Surface Analysis and Fitness Engine

The current covid-19 pandemic is set to create a trust deficit in our interactions with public spaces and deep supply chains. The effect of the same is felt most in hospitality, food businesses, logistics, transportation, mass manufacturing and perhaps even ultimately in our own private residences. Updating and maintaining a high sanitization and hygiene standard is now an existential threat to most of these sectors. It is now imperative to demonstrate compliance in simple and accessible ways to regain trust and confidence in public infrastructure. 

Horizon’s Surface Analysis and Fitness Engine (SAFE) sits at the intersection of cloud-connected bio-machines and data science to provide rapid and accurate sanitation verification for surfaces, liquids and products. SAFE is a network-connected affordable and portable hygiene monitor (ATP monitor) that is powered by a smartphone-connected platform with wireless sync technology and is designed to adapt to multitude of locations, products, procedures and complex environments.

As lockdown eases across the world, and our economies get up and running, Covid-19 has shaken up many former certainties. Our trust in public infrastructure is now broken. We think twice before pressing an elevator button or turning a doorknob. This is because we are concerned about the surfaces that we interact with. These surfaces, inanimate objects or fomites act as vehicles for microbial transmission. 

Ideally, our hygiene monitoring practices should help us ascertain the effectiveness of cleaning procedures and surface contamination in the current environment. However, our current hygiene monitoring practices are grossly inefficient in helping us rebuild trust in our public infrastructure. These include:  

a. Simple visual confirmations that only give a big picture view of effectiveness of cleaning procedures; they fail to identify microorganisms through naked eye

b. Microbiological testing can enumerate microorganisms, however, it does not provide immediate results thereby is limited in capability for mass-scale utilization 

In order to rebuild our trust in public spaces, and also prevent current/ future microbial transmission through surface contamination, we need to reimagine the hygiene monitoring paradigm by ensuring we are able to get up-to-date and reliable information on surface contamination in our environments.

SAFE is a network-connected, affordable, portable, accurate and real-time hygiene monitoring platform and management system. SAFE is built on principles of bioluminescence based on actual firefly bio-chemistry i.e. microbes and product residues contain adenosine Triphosphate (ATP), an energy molecule, which reacts with luciferin and luciferase to emit light. This intensity of emitted light is proportional to the concentration of pathogens/ microbes on the surface. ATP testing, thus, is effective as it can immediately provide results on the effectiveness of the cleaning process and presence/ absence of contamination. 

A hockey-puck shaped ATP luminometer collects surface samples. SAFE's cloud-connected platform then turns this raw data into organized information, thereby enabling immediate identification of surface contamination. ML-powered algorithms allow calibration of luminometer for multitude of conditions, locations, products and procedures thereby ensuring sensitive, accurate, and reliable test results each time. This in turn helps individuals, organizations or facilities management teams to determine the efficacy of the cleaning process against established thresholds and standards; and take corrective action if required.

We believe that in a world with a highly contagious virus - that has currently affected more than 8.0 million people globally - safety in interaction with shared/ public spaces is a top priority. Therefore, as countries emerge from lockdown, our initial focus is on organizations in the healthcare (hospitals, clinics, labs etc.) and food & beverage (F&B) industry (manufacturing, service and supply chains). While our initial focus is on these sectors, we also believe that other industries and spaces such as hospitality, travel, utilities, educational institutions etc. will be natural extensions to adopt hygiene monitoring solutions for their employees and their customers. 

Specific to the healthcare and F&B industry, we are currently in closed pilots with our prototype of SAFE (as a part of BIRAC BIG grant). In India, going forward, these sectors will be under stricter regulations and will increasingly  adopt a more proactive and preventive approach based on internationally recognized standards such as HACCP, FSMA, ISO etc. Among the current hygiene monitoring practices, only  ATP-bioluminescence-based SAFE solution helps meet these standards, while also providing superior performance on real-time, specific, sensitive, quantitative and intuitive fronts.

In situations of infectious outbreaks, inanimate objects, fomites and surfaces act as vehicles for microbial transmissions. Therefore, to reduce risk of infection spread, there is an urgent need to shift our current hygiene monitoring practices - from traditional technologies that are inaccurate or more-recent methods that are not real-time and are cost-prohibitive - to a rapid, sensitive, accurate environment monitoring coupled with customized cleaning processes and solutions based on real-time analysis of surface and environmental factors. This new Hygiene 2.0 paradigm shift will help public, shared and private spaces transition to a more proactive and preventive approach of environmental monitoring.

