PlenOptika QuickSee

Shivang has been passionately involved with global health and technology commercialization throughout his career. He was educated as a Bioengineer, Synthetic Chemist, Nanotechnologist, and Global Health technology innovator at UC Berkeley, UW Seattle, and MIT, and also received additional technology translation training in the UW Center for Innovation & Entrepreneurship at the UW Foster Business School, as a UW Program in Technology Commercialization Advanced Fellow, and Madrid-MIT M+Vision Consortium Advanced Research Fellow in bioengineering and entrepreneurship. Since 2005, he has innovated, translated, and commercialized 3 biomedical technologies. He has been recognized with numerous awards including, a National Science Foundation Graduate Fellowship, the UW College of Engineering Community of Innovators Dean’s Award, and prizes at various global innovation/entrepreneurship competitions. He is a co-founder and CEO of PlenOptika, and co-invented the QuickSee technology to improve access to eyeglasses globally.

PROBLEM: Poor vision, correctable with $5 prescription eyeglasses, affects >1.5 billion people (>239M children) in low-resource rural and slum settings, causing $227 billion in losses to the global economy, impacting children’s educational trajectories, reducing laborers earning potential by 34%, and doubling elderly’s likelihood of life-altering falls. The barrier is that there needs to be >600k eye care professionals (ECPs) and >1M optical shops to meet the global unmet need.

SOLUTION: QuickSee is the only affordable, handheld, easy, accurate autorefractor that NGOs/governments can equip microentrepreneurs with to effectively and efficiently train more ECPs capable of reaching last-mile patients in need of vision exams/eyeglasses while maintaining accuracy standards – it’s the only scalable approach.

IMPACT: QuickSee-empowered microentrepreneurs generate income while providing needed access to eyeglasses for patients. Since 2019, QuickSee has been used on over 1.5M patients across 25 countries by ECPs/NGOs, some of which, have trained microentrepreneurs in Kenya and India.

Clear vision (eyesight) is fundamental to educational trajectory, worker productivity, and overall quality of life. Poor vision, which is correctable with $5 prescription glasses, affects >1.5B people, including >239M children. World Economic Forum estimates that worldwide vision correction would increase global GDP by $227 billion annually, and would improve quality of life and childhood education. WHO projects poor vision to be a top-10  cause of disability-adjusted life years. VisionSpring (India) demonstrated vision correction improved worker productivity by 34% and income by 20%. Poor vision doubles the chances an elderly person will experience a life-altering fall.

Many of the afflicted reside in resource-constrained areas such as rural/peri-urban, and urban slums, where the major barriers is the lack of access to eyecare professionals (ECPs) and optical access points, which are segregated to high-income areas. Studies in India/Africa show loss of daily wages and travel costs prevent travel to access points. More than 100-1000x ECPs (>600k) and access points (>1M) are needed in low-resource settings to meet the global unmet need. Eyecare stakeholders (NGOs, governments, optical retailers) are creating networks of vision clinics/microentrepreneurs, however it takes 2+ years of training for an ECPs to become capable of accurately providing a vision test.

Inspired by the need to deliver excellent vision care anywhere, under any condition, PlenOptika’s scalable approach (QuickSee) to address the (1) limited numbers of ECPs and access points, (2) training barriers to creating new ECPs, and (3) unequal access (segregation) of these resources, is to (a) increase the efficiency of ECPs, (b) enable scale-up of training new clinically reliable ECPs, (c) empower ECPs to earn income as mobile vision entrepreneurs capable of reaching last-mile patients.

PlenOptika developed QuickSee, world’s most accurate, robust, handheld autorefractor which is capable of measuring a patient’s refractive errors (eyeglass numbers) in 10 seconds. QuickSee is a FDA-registered and CE Mark approved (after 10+ clinical studies on 3,000 patients), and disrupts the cost and portability limitations of traditional ophthalmic desktop autorefractors.

