The Academic Adventures Podcast
This podcast is all about people who have embraced the opportunity to combine their academic work with entrepreneurial ventures. You’ll hear about the highs and lows, juggling responsibilities whilst grabbing opportunities, and gain plenty of valuable advice along the way.
The Academic Adventures Podcast
‘If you’re not feeling insecure, you’re not learning’ with Dr Kavi Jagadamma
Kavi Jagadamma is a senior lecturer in physiotherapy at Queen Margaret University, Edinburgh. He is also one of four directors at Health Design Collective, a social enterprise which co-creates shoes for people with long-term health conditions.
Kavi shares the company’s journey to date including:
- The huge value of mentoring and support
- How applying for enterprise funding differs from research funding
- Celebrating small wins and gradual progress
- Redefining creativity and entrepreneurship
Connect with Kavi on LinkedIn or X
Find out about Health Design Collective on their website, Facebook or X
Follow the Academic Adventures podcast on LinkedIn
This podcast was a collaboration between the University of the West of Scotland, Converge and Sarah McLusky. The podcast team includes Orla Kelly, Adam Kosterka, Jen Black and Sarah McLusky. Proudly supported by the Scottish Ecosystem Fund 2023-24.
Kavi Jagadamma
We are used to applying for research grants and compared to that, when you are applying for funding for anything entrepreneurship, the support is just amazing.
We don't progress at the speed we want us to progress, because we are all doing other jobs.
I never saw myself as a creative person before. And also I realized that I do have an entrepreneurial mindset.
Podcast Intro
Welcome to the Academic Adventures podcast. This podcast is all about people who have embraced the opportunity to combine their academic work with entrepreneurial ventures. You’ll hear about the highs and lows, balancing responsibilities and grabbing opportunities, plus advice for anyone thinking about following a similar path.
Sarah McLusky
Hello. I’m your host Sarah McLusky and my Academic Adventurer today is Kavi Jagadamma. Kavi is a senior lecturer in physiotherapy at Queen Margaret University in Edinburgh. He is also one of the company directors at Health Design Collective. Health Design Collective is a community interest company which aims to co-design products, starting with shoes, for people living with long-term health conditions.
Bringing Health Design Collective to life has been a slow process. The company was first established in 2018 when they were a runner up in the Converge Challenge entrepreneurship competition. Although this provided some start-up funding, Kavi believes the most valuable thing it gave them was access to training and mentoring.
The team have built the company slowly with whatever time they can spare and whatever funding they can get. With some prototypes made and tested, they hope their first shoes will go into production very soon. As you’ll hear, over the time Kavi has learned to celebrate small wins and incremental progress.
Sarah McLusky
Welcome along to the podcast, Kavi. I wonder if you could tell us a bit about your experience as an academic entrepreneur.
Kavi Jagadamma
So I'm a senior lecturer at Queen Margaret University and I also am a director of a social enterprise which is a spin out from Queen Margaret University. And I have to say that when I heard the word academic entrepreneur for the first time, I felt like an imposter to see myself in that role. But more I think about it, I think the work I've done in the past five years with entrepreneurship actually has helped me develop as an academic entrepreneur more of the entrepreneurial mindset. And I would say the journey has been interesting. A lot of being novice at things I've been doing, feeling insecure. And that experience has been challenging yet very fulfilling, I would say.
Sarah McLusky
So what was it that made you want to start this spin -out company in the first place?
Kavi Jagadamma
It was not intentional, I have to say. It kind of developed organically. So, we've got four directors for our social enterprise, which is called Health Design Collective. It's a community interest company. And two of the directors, one of them is an academic, another person is a physiotherapist working clinically. They were talking about dissertation topic ideas for students, and some ideas came up and in general, and then we thought, they thought, actually that's quite a few good ideas to explore. And then that conversation became bigger and the team came together, because we were people, four of us, we've already been working together. There was trust and it was quite quickly that four of us got together.