In developing countries, traditional methods of hygiene monitoring i.e. visual affirmation still dominates the market. Visual affirmation lacks the sensitivity and accuracy to detect microorganisms that are not visible to the naked eye. More-recent testing methods such as immuno-assay and PCR based methods are available only in select niches, however, they do not give an immediate result and are also cost-prohibitive. As a result, both these methods or solutions are not suitable for use cases that demand rapid, affordable and accurate ways of identifying and mitigating potential risks. 

In developed countries, ATP-testing has been replacing traditional and conventional methods. 3M, Hygiena and Neogen are some of the existing ATP test kit providers. However, a quick look at their current value proposition vis-a-vis needs of developing and mass market adoption highlight a significant disconnect along four parameters:

1. Affordability: Cost-prohibitive as they have built the complexity on hardware

2. Accessibility: Not available in developing markets, and also do not scale easily across different requirements and environments

3. Ease of use: Operator-driven hence requirement investment in training

4. Quality: Technology-focused hence needs specialised capacity building

By pushing the hardware complexity to the cloud and using learning models, SAFE reduces significant cost on product and drives affordability. ML-based calibration and learning models ensure that the solution scales across locations, products and complex environments. Additionally, SAFE’s luminometer also removes any operator training or capacity building requirements, by simply working out of the box. 

Our product focuses on two core-technologies: cloud-connected bio-machines and data science

SAFE’s ATP luminometer based on ATP bioluminescence reaction wherein adenosine triphosphate facilitates the conversion of luciferin to oxy-luciferin producing light in the process. Given that ATP is present in organic matter, hence can be used to measure pathogen contamination levels left over as residue on any surface. i.e. the more microorganisms on the surface, the higher ATP levels and higher the light produced as a byproduct of the reaction. This raw data is measured in relative light units (RLU), which is transmitted via a smartphone-app to the cloud. By employing microfluidics, SAFE reduces the quantities of consumable required for regular-screening of surfaces. 

The signal processing from the luminometer is handled in the cloud via a smartphone-app and the results are transmitted back, both to the smartphone-app and the luminometer. By reducing the signal processing dependence on hardware and firmware, and pushing it to software/ cloud, we reduce the hardware costs, which in turn helps reduce the overall cost of the product. Additionally, with machine learning models handling complex calibration and analytics on the cloud, we ensure continuous upgrades to the luminometer, and also allow for contactless and remote device management.

• Rapid Microbiological Methods with Hazard Analysis Critical Control Point Link: https://academic-oup-com.ezproxyberklee.flo.org/jaoac/article/80/6/1143/5684395
• Effectiveness of ATP bioluminescence assay for presumptive identification of microorganisms in hospital water sources Link: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5493863/
• Hygiena - Food Safety
• Link: https://www.hygiena.com/food-service.html

The current covid-19 pandemic is set to create a trust deficit in our interactions with public/shared spaces and deep supply chains. The effect of the same will be felt most in hospitality, food businesses, logistics, transportation, mass manufacturing, educational institutions and perhaps even ultimately in our own private residences. Updating and maintaining a high sanitization and hygiene standard is now an existential threat to most of these sectors. More importantly, they will also feel the pressure to demonstrate and communicate their compliance to their customers and users in a simple and accessible way to regain their trust and confidence. 

This is also because we no longer trust our cleaning processes. Our traditional and conventional cleaning and hygiene practices only provide proof-of-work - Has the area been cleaned? However, it does not provide us with a proof-of-result - Has the area been cleaned off harmful pathogens? Are there any contaminants still remaining on the surface? Does the cleaning process work for my immediate environment? 

To be re-assured and confident of our immediate spaces, we want our cleaning and hygiene practices to provide an immediate result of the efficacy of our cleaning practices. This means that the new hygiene paradigm needs to be built keeping in mind people’s need for - real-time, sensitive and accurate results, and customized cleaning approach. 

SAFE platform helps developing countries leapfrog into 21st century cleanliness and hygiene paradigm by providing a network-connected rapid microbial screening solution for accurate sanitation verification of surfaces, liquids and products. SAFE’s ATP luminometer immediately verifies if the surfaces have been effectively cleaned, for better decision making and audit preparedness. Additionally, by making the cleanliness and hygiene data available publicly, organizations help build confidence in public, and help rebuild trust in public/ shared infrastructure. Our ML-based learning models adapt to a multitude of locations, products, procedures and complex environments; thus, helping millions of people regain trust in public/ shared spaces and also proactively prevent any future infectious disease spread. 

SAFE is currently in closed beta with healthcare and F&B sectors. We are working towards a commercial launch within the end of the year. Our aim is to impact 1 million consumers by the end of next year, and further scale our impact across geographies to 50 million consumers by the end of year 5. 