QuickSee was thoughtfully designed for global health settings. It is as accurate as clinical non-portable desktop autorefractors, easy-to-use for patients (objective 10-second measurement) and operators (30-minute training), rugged and calibration-free, it works indoors/outdoors, and is reliable on children, adults, elderly, and special needs patients.

To obtain a subject’s glasses measurement, an ECP holds QuickSee to the subject’s face like a pair of binoculars. QuickSee-empowered microentrepreneurs ECPs can provided clinically reliable vision exams and eyeglasses, anywhere.

QuickSee serves two classes of stakeholders: (1) vision care and eyeglass providers (optometrists, ophthalmologists, NGOs, governments, optical retailers), and (2) people in need of vision correction with eyeglasses who currently lack access to an ECP to provide a prescription and corresponding eyeglasses.

For the first group, QuickSee increases the efficiency of vision exams (up to 60/hour), scalability of training new ECP microentrepreneurs, geographic reach and last mile access of vision care, and economic sustainability of vision care outreach programs via increased sales of low-cost eyeglasses. These microentrepreneurs earn an income as mobile ECPs.

Simultaneously, by increasing the number of QuickSee-empowered microentrepreneurs to serve as mobile ECPs and access points for vision exams and eyeglasses, PlenOptika impacts the >1.5B people who suffer poor vision and lacked access to vision correction. With corrected vision, children can improve their educational trajectories, daily laborers can earn higher wages through increased productivity, and the elderly can gain improved independence and quality of life while reducing the likelihood of life-altering falls – overall positively impacting the global economy.

Since 2014, PlenOptika has worked in the field with these stakeholders to understand their needs, conduct clinical studies to iteratively improve QuickSee’s design, and deploy the technology worldwide.

PlenOptika’s proposal to deploy QuickSee with vision care and eyeglass stakeholders to create a new generation of ECP microentrepreneurs and eyeglass access points fits within this ELEVATE Prize’s dimension by: (1) creating a professional job (or small business) which was traditionally inaccessible due to less-educated or economically-disadvantaged (“upskill”), (2) creating a “small-business” in untapped communities without access to vision care and eyeglasses, (3) support workers (daily wage earners) to improve their productivity and income, (4) improving the educational outcomes for children with poor vision, and (5) connecting low-resource communities with frontline health workers and eyeglass supply chains.

Discovering the global burden of low vision which affects >1.5B people, PlenOptika’s 4 founders during their advanced research fellowships in the Madrid-MIT M+Vision Consortium for BioMedical Imaging & Entrepreneurship (2011-2014), were determined to design a solution that could provide better eye care for everyone, regardless of their circumstances and access to health care. The initial spark was the Global Burden of Disease list which not only indicated the vast scale of the problem, but also that it’s negative impact on disability-adjusted-life-years (DALYs) would surpass HIV/AIDS and Diabetes by 2030. After understanding that the barrier was insufficient eye care professionals in low-resource settings, globally, we decided to develop the affordable, easy-to-use, accurate QuickSee to democratize access to vision care.

The company has strong research and development relationships with institutions and agencies around the world, including the Aravind Eye Hospital (India), the Regional Government of Madrid (Spain), the NIH, and MIT - where our technology was invented and the first prototypes were designed. Based in Boston, Massachusetts, we have offices in Madrid and Singapore, and we’re proud to count among our board and advisors some of the world’s leading experts in optical science, clinical eye care, and business strategy.

I, and my 3 co-founders, are passionate about equal and affordable access to vision care because of its fundamental impact on education for children, economic productivity for adults, independence and reduction of falls for the elderly, and quality of life for all. We find it unjust that a simple $5 pair of corrective eyeglasses could have such dramatic positive impact on 1.5B people (including 239M children), and yet, due to a lack of access to an eye care professional, this problem continues to exist in the year 2020.