And there was this idea, more than one idea about how to, how to develop some products for people living with long -term conditions, but we didn't know what to do with it. We were looking at maybe we need to do research, maybe we need to look for grants. So it was our business development manager at QMU at the time, Mariam, who was really helpful and was serendipitous that Converge Challenge was happening at the time and there was a deadline. So speaking to the Converge, people from Converge and our business development manager, they really kind of pushed us.It was kind of into thinking as an enterprise, as a company. And then the discussions happened and we put an application in and before we know it, we are in it. So it was quite a journey, quite quick. We got into it before we had time to really think about it in a way.
Sarah McLusky
Yes.
Sarah McLusky
Yes, yeah. So for anybody listening who doesn't know about Converge Challenge, could you tell us a little bit about what that experience was like? What did it involve?
Kavi Jagadamma
So this was for 2018. So Converge Challenge just evolved over time. So Converge Challenge, you know, the competition for universities, for students and staff, for Scottish universities where they've put in ideas and then there are different streams like social enterprise, kickstart or main Converge they call it, where the ideas can get support and funding.
And so if you win the competition, there's a lot of kudos around it as well. It was a great experience because as I said earlier, we were novices. Three of us were academic and one of them was an experienced clinician. We are all kind of seen as experts in our areas. And then going into entrepreneurship, setting up a community interest company, and we are complete novices going in. And Convert Challenge really helped us frame our idea.
Also I was the lead applicant on it, which meant I went on the training, two -day training at the time, which was brilliant. And that training helped us write the business plan. And we did come up, runner up for the social enterprise category that year, which was such kudos because we felt like people, we had no idea what we were doing, but it was such a, it really helped our self -efficacy.
But the support for the whole Converge experience was amazing. The QMU support as well as support from the Converge team, because we are used to applying for research grants and compared to that, when you are applying for funding for anything entrepreneurship, the support is just amazing. So that helped us believe that we could do it.
Sarah McLusky
Mm -hmm. Yeah, so you've said there a couple of things there I want to dig into. You said that the training and support that you got was really helpful. What in particular was it about that training and support that really made a difference?
Kavi Jagadamma
The thing is Sarah, I went in, I’ve got no idea. I've never written a business plan before. And, you know, so even starting from how to write a business plan, working with business model canvas, and the sessions on writing your vision. The thing is, I wrote a statement on our vision in that training session, which then I took to a team. It is still our vision.
Sarah McLusky
Oh excellent
Kavi Jagadamma
So because everyone liked it and we all agreed to it and the training was so good that that never, that's not changed. And I wrote it myself, but that, cause I knew, cause I think, you we are quite, we know each other quite well and everyone agreed to it. And the support on IP, for example, I had no idea how to protect, even that we have to protect our intellectual property. I had a vague idea, but talking about different options of it.
And also the support in terms of feedback on writing the business plan and you know, we've got such feedback on the way as we were doing it, through doing a pitch for example. So several things we have not had experience, none of us had experience as academics in our own respective areas, really helped us develop those skills and also kind of help us frame the idea in a in a way which we thought is sustainable.
Sarah McLusky
Yeah, and it speaks to the value of that training and support that even though you didn't win the competition, it was still what you got out of it was good enough that it's set you up to keep to get you to where you are now and to keep that company going. It wasn't that you just did the competition and then gave up. Yeah.
Kavi Jagadamma
Absolutely. The thing is, that's one of the things our aim, I remember this conversation, our aim when we applied was to get into the, get through the first round so that we get the training. So, and that we were successful. But the thing is, also we got some money because we were runners up in the category, which when we did get funding, we got something, at the time it was like £4,000 or something from Converge, which was really helpful and also mentoring was really helpful.
Sarah McLusky
Yeah. Yeah. Oh, you've these things. It's amazing how just a little bit of the right thing at the right time can make a big difference, isn't it?
Kavi Jagadamma
Absolutely.
Sarah McLusky
So you've said there, though, that one of the clearly one of the biggest challenges for you was coming in as a novice, not knowing, you know, where to start with business plan, anything like that. Are there any other things that were particularly difficult, either in those initial stages or have been difficult as times gone on?
Kavi Jagadamma
Yes, there has been. There have been few, I have to say. One of the key things, one of the things when we look back, when I look back now, is that we've had mentorship, which has really helped us. But some of those mentorships, it would have been useful a bit earlier for us. Because some decisions you make, you can't then change and has had long lasting impact.
