fSpace Talks – Curve Tomorrow
Think about the business you have or work at.
What goals does it have in terms of reaching and impacting people?
Curve Tomorrow is a fascinating international business that exists to improve the lives of people by solving challenging problems. Their humble goal is “to positively impact the lives of 1 billion people”.
Mohinder Jaimangal, a founder and director of Curve Tomorrow, readily admits that their goal of 1 billion is incredibly ambitious, but also notes that with the nearby populations of India and Asia, it’s not as farfetched as it might first seem.
_
_
Curve Tomorrow was founded in 2009 by a group of university friends in Melbourne, Australia. To understand the business, it’s important to understand a little about these friends and how they came to work together.
After perhaps wisely moving on from dreams of a career as a professional basketball player, Mo studied mechatronics – technology combining software, electronics and mechanical engineering – at The University of Melbourne.
After graduating, he joined Object Consulting, a consultancy that specialized in software development. While expecting to work on robotics, he spent most of his time creating apps for banking and telecommunication clients.
This consultancy led to an interesting role in a decidedly larger company, Holden. Working with a good friend and future cofounder of Curve Tomorrow, Mo helped lead an innovation and development team for Holden and General Motors worldwide.
Working out of Melbourne and GM headquarters in Detroit with eye-popping budgets, Mo worked on concept cars by developing 10-year innovation plans with trend analysis and user interface designs for vehicles of the future.
After Holden, Mo joined Dius, a startup technology company that specialized in pure agile software development. Coming in when there were nine people in the company, Dius has since grown to over 125 employees. It was here Mo experienced the roller coaster ride of how a start-up transitions into a small-medium enterprise.
Throughout all these roles, Mo came to realize the importance of two factors that would influence the direction of his career. One – doing work that contributed a positive social impact, and two – appreciating the value and enjoyment of working with good friends.
Both these elements were present when Mo helped start Bliss, a luxury chocolate label and retail chain in India. In addition to marketing a luxury product, Bliss had significant social reinvestment and worked towards breaking barriers and creating opportunities for the disadvantaged.
This of course led the same university friends combining to create Curve Tomorrow. Now, less than 10 years later, they’ve expanded to have offices in Australia, USA, India, Sri Lanka and France.
Their main focus is currently on healthcare, however they have plans to venture into education and environmental areas as well.
Incorporating best practices from previous businesses, the directors of Curve Tomorrow have implemented three key strategic principles: lean startup, design thinking and agile development. This approach has led to multiple awards, which has raised their profile and opened doors to funding opportunities.
Curve Tomorrow is interesting in that they do not focus on job titles. While each director has a role that relates to responsibilities normally associated with a CEO or CFO, they are in such constant communication that there is substantial overlap. They also promote an open, equal culture where everyone is valued, which is why ‘junior’ or ‘senior’ titles are not used in their company.
Projects range from process automation improvement in hospitals to automating existing research processes. Research into these areas has afforded them full access to all aspects of health care delivery, including even into operating theatres during surgical procedures.
Curve Tomorrow has worked with world-class health organizations around the world to improve efficiencies, solve clinical problems and commercialize intellectual property.
One example is the development of _HeadCheck_TM, an app that helps parents and coaches recognize the signs and symptoms of concussion in children. Designed by leading child concussion experts in Australia, this app is endorsed by the AFL and is available for free download.
An example of improving efficiencies is their development of a _Q-Max_TM, a desktop app that enables a team at the Victorian Clinical Genetics Services to perform research and screening for epigenetic mutations (a genetic condition) more accurately and efficiently.
_Q-Max_TM took a practice that routinely took four days to process thousands of samples over multi-step spreadsheet analysis and reduced it to a seamless ten-second task. This new process also eliminated data entry error, which results in better outcomes from the research.
Curve Tomorrow also co-developed _Peers_TM, an iPad app that is the first digital and objective assessment tool to enable early detection of social disorders in children. Traditional detection processes typically include observing children, documenting findings on a written report, and then inputting the information into a program for analysis. _Peers_TM is an age appropriate game that children play while being automatically assessed for primary characteristics of autism spectrum disorders. This lets health professionals detect social behaviour problems more quickly and easily, leading to critical early intervention treatments.
It’s work like this that makes it easy to hope Curve Tomorrow reaches their lofty goals as soon as possible.
Check out www.curvetomorrow.com for more information.