Being of the first generation of parents from India, I have a strong connection to India. As a child I was deeply moved by seeing first-hand the abject poverty and inequality that faced the 100s of millions in India, caused simply by virtue of the fact they were born into poverty with little potential for upward mobility. Seeing in person various severe health disabilities affect my family and how my parents and aunts/uncles tried to improve quality of life and the economics of our community was an important lesson. Thus, from a young age, I decided to work at the intersections of human health and global health, international development, culture, and technology.

PlenOptika's 4 cofounders (all PhDs), are full-time, invented the QuickSee during their advanced research fellowships at MIT (in the Madrid-MIT M+Vision Consortium for Biomedical Imaging & Entrepreneurship). They have over a decade of biomedical technology development and device commercialization experience (5 separate commercial technologies). Shivang (CEO) has a decade of entrepreneurial experience and has translated 3 technologies. Daryl (COO) has experience at McKinsey and in telemedicine startups. Eduardo (CTO) designed medical scanners including CT and PET-scanners commercialized by General Electric. Nick (technical advisor) developed technologies for Nellcor Puritan Bennett and Harvard Medical School and is an Assistant Professor of Biomedical Engineering at Johns Hopkins University and the Director of the Center for Biomedical Innovation & Design.

My first entrepreneurial endeavor (2006-2008) was to develop the commercialization plan for a low-cost drug-eluting intraocular lenses technology aimed at reducing post-surgery infection burden in developing countries such as Nepal and India. Through this 2-year process, I became acutely aware of the lack of access to eye care professionals and technology in low-resource global health settings. Also, I discovered the leading eye care NGOs and eye hospitals, the pathways to market – knowledge which help us bring QuickSee to market almost 10 years later!

As a mission-oriented social-impact company, that has developed the world’s most accurate and scalable autorefractor technology that has the potential to improve the lives of billions worldwide, it would seem raising investment to scale our technology globally would be easy (especially since we were finalists in international entrepreneurship, impact and, design competitions). Although the interface of social impact and developmental economics sounds attractive to many investors, relatively few who invest due to the challenges with developing and executing a scalable and profitable business models.

After spinning out of MIT, from 2014-2018, I pitched to 100-150 investors (including social investors and corporate-social-responsibility divisions) and garnered genuine interest (deep diligence 15-20 groups). However, I was unable to raise investment (despite a very low valuation) to support the needed technology development, clinical studies, or regulatory/manufacturing, or they wanted us to abandon our mission for more lucrative US-only opportunities.

True to our mission, the founders took $20k/year salaries from 2014-2017, boot-strapped, gained partnerships due to our character and vision, took small loans from friends/family, and effectively survived with grants to commercialize the technology in India/USA in 2018 (including regulatory/manufacturing work!) with only $101k of total investment from early-stage angels.

I have dedicated my life to service, which is exemplified by academic, entrepreneurial, and volunteering pursuits.

Academically, over the last 20 years I’ve focused on improving human health at the interfaces of bioengineering, synthetic chemistry, nanotechnology, and medical devices – resulting in 3 biomedical technologies being translated out of the university.

In addition to this, I have focused on teaching and volunteering for STEM outreach to underserved communities for the last 25 years. Examples of this include being “Student Volunteer of the Year” for the Northern California Red Cross (high school) for my work conducting health outreach in low-resource areas of Sacramento, to mentoring and teaching students (college and graduate school) which culminated in the Dean’s Award for the College of Engineering (UW Seattle). Along these lines, I’ve volunteered as a professional and entrepreneurial mentor in the MIT Sandbox program, the International Mentor Program of the International Mentoring Foundation for the Advancement of Higher Education (Europe and Latin America), to mentoring in the MIT Catalyst/IDEA2 Global/IMPACT/Rising Stars programs, in addition to mentoring entrepreneurs selected for India’s SmartFIFTY program (top 50 social impact startups impacting India).

 As a mentor, my goal is use education to help address disparities in the world.

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Competing approaches to providing vision exams face challenges that limit scalability and impact.