For example, the legal structure of the companies. We set our company as a community interest company and also it's limited by guarantee. This was based on the principles and values of who we are and what we are trying to do and it was all about the mission rather than the profit, which we don't regret.
However, when it comes to investments, that limits us on who we can go to. We can only do debt -based investments. We can't have any equity -based investment. So there is a bit of kind of working out the pragmatics of it which we thought would have been useful if we had even discussed with somebody else who runs a social enterprise or somebody with that experience would have been useful. So there is things like that where we thought in retrospect it would have been quite useful. So also understanding IP and we kind of look at thinking if we had done a bit more of.
We did a bit of IP audit early on, but could have done a bit more on the IP audit early on to look at what else was out there before we filed the patent. Again, that was quite challenging, learning about IP, learning about patent. Those were also early on challenges. Time was a big challenge. And, you know, as for all of us, COVID.
Sarah McLusky
Yes, of course. Yeah.
Kavi Jagadamma
That really had an impact. There were quite a few challenges earlier, and there are still challenges. One of the biggest challenges I would say still is the frustration we have that we don't progress at the speed we want us to progress, because we are all doing other jobs. And we would have progressed much faster if we were spending our time on this full time, or even half time, half the working time, but it's not and which means our progress is slow and it's accepting that.
Sarah McLusky
Mm hmm. Yeah, so yeah, just to put some numbers around that for people that don't know. When did you start the company, start this process, this journey that you're on now?
Kavi Jagadamma
2018.
Sarah McLusky
And we're at the point we're at now. Is there something out in the world or are you still in that development stage?
Kavi Jagadamma
So we have developed prototypes, we've tested prototypes and because, and again that's another thing, because our community interest company is all about co -design. It's about designing products with users for people living with long -term conditions, which means it's iterative. It's not like you design something and it's launched. So we've been doing that iterative, got a prototype, tested it, feedback, changed again. So it's been iterative.
So it taken longer and also we've done some testing in the lab here with people wearing, it's shoes basically, it's people wearing shoes. So we've got to the point now that we have patent filed with the UK intellectual property office and EU and this UK one's been currently examined and EU still in the process. And we are quite close, we are working with a company in Scotland looking at licensing agreement to get the product out of market. It is not out in the market yet, but we are quite close.
Sarah McLusky
Yes. Okay, but that gives a sense there though, of the time scale there. So we're, you know, five, six years down the line and still just at that stage there. And so the thing you said there is that, time is the biggest challenge. How do you balance your academic role with this business role as well?
Kavi Jagadamma
So there are times when it's easier, but there are times when it's really challenging. It can be difficult. We have some time in our academic rules for research, for example. So 20 % of my time for research. So this is my significant chunk of my work. Time goes into this. Also, we are a team. So three of us from the university, and we all pitch in. Then one of the things I have to say is the support from the university has been brilliant.
So we've had funding from university. There's an innovation fellowship that university introduced a few years ago. And we got that fellowship three years running. And that money we used for backfill. So we could pay somebody to do some of the teaching so that we can raise our time. We can buy some shoes, get the shoes made from the funding. So all that really helped with time.
It is still, I have to say, it is still a struggle managing time, but there's a lot of support and there's sort of much more recognition as well now about entrepreneurial activity. It's kind of seen that knowledge exchange activity is similar to research, which is quite useful. So I've done, sorry, I'm just kind of going back.
So the time does spill into evenings sometimes which is inevitable and I do see this as when I'm on sometimes on annual leave I do some piece at piece here and there and time is a challenge and that's something I would say to others as well is think carefully about the time and also how much it will take to progress how long it will take to progress because of that.
Sarah McLusky
Yeah, I think it's always a challenge, isn't it? It's one thing we can never seem to have enough of this time. So it sounds like, so you said your role in the company is as one of four directors, is that right that you said? Yeah. And are all of the directors all fellow academics or are some of the people external?
Kavi Jagadamma
Three of us are academics and one person is from Compass. So it used to be called MS Therapy Centre, this Compass, and she's a senior physio in Compass. Yes, that's four of us.
Sarah McLusky
So that again, do you think that that structure of having so many of you embedded in the university, I guess it must have its advantages and disadvantages.
