Audra Renyi Presents earAccess at LSI Europe '23

Transcription

Audra Renyi  0:05  
Imagine you couldn't hear. That's the reality of over 1.5 billion people. 90% of these people can benefit from hearing aids. That Currently, only 20 million units of hearing aids are sold per year globally. 80% of all these people live in low and middle income countries. This is a $230 billion addressable market for affordable hearing aids. So what are the barriers? The first is that testing is just not widely available. Secondly, old school distribution. So basically hearing aids are sold through traditional audiology clinics. It's a very low volume, very high margin business, and not enough audiologist to sell them. In Guatemala, you have one audiologist for the whole country. Very expensive. So the average selling price of a hearing aid to a patient is 2000. US dollars, whether you live in the US or Kenya, they go up to about $7,000 per unit, they cost as little as $50 to manufacture. We're looking to disrupt this industry and really make hearing aids available and accessible and affordable through our three A approach. Available we do hearing testing at scale, we can test as many as 1000 patients in a single day. Affordable, we aim to be at least 70% more affordable than comparable product on the market while still retaining 50% gross margins, and accessible creating alternative distribution networks. So working through pharmacies OTC we also have a training program that's proprietary to train technicians to create more capacities and country. Our business model is about being a one stop shop solution. So the affordable hearing aids but also our unique tele audiology platform that will help scale this globally and strong customer after care. We have revenue streams from the hearing aid sales, we carry a line of six different types of hearing aids under Access Canadian brand. We also sell as I mentioned with through alternative distribution, and we do mass hearing testing. So to date, we've sold in six countries, we've generated over $500,000 in sales, we've sold over 4000 hearing aids, served 50,000 patients through hearing testing, and we're just getting started. For example, in one of our key markets, the Philippines where we have a wholly owned subsidiary, we've signed up partnerships with Watsons one of the largest pharmacy chains in Asia, we're the first to be selling hearing aids over the counter, so in a in a pharmacy. We've also had an agreement with Aventus, a large medical chain where we have clinics within the clinic serving HMOs that have over 1.5 million patients. So to date, we've only raised non diluted funding, we've raised $2.5 million of funding to find our path to market secure product, develop our brand, and train over 350 people to become technicians across several countries. Right now we're really looking for a first seed round. And that is to build out our tele audiology platform. We've already built out phase one, but we're looking for the next phase to scale our solution online and to scale to new markets. So in terms of our go to market strategy, we have both a b2c and b2b business. On the b2c side, what does that look like? So we have your typical patient. So with their entry level product is paying about $250 per hearing aid, typically, people have bilateral hearing loss, so they're buying to hearing aids lasts on average about five years. And people tend to be quite loyal to their provider. So on average, that means over a 25 year period, that's a $2,500 customer lifetime value. And so our goal over the next 10 years is to be in at least 10 countries and to have, which is essentially a $1.2 billion addressable market just in the next couple of years. On the b2b side, we sell, for example, to governments, hospitals, NGOs, the sales cycle is a little longer, but they can become very quite large volumes of 1000s of hearing aids at the time, that in itself is also a significant addressable market. So the team were a team of people who have a lot of experience in audiology, but also in sales and distribution. Myself, so I come from a finance background. My background I studied at Wharton, I I used to be an investment banker before I got into this field. I also spent two years living and working in places in Africa, Chad, Rwanda, with organizations like Doctors Without Borders and others are our audiologists are very experienced. We have for example, the chairman of our board, cloudy blue Sandri ran Canada's largest pharmaceutical distribution company, and we've won multiple awards, including Canada's highest in the Ovation award, the Governor General's Award. How we're different. Instead of the traditional, as I mentioned, audiology clinic selling at very low volumes and high margins, we really do a combination of things. Yes, there's affordability. But there's also the fact that we sell through different omni channel, we have an omni channel approach we sell through clinics, we sell through pharmacies, and we sell online. So those people that do want to speak speak to a human being they can, but they can also go either either buy online speak to a human, or vice versa. And with our tele audiology platform, there's multiple touchpoints. We also have a unique payment plan that allows people to pay over six months, again, reducing even further the cost and the price of the hearing aid. We also go to people in their communities, we do mobile screenings, and mass hearing testing. The next phase of our journey is building out our tele audiology platform. So we really want to empower, facilitate and connect. The platform has three key parts to it. One is audio technician facing app, which has already been built. So it's basically an app to be able to connect with the patient do the most fitting and testing with the patient on the spot and refer any complex cases to the audiologists, a patient facing up and an admin portal for the audiologist or clinicians to be able to manage all of this remotely. So this is just an example of what our technician facing app does. So it can capture all the data needed to basically fit a hearing aid on the spot. Now, what we want to do in terms of building out the next phase, which is a patient facing app is address the whole patient journey of someone with hearing loss. And these are the things that you know, we're addressing price that's a big barrier, we're addressing access, that's a big barrier. And then there's a psychological barriers and why people choose not to get a hearing aid or don't wear the hearing aid once they get it. And that has very little to do with technology and a lot to do with human psychology. So people don't want to be seen as being old people are afraid of stigma, etc. So that's the pre hearing aid fitting, then the intervention and the post hearing aid fitting, there's generally a lack of posts counseling, which means people typically put their hearing aid in a drawer if they don't get that critical counseling to where the hearing aid consistently. So this app by using by using an AI enabled chatbot will really personalize the care to each patient, so that we shorten the average seven years between someone who gets tested and decides to buy hearing aid to a matter of couple of weeks, and post counseling ensuring that they're wearing these products consistently, especially in the first three months where the neuroplasticity, neuroplasticity is adapting to new way of hearing. Because if they if they pass that three month milestone, they're typically hearing aid users for life. So we're excited about building the next phase in terms of summer or milestones. So this year, just actually, recently, two months ago, we just hit one of our key milestones, which is profitability in our Philippine subsidiary. Our goal is to reach global profitability by early 2024. And to accelerate our sales with the technology platform once it's built. We're seeking a total of a million in seed funding to invest in digital marketing one of our key drivers for sales. Develope our tech platform, as I mentioned, hire some key folks on the team. Our team is about 15 people and we're really looking to scale some of the senior management and some inventory. Our goal is to be the number one hearing aid company in emerging markets. We want to do well and we want to do good at the same time. So please join us on our journey. Thank you