Paper visual acuity eyecharts can be used for screening vision only, while they are affordable and widely dispersed, they cannot provide eyeglasses prescriptions. Self-refracting glasses (AdSpecs, USee) cannot correct for astigmatism and are not easy for children and elderly patients to use.

Clinical desktop autorefractors are expensive ($10,000) and non-portable (50 lbs), and are only used in higher-end optometry clinics. These instruments take 3-5 static measurements of the eye, which are highly susceptible to physiological fluctuations in the eye, yielding inaccuracy.

Handheld vision screeners (2win by Adaptica, PlusOptix, Welch Allyn Spot) utilize the optical principle of photorefraction, and thus lack the precision needed for accurately measuring refractive and are sensitive to external/ambient light conditions. Smartphone-based refractors (Eyenetra, SmartVision Labs) have demonstrated poor usability, time-to-measurement, repeatability, and accuracy, and thus, have failed widescale adoption. These approaches suffer these drawbacks due to their “closed-view” (like a VR headset) optics/hardware which do not fully relax the patient’s eyes (“instrument myopia”), thus yielding less accurate measurements.

PlenOptika’s competitive advantage is that QuickSee is the only objective refraction technology that is affordable, intuitive for children and elderly, easy to learn for ECPs, portable and durable enough to be used anywhere, and most importantly as accurate as the clinical gold standard. It is the only globally scalable solution that can both transform the lives of patients and the economic sustainability of eyecare microentrepreneurs/NGOs.

ACTIVITIES: Promote and pilot QuickSee among stakeholders (ECPs, NGOs, governments, and optical retailers) so that they become aware of QuickSee’s potential to help them overcome their current barriers to effectively reaching under-served communities.

OUTPUTS: Adoption of QuickSee by stakeholders resulting in an increase in the throughput of vision exams by existing ECPs, reduction of the training barriers to train new accurate and reliable ECPs, and expansion of the geographic reach of ECPs into under-served communities.

OUTCOMES (Short-term): Improved access to clinical-quality vision exams and low-cost eyeglasses in under-served, low-resource settings globally.

OUTCOMES (Long-term): Reduction in the 1.5B people who suffer poor vision due to uptake of low-cost eyeglasses, leading to improved educational outcomes of children previously needing vision correction, increased worker productivity, reduction in life-altering falls by the elderly, and an overall economic increase in the local and global economy.

EXAMPLE OF ECP MICROENTREPRENEUR MODEL IN KENYA: In 2018, TwoBillionEyes, an European NGO, used QuickSee in Kenya to train 8 unemployed teenagers to become vision microentrepreneurs in 2 weeks. They provided vision tests to 550 truck drivers (66% never had a vision test) in 1 week to improve roadside safety. 40% of drivers (200) needed reading or distance eyeglasses to perform their work safely. This model was expanded to The Gambia where 18 women were trained. https://plenoptika.com/mobile-care/building-a-scalable-solution-to-the-global-challenge-of-low-vision/

EXAMPLE OF EXTENDING VISION EXAMS TO ELDERLY ( USA): Optometrist uses QuickSee to provide vision exams for patients (incapacitated by stroke or mental disease)  in 200 nursing homes per year (20-40 patients/nursing home), many of whom who could not participate in a traditional vision exam.

EXAMPLE FROM LARGE-SCALE OPTICAL RETAILER: Essilor-Luxottica’s Eye Mitra (“Eye Friend”) program in India, trains people from under-served rural and slum areas to become local ECP microentrepreneurs. Approximately 5,000 Eye Mitras have been trained. A significant barriers for Eye Mitras is to gain the needed accuracy and reliability to perform vision exams. In small-scale pilots, QuickSee helped improve the quality of the vision exams by Eye Mitras. A Dalberg study on 400 Eye Mitras (not equipped with QuickSee) demonstrated they provided 70,000 eyeglasses causing $4.4M/year in economic impact. https://www.essilorseechange.com/what-we-do/2-5-new-vision-generation/eye-mitra/

CURRENT: 100s of QuickSees have been sold across India, USA, and EU, which have been deployed across >25 countries on >1.5M patients.