Kavi Jagadamma
And then yes, it has got its advantages. Part of it is the trust in the team. We all know each other and we can support each other. And our strength, at the academic side, the three of us, our strength lies in the kind of experience of research, of applying for grant. That can come in quite handy. And our other director, Gillian, who's from Compass, her strength is working with people. And she's also an ideas person.
So we all have our own strengths and we all have, say, the roles are evolving every year. So early on, for example, when it came to Converge, I was the lead applicant on it. I went on training, I did all that kind of, you know, outward facing things. But over time, different periods, different people, different directors have led on different things.
So we did BioCity training which is offered by Scottish Enterprise was Gillian who went and did the BioCity and other, we've got two grant applications right now, ongoing one is to do research associated with it and one of the other directors, Derek is leading that. And we also applying for some, it's called Innovation I for I grant from NIHR is about for us as a small and medium enterprise company, we can apply for further development and other director Cathy is leading that one.
So we have our own roles in our own ways and we lead on different things.
Sarah McLusky
Yeah, it sounds very collaborative. And is that something that did you sort of sit down and decide who would do what? Or has it just kind of evolved over time? Yeah.
Kavi Jagadamma
It evolved over time. It did evolve over time. I still do the basics, you know, the finances, the keeping the company accounts and everything. That's still my job. And I do, usually I do the output facing things like this. And so, but there's kind of people's strengths in a way. People, you know, we know who's wanting to develop where and people can put their hand over, I've got this idea. I want to do that one. I can lead that one. And then it just developed that way.
Sarah McLusky
Yeah. Yeah. Oh, excellent. So as you've gone through, you've talked a lot about, you know, everything you've learned about just running a business. Has there anything else that you've learned, maybe anything you've learned about yourself whilst you've been going through this process?
Kavi Jagadamma
It is interesting that you asked that because I never saw myself as a creative person before. And this process that made me realize, I could really reflect on or I may redefine what creativity is. And also I realized that I do have an entrepreneurial mindset and it helped me to redefine entrepreneurship in my head. And then, and then it's quite kind of, you because I also teach entrepreneurship now because I've really got interested in this.
So I use entrepreneurship in my teaching. I use the concepts of enterprise skills, entrepreneurial mindset with my students. So there's a lot I learned and working with others and also it exposed me to the entrepreneurial ecosystem of Scotland and how things are done differently. And compared to what we are used to, you know, submitting a paper and getting it rejected with why this isn't good, submitted grant and getting rejected and why this isn't good versus when you submit something for, for example, funding for entrepreneurship, even if you don't get the money, it's more like what can we do to help you? Do you want some mentorship? And it's the whole approach, the supportive approach, which kind of I have taken on board as well. So I support others now as well. So it's not a learning, not kind of learning as such, but it's more about change in approach. And you know, we all win. It's all of us progressing together. That's also quite key for me.
Sarah McLusky
That's really interesting to hear that difference between the entrepreneurial worlds and the academic worlds. And it can't help but make me wonder what my academia would be like if that was done more, you know, rather than no, just full stop, but how can we help you? Yeah.
Kavi Jagadamma
Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. I agree.
Sarah McLusky
Yeah, so as given where you are with the company as it is at the moment, you've said that maybe if you went back you would maybe reconsider how you set up the structure of the business. Is there anything else that you think you might do differently if you went back or has it just been an evolving process?
Kavi Jagadamma
It has been an evolving process and in terms of when I look at things I might do differently, one is the structure. I'm not saying it would be different. What I'm saying is I would have considered it a bit more carefully and discussed it a bit more carefully. One of the other things is probably looking at IP a bit more carefully before we filed our first patent, looking at the IP landscape, looking at doing a proper IP audit before we did that.
Sarah McLusky
Right, yeah.
Kavi Jagadamma
That's something you could have done. There aren't any other thing I would say I would do differently because we did have mentorship. Again, probably would have sought out that mentorship early on. While we have mentorship applying for conversion and everything, but much more specific to the workings of a social enterprise or talking to somebody who is running a social enterprise, I think would have been quite useful.