Pre-Commercialization Phase (0 - 2 years)

On the technology side, our focus is to redesign and miniaturize the “prototype” standalone hygiene monitoring solution into a consumer-first networked hygiene monitoring platform. Additionally, we intend to push the complexity into software by building ML-based learning models for both calibration and analysis surface contamination detection

On the business side, we intend to launch SAFE for healthcare and F&B sectors, and sign at-least 20 large institutional customers (product intensity). We also intend to initiate direct-to-retail customer sales, and drive marketing efforts to that effect 

Commercialization Phase (2 - 5 years) 

On the hardware technology side, we intend to  enter into strategic partnership for manufacturing luciferin/ luciferase and other reagents/ assays to further bring down the cost of consumables. Additionally, R&D and commercialization of assay/ reagents for other sectors and complex environments. On the software technology side, we intend to mature the learning models to improve the accuracy per test basis during deployment. We further intend to explore and begin R&D into soil, air, water and other contamination identification.

On the business side, we intend to expand into new areas such as Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) etc. and also expand across different customer segments such as hospitality, travel, and even retail customers. We further intend to build a recommendation engine to provide our customers recommendations of EPA approved cleaning solutions. Through these efforts, we intend to become India’s and other developing countries platform of choice for rapid microbial detection, monitoring and identification.

There are four major priority areas that we will be focusing on in the near-term for India market - 

1. Product - Awareness on ATP-hygiene monitoring solutions needs to be built amongst both institutional and retail customers

2. Business Model - Major reasons for non-availability of ATP solutions is a combination of high-cost and an extensive need for training on using the ATP-monitoring kits

3. Technology Infrastructure - The existing ATP-monitoring solutions provide rapid contamination results, however, are limited in their ability to provide trends and analysis of surface contamination; thereby rendering them limited 

4. Operations - As a customer-first product, extensive and continuous customer support would be required for any issues that may arise post-rollout

We intend to work on the above-mentioned factors in the following ways - 

1. Product - SAFE’s focus is to provide rapid, affordable and portable hygiene monitoring of surfaces that aids compliance audits and adherence to regulatory norms. By releasing our solutions for highly-regulated sectors such as healthcare and F&B, we not only gain customers but also build product-market validation for the product and platform

2. Business Model - Our solution lends itself to a highly efficient go-to-market model that focuses on institutional as well as retail customers. We intend to roll-out SAFE products and platforms on a recurring revenue model. For us this would result in a highly predictable revenue model, which will help us plan for our scale and growth. By pushing the hardware complexity to software/ cloud, we drastically reduce cost of the product, and make superior technology available at drastically reduced rates

3. Technology Infrastructure - Network-connected ATP-monitoring platform stores data on the cloud, and allows customers to analyze the evolution of pathogens and/or contamination and cleaning efficiency across locations and dates

4. Operations - As a customer-first company, we will build processes and capacity to assist customers adopt SAFE as a hygiene monitoring platform of choice

We currently have 9 members working on the SAFE platform. The product initiative is led by Aishwarya Nair, who is an SIIP Fellow and an alum of IISER. Sidharth Sudarshan and A S Sunny lead the strategy, technology, data science and business development initiatives. The team comprises one associate on microbiology and three associates on the hardware and software development side. 

Our founding team has over 30 years of experience working on bleeding edge technologies ranging from genomics, biotechnology, embedded systems, IoT, parallel computing, data analytics, and visualization. Core members of the project are: 

Aishwarya Nair

Aishwarya leads the SAFE initiative at FRNT LABS. She is a KVPY fellow and has spent nearly 6 years on translational research in addition to her education at IISER. She is also a SIIP fellow, and her current work is focused on developing affordable, real-time hygiene monitoring solutions to measure cleanliness in spaces relevant to public health and provide actionable insights on the same. 

A S Sunny 

Sunny leads operations, partnerships and business development initiatives at FRNT LABS. An alumnus of INSEAD MBA program, he has over 15 years experience in business strategy, operations and relationship management roles across technology, education, skill development and rural commerce. Sunny has worked for organizations such as Tata Consultancy Services and Teach for India. 

Sidharth Sudarshan 

Sidharth leads product, technology and marketing initiatives at FRNT LABS. An alumnus of London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE), he is a seasoned product leader focused on product engineering, human-computer interactions and design. From a very early age, he has been trying to make technology invisible, and utilize it to improve human condition. 