Small-scale NGOs use QuickSee to provide vision exams and eyeglasses for 1,000s patients per year.

Aravind Eye Hospital (India) used QuickSee to examine >100,000s of patients in their hospitals, vision centers, and eye care camps. Their QuickSee-powered vision technicians can see >45 patients an hour in the field.

            Orbis International is using a handful of QuickSees as part of a country-wide vision screening pilot program in Mongolia (3M population) to build-country level vision care capacity for 1,000-10,000s patients.

IN ONE YEAR: We expect >500 QuickSee to have been used on >5M patients.

Two state governments in India, with a combined population of 140M people, have recently adopted 100s of units of the QuickSee technology as part of their state-level eye exam program which aims to >7M children, >62,000 schools, and >20M adults, within 3 years.

IN FIVE YEARS: We expect >10,000 QuickSees to have been used on >250M patients.

            By gaining widespread adoption of QuickSee amongst the various types of stakeholders, we believe we can make significant traction towards addressing the 1.5B people in need worldwide.

PlenOptika’s Vision Statement, established in 2014, is:

“to transform the lives of 2.5 billion people in middle- and low-income settings by improving their access to vision correcting eyeglasses so that they can improve the educational trajectory, enhance their economic productivity, and improve their quality of life”.

One year from now, we want to expand our international distribution network from 20 countries to cover 60+ countries with particular focus on Latin America, Sub-Saharan Africa, and SE Asia. This will require:

(1) finding ethical trust-worthy ophthalmic device/eyeglass distributors in these regions

(2) performing necessary regulatory and import registrations for each individual country

(3) identifying and connecting with vision care stakeholders in these countries

(4) optimizing supply chain logistics to avoid unnecessary expenses in deploying QuickSee locally

Five years from now, we want the QuickSee platform to become the standard of autorefraction, globally.

Our vision is bold and ambitious because of:

(1) it’s scale of 2.5 billion people

(2) it’s geographic global reach

(3) the transformative impact that good vision has on an individual’s life, their economic potential, and inclusion into the economy.

(4) the large-scale impact that good vision has the global economy (currently, over $200B is lost from the global economy due to poor vision).

(5) our approach, to use the QuickSee to empower NGOs and microentrepreneurs to build capacity and provide eyeglasses in the field, helps these organizations become sustainable and scale – thereby amplifying the net global impact.

BRAND AWARENESS BARRIES TO WIDESCALE ADOPTION. Despite our significant traction, PlenOptika’s brand awareness is relatively low, hindering global uptake. Additional funding and marketing partnerships that can amplify our message to vision care stakeholders globally is an important milestone on the path to addressing global poor vision in partnership with these stakeholders.

FINANCIAL BARRIERS TO INTERNATIONAL SCALE-UP. As a relatively small team, PlenOptika has been  successful at organically commercializing QuickSee over the last 1.5 years. To bring this impactful solution to more of those in need, particularly in low-and-middle-income countries, we will need additional funding to expand the team. Our current funding limitations constrain the growth of our commercial and regulatory teams, which constrains our international expansion. Although, we have successfully utilized our financing to register with the FDA and become CE mark approved, we have limited resources to perform medical device regulatory and import registrations in many of the low- and middle-income countries.

MARKET BARRIERS DUE TO COPY-CAT TECHNOLOGIES. Copy-cat technologies that look physically similar to QuickSee, but are unable to provide the clinical accuracy of the QuickSee, have recently emerged. These copy-cats in the USA, China, and India have generated skepticism against the accuracy and usability of portable refraction tools in the customer base (microentreprenuers and NGOs). PlenOptika has diligently worked to surmount these challenges and gain trust with partner microentrepreneurs and NGOs by clinically validating QuickSee and publishing in high-impact peer-reviewed journals, working with high-brand-visibility NGOs, eye hospitals, and schools of optometry/ophthalmology, and through initial organic marketing efforts.

