Team:IISER Mohali/Entrepreneurship
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Entrepreneurship
Problem Definition
The problem we are addressing is the late detection of Oral Squamous Cell Carcinoma (OSCC). Due to ignorance, it’s usually detected at stage 3 when the efficacy and feasibility of treatment are very low. 95% of all oral cancers among Indian patients are OSCC. This is also the most common type of cancer amongst males (3rd overall) with a death rate of >5/hour in India and is entirely treatable if detected early.
Since most patients are from lower middle-class households, expensive diagnosis procedures such as biopsy are unfavourable. This compels innovation at a preliminary level, identifying biomarker patterns that could prevent it from developing into fatal malignancies.
Solution
Here’s our solution, OSCCit: an easy-to-use, standalone, and novel detection kit to screen people for the risk of developing OSCC.
Among different types of cancers, OSCC stands out in being detected via optical inspection. However, existing detection systems require adequate infrastructure and data interpretation by experts. These kits are thus unsuccessful at places with scarce medical resources. Notably, issues such as limited awareness and financial constraints discourage invasive biopsies. By catching the disease early, we want to motivate people to seek timely professional help by recognising anomalies.
Market Analysis
Addressable market
The total addressable market is expected to be USD 767.90 Million USD by 2024, with a compound annual rate growth (CAGR) of 6.94% for 2018-24. What this means is, for 2018-24, if we average out all the growth in the oral cancer diagnosis market, we will observe a growth of 6.94% annually.
Competitor Analysis - Key Competitors
Existing detection systems require adequate infrastructure and data interpretation by experts. These kits are thus unsuccessful at places with scarce medical resources. Notably, issues such as limited awareness and financial constraints discourage invasive biopsies. By catching the disease early, we want to motivate people to seek timely professional help by recognising anomalies. In terms of numbers, we aim to make our kit the most affordable way to check cancer susceptibility and undercut equipment cost to less than a 10th of the existing standards. We also aim to bring down the operational cost by more than 10 times of the current value. On top of this, we are making the only user-friendly and self administrable test for oral cancer susceptibility.
Target Audience
USP- A self-administered, user-friendly, reusable kit that would report the user’s susceptibility to oral cancer. We are focusing on launching the kit through two models-
B2B Model
Customer: Hospitals, dentists, pharmacists and more. This would be possible during and beyond the clinical trial stage. Paid Users: Tabacco consumers, the general public. It makes it a lot easier for hospitals to screen patients for oral cancer, thereby increasing the availability and load of susceptible cancer patients that a healthcare institute can handle while also making cancer point of care diagnosis more accessible to the consumers.
B2C Model
After sufficient trials and making the kit self-administrable, we will market the kit to tobacco consumers, health enthusiasts, and the general public. Making oral cancer point of care diagnosis affordable and accessible for everyone.
Addressable Market (paying customers) - Health conscious individuals, healthcare institutions, and tobacco consumers.
The end goal of this kit would be to make OSCC screening free or very nominal in cost. Our proposed plan is to mass-produce such kits after due successful clinical trials and approvals. This would bring down the cost further by up to 25 times, making it feasible for the government to buy these in bulk and provide them at a subsidised rate or at government-funded health centres and pharmacies throughout the country and later the world.
Steps to Commercialisation and Timeline
Establish Proof of concept and apply for a provisional patent - 1 year
Construct hardware and software prototype - Ready
Establish Supply Chain - concept and arrangement ready.
Conduct pre-clinical trials - 1.5 Years
Conduct clinical trials - 5 Years
Get approvals for listing - 1 Year
Market and Scale
All of this amounts to over 8 years before we can freely scale the product.
Cost Analysis
Predicted Growth and Market Share for OSCC Diagnosis
With the 700+ Million dollar market for Oral cancer diagnosis, OSCCit can position itself as the chief and proprietory tool for the most accessible OSCC diagnosis.
A target share of 1% offsets the high initial investments and long time spent during trials. That is, a revenue of over 7 Million USDs in the initial (pre-approval) stages. This can be achieved through targeted marketing and, strategic placement and partnerships with clinical organisations, IP sharing, obtaining letters of intent and government contracts.
Given that our tool does not require clearance of any special permits to be used and tested (since our sample is saliva), it may not achieve approval to be used as a diagnostic standard soon, but it can still fuel research and serve as an intervention to identify susceptible patients.
Once commercialisation is freely possible, and the kit can be sold and mass-produced, we expect to rapidly capture the majority market share and scale at a drastic level, owing to being the most affordable and accessible means to diagnose OSCC.