1. The idea and prototype were incubated at Venture Center, Pune

2. The initiative has received a research and innovation grant from Biotechnology Industry Research Assistive Council (BIRAC), India to prove-of-concept, prototype and pilot the current solution

3. BigTec Labs - India-based product diagnostics company - provides advisory and monitoring support for the project

India’s hygiene monitoring landscape is dominated by traditional methods of visual affirmation that are neither sensitive nor accurate. Additionally, recent-methods such as immuno-assay or PCR-based solutions are time-consuming and cost-prohibitive, thereby rendering them limited in situations where employees, workers, customers etc. are looking for a real-time, affordable way to check for cleanliness and hygiene of their surroundings. Given this landscape, our SAFE solution lends itself to a highly efficient go-to-market model that focuses on 

1. Institutional sales (B2B)

2. Retail customers (B2C)

3. Regulatory authorities and state/ central governments (B2G)

Our revenues would be based on:

1. product Sales (One-Time)

2. consumable Sales (Recurring/ Subscription)

3. platform (Insights, Reports, Trends and Analytics)

4. eCommerce sales of EPA-approved cleaning products

Through these efforts, our channel and revenue lines would result in a highly predictable revenue model, which will help us plan for our scale and growth. This would further help ensure that our incentives are aligned with our customers to ensure continued success of SAFE. We are also aligning incentives with each stakeholder in the cleanliness and hygiene sector by focusing on a clear path towards impact and financial outcomes. 

Our path to financial sustainability is built on our rigorous emphasis on R&D and post successful product-market fit, commercialization of products and services: 

1. Research & Development: We intend to develop our core technology through a grant funding route. Technology and innovation grants would be used for developing proof-of-concept, early prototyping and piloting through pre-commercialization phase

2. Pre-Commercialization & Commercialization:  Post-successful pilot and product-market fit, we intend to commercialize our product through a combination of investment instruments such as grants, debt and equity (investment capital). These instruments would provide us the necessary impetus to a) build a scalable solution b) grow and scale our product, platform and solution across different target segments

3. Post-Commercialization: We intend to be financially sustainable through product sales and platform services. This would further allow us to reinvest any profits back into R&D, and build next set of products and solutions under SAFE’s rapid microbial detection and identification platform

Post-covid, India’s cleaning market is expected to witness a huge adoption boom, both in the industrial and institutional segment as well as the retail segment. Based on reports and our internal analysis, the cleaning market is expected to be USD 500B by 2026. We believe that hygiene monitoring solutions that are currently non-existent will become as ubiquitous as cleaning itself, and therefore, expect the industry to grow to ~ USD 1B by 2026. 

As a bio-engineering company focused on hygiene and sanitation, MIT Solve - world's leading incubator for tech entrepreneurs solving global issues is a perfect partner to us. With the help of Solve, we expect to leverage the mentors & other startup communities for technical mentorship, refining business models and gaining global access.

Our project SAFE is a very complex engineering undertaking, and though we have a stellar team of very dedicated, and experienced developers & data scientists, we still need abundant help to solve our technical challenges. We are in a fairly nascent global market with yet-evolving business models & use-cases, where guidance from the Solve team can be principal to our growth. We intend to leverage support of the Solve community to transform hygiene monitoring practices in the Global South to a Hygiene 2.0 paradigm - tech-enabled  rapid microbial screening, monitoring and identification. 

Emerging infectious diseases and pandemics have resulted in suddenly shifted focus to the interplay between human, animal and environmental health. FRNT LABS is focused on building products and services that align with WHO’s One Health Mission and help developing countries build capacity to prevent, track and monitor outbreaks through maintenance of cleanliness, hygiene and sanitation standards. An equity-free grant by Solve would help us allocate capital resources towards accelerating re-design, development, and marketing of first generation SAFE solutions. 

We are looking for partnerships and support across multiple levels:

1. Business Development: We would like to partner with international development organizations such as WHO, USAID, UK DFID, Bill & Melinda Gates foundation etc. to spread awareness about need for rapid environmental screening and hygiene monitoring

2. Technology: We would like to meet with experts from MIT Research Lab - Microfluidics & Nanofluidics to review our consumable designs and provide technical guidance and support. Additionally, as a next step - we are also working towards optics-based detection solutions, and would like to explore potential collaborations with MIT Spectroscopy Lab

3. Human Capital: As a part of building a bio-engineering company, we would also like to explore opportunities for students from MIT to volunteer/ intern across other upcoming initiatives around  

The current generation of ATP-testing solutions built for developed markets are highly restrictive as the same product cannot be used seamlessly across multiple locations, surfaces and complex environments. This results in high-cost and limited cross-compatibility, both limitations while building products and solutions for Global South. 