The most effective way to address all three barriers is to raise sufficient capital via innovation prizes, commercialization grants, and impact investors, to establish widescale brand visibility and to expand our team in regions with great unmet clinical need.

Establishing broader brand visibility will raise awareness amongst vision care stakeholders who could benefit from employing QuickSee as part of their outreach programs. In general, brand awareness will also help distinguish PlenOptika’s bona fide work with QuickSee from physical copy-cat technologies that lack the clinical effectiveness. Note, addressing the copy-cat barrier legally is impractical in many settings.

Our key future hires will be to augment our regulatory and sales teams so that we can accelerate international market entry in low-and-middle-income countries.

GLOBAL MANUFACTURING PARTNER: PlenOptika partnered (since 2014) with the internationally renowned ophthalmic product manufacturer, Aurolab (India) - 900-person organization that produces 10% of the world’s intraocular lens and deliver low-cost high-quality ophthalmic products to over 120 countries. As our designated ISO-certified manufacturer and they are able to rapidly incorporate design changes and new products to the production line.

CLINICAL STUDY COLLABORATORS: We work closely with our clinical partners to conduct clinical studies which includes: New England College of Optometry, Aravind Eye Care System, Johns Hopkins University Wilmer Eye Institute, Fundacion Jimenez Diaz (Madrid, Spain).

DISTRIBUTION PARTNERS: Over the last year, we have developed a network of ethical medical device distributors to provide coverage in >20 countries. We are actively growing this network to increase global coverage.

CUSTOMERS. Customers are the optometrists, ophthalmologists, eyecare NGOs/non-profits, eye hospitals/vision clinics, Ministries of Health, and for-profit optical retailers – stakeholders that provide vision exams and eyeglasses (donated or sold) and train microentrepreneurs to expand access to vision care in under-resourced settings.

BUSINESS MODEL. We sell the base QuickSee model (with additional advanced features) in high-income countries and higher volumes of a lower-priced QuickSee model (with less features but same clinical accuracy) in low-and-middle-income countries. Because both product versions utilize the same manufacturing process and components, the two QuickSee models create economies of scale manufacturing benefits and a virtuous cycle of subsidizing and creating impact of the lower-priced QuickSee model sold in low-resource settings. This helps PlenOptika achieve profitability and impact, simultaneously.

GO-TO-MARKET STRATEGY. The second aspect of our strategy is to work with large-scale NGOs, governments, and armies of vision microentrepreneurs to achieve rapid scale across multiple geographies. If PlenOptika attempted to work without these partners, our market penetration, health and economic impact would be minimal. By working with these stakeholders who already perform eye exams and have eyeglass supply chains, we leverage their brand, networks, and access to patients in need. As QuickSee helps them to perform more eye exams more efficiently, and train new refractionists/microentrepreneurs more cost-effectively, we essentially help them sell more eyeglasses and thus, improve their sustainability and ability to expand.

To execute PlenOptika’s Mission, Vision, and Objectives, and thus achieve financial and impact sustainability, the company will focus strategic partnerships to amplify our international marketing and brand awareness and build-out our distributor network in order to drive growth. PlenOptika’s revenues have steadily grown over the last year, and we expect to reach sustained profitability within the near future. To accelerate past organic growth, we will need to raise social impact capital (grants or investment) to support expansion of our commercial and regulatory teams and increase our marketing/branding budget. Over the previous 1.5 years of commercialization, we have gained understanding of the market-specific pricing, customer and partner acquisition strategy, and have been able to replicate these in USA, India, France, Spain, Mexico.

GRANTS. PlenOptika is a mission-oriented C-corporation that utilized <$4M (since 2011) in non-dilutive research and commercialization grants to fully develop and commercialize the QuickSee in the US and India.