Sarah McLusky
Yes, yeah, yeah, oh definitely. And so I wonder if with everything that you've gone through now with the company, obviously the company is still a work in progress. So maybe you don't know yet what success would look like for the company, but has, what does success mean to you and has that changed?
Kavi Jagadamma
That's something we had to, or I had to, reframe a lot. Because when we started, we had this vision, or in a year, we're going to have this product out and launched. And that was our success. And there are so many times I felt like a failure. Because things are not progressing as they're meant to progress. And when we talk to students about learning from failures, but still kind of having to apply that to myself, I did challenge.
And because self -efficacy, because it's a new area, and there was not much self -efficacy. So for me, success, definition of success has changed in that sense. It's about small wins. It's about as we go forward, we have achieved this. That's one more step towards the final goal. And if you ask me what the final goal is, there is not one final goal. So we want this product out there, launched, used by people.
And we get such good feedback on people who are using the product already, which is always we see as a win again. And whenever we get such good feedback from people testing these products, but we want that out for others. And we also want this product to be available across the world, like for India, I am from India and I want to have this affordable product, which is also for a hot country version, develop that.
So there is so many things we want to do and there's an overall goal of having this out there. However, for us, success is now achieving steps and even enjoying the process as we go. So we have changed, I have changed what my wins are or what my metric of success is.
Sarah McLusky
Oh, bear with me just a minute, my cat has just broken the door down. I'm just gonna shut up. Ah, they're such a pest sometimes. No, you don't need to do anything again. I'm muted, so I don't think it will have picked it up on, but yes, I was gonna lead in from that. What's it gonna say?
Sarah McLusky
Yes, I think that the idea of success being about the journey is quite a realisation, I think, that a lot of people come to along the way, don't they? Yeah.
Kavi Jagadamma
Yeah. And one of the things I would say, it's a cliche in a way, and my students cringe sometimes when I say this to them. I say this to people that, you know, I heard this, someone said, it's not my own words, is that if you're not feeling insecure, you're not learning. So for me, you know, that, you know, even in the feeling of insecurity is fine. It's kind of true that I am actually learning. I'm not plateaued and I'm not static.
Sarah McLusky
Yeah, I think that is excellent advice. And on that note, is there any other advice that you would give to anybody who's maybe thinking about following a similar path?
Kavi Jagadamma
I would say don't underestimate the time it takes. And that's one of the pitfalls early on we made. Finding mentors early on. Mentorship, the value of mentorship is something I can't put any price on. It is amazing how much mentorship we got. But having mentors early on and the support from organization is quite important.
Wherever you are, the support from organization you work for, if you're an academic entrepreneur and the support from university can make a lot of difference because of time, because of how it's seen, how it's valued, they all matter.
Actually one of the things I meant to say, which is relevant in a way, it's not about advice, more about one of the things which really helped us was the university's, QM University's IP policy. Where universities assign the IP intellectual property to us with no, and that's our policies got professors privilege, which has really helped us without, it makes things so much easier. So support like that, organizational support like that can be quite key, which is not in the hands of academic entrepreneurs, I guess, but finding that support can be quite useful.
Sarah McLusky
Yeah, knowing that those are the things to look out for is really valuable.
Kavi Jagadamma
Yes, oh understanding your University's IP policy is quite, it is quite important early on.
Sarah McLusky
It's amazing how much IP policy comes up in this podcast.
Kavi Jagadamma
Well, I'm not surprised. I'm not surprised. I imagine when there are challenges to IP and also even it took us quite a while to understand what the all the background IP we needed to think about before we talk about the, you know, the foreground. It's just all that conversation, understanding that early on. Again, having mentors, white mentors early on can help with all that.
Sarah McLusky
Yeah, definitely a strong message there. So, well, with that advice, which I think is excellent for anybody who is thinking of following a similar path, it just remains to say thank you so much, Kavi, for taking the time to come along and to tell us about your journey.
Kavi Jagadamma
Thank you so much for this opportunity.
Podcast Outro
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This podcast was a collaboration between the University of the West of Scotland, Converge and Sarah McLusky. The podcast team includes Orla Kelly, Adam Kosterka, Jen Black and me, Sarah McLusky. The Academic Adventures Podcast is proudly supported by the Scottish Ecosystem Fund 2023-24.