Mr. Abhijeet Ghavalkar
Co-Founder & CEO at Prana Medical
Achiever's Success Story
If there is no struggle, there is no progress
Abhijeet (Abhi) Ghavalkar is a designer and engineer who works at the intersection of design, technology, social impact, and business. He has founded multiple healthcare and wellness startups across the UK, the US, the Middle East, and India including startups in telemedicine, medical tourism, fitness, and medical devices. He has led cross-disciplinary teams across continents to design and develop award-winning products. He is passionate about making healthcare affordable, accessible & equitable to people around the world.
His work with his startup Prana Medical is looking at developing a low-cost medical device that allows up to four patients to share a single hospital ventilator. Fewer than 2,000 working ventilators serve millions of people across 41 countries in Africa compared to more than 170,000 ventilators in the US alone. Prana is looking to address this ventilator inequity through their device which can be produced for less than $2,500 for four patients compared to traditional ventilators that cost $17,000 for one patient.
Abhi has also been invited as a guest speaker by Rotary International, Loughborough University & the University of East Anglia in the UK, UC Berkeley and Harvard University in the US, and other organizations. He was an instructor at the Fung Fellowship at the Fung Institute for Engineering Leadership at the University of California, Berkeley where he taught students about human-centered design and guided them through the design process to develop software and hardware solutions for industry partners such as University of California, San Francisco Innovation Ventures & Blue Goji. Abhi has also been invited to be a panelist on design, technology and innovation, has been invited to judge startup pitch competitions, and has mentored entrepreneurs, designers, and students across the UK and the US.