Our focus through SAFE platform has been to strip away the complexity of the product from hardware and push it to the cloud. Cloud-based machine learning (ML) models dynamically set-up calibrations for testing, based on surface and variations in environmental and seasonal factors, thereby resulting in clinical-grade accuracy. These learning models are further used to correlate the relative light unit (RLU) and colony forming unit (CFU) correlations. Based on the number of reads across different geographical, locational, product or environmental factors, these learning models improve in accurately analyzing and determining the microbial contamination levels. Further, by deploying ML-based models, we ensure that any product upgrade can be easily passed on to the customer as an over-the-air (OTA) upgrade. 

Therefore, through smart use of bio-sensors, industrial IoT and ML learning models, we have been able to develop a network-connected hygiene monitoring platform that brings the cleaning, hygiene and sanitation industry into the 21st century. AI for Humanity prize would help us validate our solution approach, and also help us invest resources to develop strong AI/ML capabilities in-house as we target projects on other infectious disease detection such as antimicrobial resistance (AMR) etc.

Ever since the outbreak of Covid19, we’ve had to change our social behavior radically. The way we now see shared spaces and how we interact with infrastructure has changed. Every employee, every worker, every customer and everyone else is concerned about the safety of the premise they enter. This is because coronavirus can be lurking in any corner, in any office, or any shop. Our trust in public infrastructure is now shattered. 

This is also because we no longer trust our cleaning processes. Our traditional and conventional cleaning and hygiene practices only provide proof-of-work - Has the area been cleaned? However, it does not provide us with a proof-of-result - Has the area been cleaned off harmful pathogens? Are there any contaminants still remaining on the surface? Does the cleaning process work for my immediate environment? 

To be re-assured and confident of our immediate spaces, we want our cleaning and hygiene practices to provide an immediate result of the efficacy of our cleaning practices. This means that the new hygiene paradigm needs to be built keeping in mind people’s need for - real-time, sensitive and accurate results, and customized cleaning approach. 

SAFE platform helps developing countries leapfrog into 21st century cleanliness and hygiene paradigm by providing a network-connected rapid microbial screening solution for accurate sanitation verification of surfaces, liquids and products. SAFE’s ATP luminometer is powered by a smartphone-connected platform with wireless sync technology and leverage ML-based learning models to adapt to a multitude of locations, products, procedures and complex environments. Thus helping millions of people regain trust in public/ shared spaces and also proactively prevent any future infectious disease spread. 

People's Prize will help validate the need for a transformative 21st century hygiene monitoring approach to tackle infectious disease outbreak and spread. It will also help us accelerate our re-design and development of consumer-first SAFE solution - focused on miniaturization, driving down consumable costs through micro-fluidics and reduced reagent/ assay usage. People's Prize would also help ensure that the first generation of SAFE product and platform is available to our customers within the coming 6 months. 

Ever since the outbreak of Covid19, we’ve had to change our social behavior radically. The way we now see shared spaces and how we interact with infrastructure has changed. Every employee, every worker, every customer and everyone else is concerned about the safety of the premise they enter. This is because coronavirus can be lurking in any corner, in any office, or any shop. Our trust in public infrastructure is now shattered. 

This is also because we no longer trust our cleaning processes. Our traditional and conventional cleaning and hygiene practices only provide proof-of-work - Has the area been cleaned? However, it does not provide us with a proof-of-result - Has the area been cleaned off harmful pathogens? Are there any contaminants still remaining on the surface? Does the cleaning process work for my immediate environment? 

To be re-assured and confident of our immediate spaces, we want our cleaning and hygiene practices to provide an immediate result of the efficacy of our cleaning practices. This means that the new hygiene paradigm needs to be built keeping in mind people’s need for - real-time, sensitive and accurate results, and customized cleaning approach. 

SAFE platform helps developing countries leapfrog into 21st century cleanliness and hygiene paradigm by providing a network-connected rapid microbial screening solution for accurate sanitation verification of surfaces, liquids and products. SAFE’s ATP luminometer is powered by a smartphone-connected platform with wireless sync technology and leverage ML-based learning models to adapt to a multitude of locations, products, procedures and complex environments. Thus helping millions of people regain trust in public/ shared spaces and also proactively prevent any future infectious disease spread. 

Future Planet Capital Prize will help validate the need for a transformative 21st century hygiene monitoring approach to tackle infectious disease outbreak and spread. It will also help us accelerate our re-design and development of consumer-first SAFE solution - focused on miniaturization, driving down consumable costs through micro-fluidics and reduced reagent/ assay usage. Future Planet Capital Prize would also help ensure that the first generation of SAFE product and platform is available to our customers within the coming 6 months.