(1) Madrid-MIT M+Vision Consortium (2011-2014)

(2) Indo-US Science & Technology Endowment Fund (2014-2016)

(3) International Agency for the prevention of Blindness (2016-2017)

(4) NIH SBIR Phase I and Phase II programs (2015-present)

(5) TRISH-Baylor College of Medicine/NASA (2019)

(6) MassSTART/MassVentures (2020)

PRIZES. We have been recognized with minor prizes (<$100k awarded in total) in various entrepreneurship and social impact competitions.

(1) MIT $100k

(2) MassChallenge

(3) Essilor See Change

(4) Clearly Vision

(5) SmartFIFTY

(6) American Society of Mechanical Engineering I-SHOW

INVESTMENTS. A relatively small amount of equity Seed investments from a handful of social impact angels and healthcare investors (amount confidential, <$1.25M) was used to build inventory, complete regulatory requirements, initiate marketing and product launch in 2018.

PlenOptika has been incredibly capital efficient, and compared to typical medical device startups we have only raised a fraction in total funding to similar companies. Revenues from product sales have been earned from customers in the USA, India, and EU since 2019.

We consider these types of financial information confidential and are unable share specific amounts publicly.

Within the next 12-18 months, we aim to raise additional growth capital via innovation prizes, commercialization grants, and social impact equity investments (Series A, $2-10M range). Financing of this size would be transformational in helping PlenOptika address the above-mentioned barriers and would accelerate the organization towards profitability and global scalability.

We consider these types of financial information confidential and are unable share specific amounts publicly.

PlenOptika manages its operations according to financial standard practices (including Profit & Loss analysis), and therefore, has clear visibility on its budget and operating costs (confidential, < $1.25M). We consider these types of financial information confidential and are unable share specific amounts publicly.

By being selected as a finalist for The Elevate Prize:

(1) we hope to gain exposure to and learn from likeminded innovators and advisors with experience in scaling up innovations aimed at impacting the base-of-the-pyramid. As part of this, we will be open to re-evaluating our business and operations strategy, and exploring new delivery models and methods to analyze and improve our theory of change.

 (2) we believe that the Elevate Prize can help us amplify the social impact work we have achieved to date, thereby raising awareness amongst vision care and global health stakeholders. We anticipate this amplification to happen by organic word-of-mouth (which has been highly successful for us) through SOLVE and Elevate Prize networks of impact innovators, key opinion leaders, and global health / international development stakeholders. This is a critical barrier for us and we believe there is a lot to learn from other Elevate colleagues about the best way to approach marketing and branding in different regions of the world. The Elevate Prize is a platform for us to further connect with appropriate social impact channels.

(3) we would like to connect with social impact focused investors, knowledgeable of the challenges of deploying healthcare solutions in high- and low-income settings, who are patient and focused on long term value creation.

The partnerships we aim to make by participating in SOLVE include building relationships with social impact innovators where there may be synergies to advance our mutual missions. For instance, we may meet global health innovators developing other last mile healthcare solutions with which QuickSee may pair. Or, we may meet academics with interest in quantifying and analyzing our theory of change, which may help us refine our impact model. Other potential partnerships include leveraging the communications/PR channels of the SOLVE cohort and MIT to expand our brand awareness and broaden our stakeholder base. The partnerships may be simple collaborators or interactions, or, may become more involved long-term mutually beneficial relationships.

We are interested in interacting with MIT faculty from Sloan, TATA Center for Reverse Innovation, Legatum Center, and J-PAL. These groups have experience bringing technologies and new delivery models to the base-of-the-pyramid. They have broad networks of global health stakeholders that may leverage QuickSee to improve access to vision correction. In addition, they are ideal partners to conduct studies to document and review our theory of change, delivery models, and operation strategies. We would like to connect with the World Economic Forum, Global Educational Skills Forum, Medtronic Foundation, Save the Children and many others.