radical mastectomy or partial mastectomy. Many patients during this pandemic couldn’t go to clinics for decongestive surgeries for lymphedema. Patients in the rural area couldn’t access decongestive treatment even before the pandemic.

The pneumatic compression devices are extremely difficult to get at home. So we have designed a device which is low cost and patients can easily keep it at home.

All of our devices are in the clinical trial phase right now. For the lymphedema prevention device, Anwaar got the Nidhi EIR grant from Manipal TBI. I got EIR grant from KIIT TBI in bhuwanehswar.

What is the typical day of work for you?

Currently I am doing clinical work. Right now I am handling covid case load. I am not working with any hospital. Mostly I treat patients who are at home because they cannot get to the hospital or prefer to stay at home. I am doing home visits.

We have a team to help people in need with supply of Oxygen and medicines. We have a group of people who arrange blood donors. One of us is a medical officer who handles covid tests and initial line of treatment.

The day ends late at night. Since the second wave started, work at frugal sphere innovations has halted from my part. We are working on streamlining things and making sure we perform better after the second wave is over.

What do you like about your job, clinical and Frugal Sphere Innovations?

From the clinical perspective, I like treating patients. Every patient is different and I like learning from them. It is satisfying to see patients getting improved health wise. I am happy that I have enough strength to help people in need.

Frugal Sphere Innovations wise, we are in the optimistic mindset. We are nurturing our creativity. Nothing is considered impossible. We discuss all sorts of problems and all sorts of solutions. We keep on trying. Our team dynamic is very good.

What are the challenges you face, both, Clinically and Frugal Sphere innovations wise ?

All four of us are in different cities. We have not met since December 2019. We are working remotely and hope to meet soon.

Financially all four of us are beginners. Company is in the startup phase. We got grants but due to lockdown, grants were washed away in just maintaining the company itself. Sometime in the future we need to come out of surviving on grants. Generating revenue is important to sustain ourselves and for any startup out there.

We are innovators and not necessarily have marketing skills. Soon we will be looking for someone to help us with our marketing needs. I feel if we start selling and marketing our products, we will leave our innovation behind and that is where we need to be careful. We cannot keep innovations on the back burner.

What is next for you?

Next is expanding on clinical practice. I want to help those who didn’t find any relief from other treatments or even mine.

Company wise, we have to improvise, adapt and overcome.

What are the books you found helpful?

I read a lot of books. Some of my favorites are:

• Many books from hay house publications.

• Books by Carlos Castaneda

• Books by Dale Carnegie

Physiotherapy wise there are so many of my favorites. We can read different books to understand a topic. So for example if we want to learn more about multiple sclerosis read about anatomy, physiology, biochemistry, pathology, medicine and then rehabilitation.

With respect to Innovation, BioDesign and Essence of Medical Device Innovation.

What is your advice for new grad physiotherapists?

See I didn’t do my masters since I did not want to confine myself to one specific branch. I have 64 GB worth of books on my hard disc. It contains physiotherapy and then there are non-physiotherapy books and I keep reading that. We need to nurture our knowledge more than our degrees. What we have learned from our experiences is the most important.

Interact with everyone. Don’t get caught up in the senior and junior hierarchy. Everyone we meet will know something that we don’t know.

Where can people reach you?

They can reach me on LinkedIn.