Sleepiz: The Venture Leader Mobile tackling sleep apnea and other chronic respiratory diseases

Meet Soumya Dash, CEO of Sleepiz. His startup developed a simple and non-invasive device that can screen and monitor sleep apnea and other chronic respiratory diseases, all from the comforts of one's home. Soumya and the other members of the Swiss National Mobile Team will head to the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona at the end of February.

Name: Soumya Sunder Dash
Location: Zurich, Switzerland
Nationality: Indian
Graduated from: ETH Zurich, Ph.D. in Electromagnetic Fields, 2020
Job title: CEO
Number of employees: 42
Money raised: CHF 13 million (incl. CHF 3 million of non-dilutive funding)
First touchpoint with Venturelab: Venture kick, 2017

How did you come up with the idea for your startup?
The idea came up when I had the opportunity to work with people from the sleep industry and to understand how the field works. I quickly realized that, although we spend a third of our lifetime sleeping, it's not considered as important a topic within healthcare as you would expect. Coming from a wireless engineering background, their tools and technologies felt so outdated. When it comes to sleep, if you want to get diagnosed, you have to go to a sleep lab where they attach 30 cables to your body and then ask you to go to sleep. It was hard for me to accept that this was what they considered state-of-the-art.

Whom does your product or solution help, and how?
Any patients with a chronic respiratory disorder. We have developed a device that is contact-free, easy to use, inexpensive, and robust in operation. This enables patients to conduct sleep monitoring and sleep apnea screening in their most natural sleeping environment (at home) without any disturbances. Patients can also use it during therapy to monitor disease progression and manage their chronic conditions. Our product is also used by patients suffering from COPD, cystic fibrosis, and long COVID, to name a few.

What are you most excited about at work right now? 
We are getting recognition from insurance to integrate into the standard of care.

What market are you addressing, and what is the potential of your startup in that market?
Sleepiz addresses the chronic respiratory market, which includes sleep apnea and COPD. One billion people suffer from Sleep apnea, and less than 20% are diagnosed. It is highly underdiagnosed, and the sleep apnea devices market is growing with a CAGR of more than 7%. More than 317 million suffer from COPD, the world's 3rd leading cause of death. COPD is estimated to cost the US healthcare system USD 49 billion annually.

What are your company's and team's key achievements to date?
Our product received CE Class IIa certification for vital sign monitoring and sleep apnea diagnosis. Moreover, within the first year of our launch in Switzerland, we screened 3,500 patients; and within the first month of the launch of our telemedicine service, we built a pipeline of 140 patients with a customer lifetime value of 2.8 million spread over eight years.

How did you come up with the name of your startup?
The name of our start is an open-ended sentence: “Sleep is ___,” which later became Sleepiz. Sleep is very personal, and we are striving to answer the question, “what is sleep?”.

Is there a key principle or value that guides you as you build your company?
Respect.

What is the most challenging aspect of being a founder?
Finding the right people.

What is the most important lesson you have learned as a founder?
It always takes more time and money. This is a valuable lesson learned through the course of building the company. As a founder, you are building and commercializing something novel, and it's hard to account for uncertainties. These uncertainties can come from the technology, market, and/or team.

How do you stay on top of industry trends?
I engage myself in reading-related articles and participate in different working groups. Reading keep me updated with the industry trends, whereas participating in different working groups helps me to bring this latest learning to practice and use the same with my peers to shape the future of the industry.

What is your favorite movie or TV show and why?
The Matrix, because the idea that we all are in a dream is infectious. It is a movie that resonated with me and gave me much perspective.

What is your favorite book and why?
Fortunately or unfortunately, I have always been a slow reader. I take my time to immerse myself in the themes and messages of the text. One of the books I keep going back to is Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman as I feel you can never understand its depth in a few sittings.


The Sleepiz device can be placed on the bedside table to monitor a patient's breathing while asleep


The Venture Leaders program supports startups in their global growth by taking promising entrepreneurs on investor roadshows in sector-relevant tech hubs. Venture Leaders Mobile is organized by Venturelab with the support of Huawei, Swisscom, and VISCHER.