Nickhil Jakatdar, CEO GenePath Diagnostics chats with Amit Somani, Managing Partner Prime Venture Partners.

Listen to the podcast to learn about:

00:46 - How Nickhil started his entrepreneurial journey as a student

08:13 - Dating founding team: finding interesting, smart, motivated people.

13:10 - When and how should a founder “let go”

17:47 - An overview of what molecular diagnostics is and what does Genepath do?

29:30 - Is there an ideal diet? Data-driven Personalised Preventive Health.

34:05 - How entrepreneurs should take care of their health while trying to reach the ‘promised land’.

Read the complete transcript below:

Amit Somani 00:46

Welcome to the Prime Venture Partners podcast. This is your host, Amit somani. Today we are delighted to have with us Nickhil Jakatdar, he is the co-founder and CEO of GenePath Diagnostics, we have this term in the industry called serial entrepreneur, I think Nickhil can probably be both a serial and parallel entrepreneur. There are many interesting things that we will cover on the show. So, welcome to the podcast Nickhil.

Nickhil Jakatdar 00:53

Thanks, Amit. Thanks for having me.

Amit Somani 01:06

Great, Nickhil. So you’re sort of born an entrepreneur, in some sense, I know you were doing a grad school at Berkeley, and you started your first company right out of Berkeley, in the semiconductor space, then you did another company, than you did Vuclip that you’re very popularly known for in India in terms of the video on demand. And now you’re running a genetics and molecular company, a diagnostics company. So, talk to us a little bit about just a bit of your journey. And how do some of these things pan out? And how do you come up with some of these ideas? Because they seem like in far flung fields?

Nickhil Jakatdar 01:22

Yeah, my first company, like you mentioned, was during my time at Berkeley, I was a grad student there, I was doing my PhD. And this was the late 1990s .com boom time. And I was just so enamoured and amazed by all the energy in Silicon Valley, that I wanted to be a part of it. And I had no idea what that should be. And I came to the conclusion that the only thing I understood well enough to start a company was my PhD thesis. And so my research colleague and I took our PhD thesis and made that into a company.

And it was a perfect example of ignorance is bliss, because we had no idea what we were doing. And we just thought, if you’ve got a good idea, what else is there, everything is in our control. And over the next three years, through a series of very interesting and humbling lessons, we learned that running a business is more than just being great technologists.

We were lucky enough that we learnt all those lessons, the relatively easy way. And it ended up being a big success. But there is no teacher, like actually doing it and learning it on the ground. And so that’s how the first company started. But that was my area of expertise. However, the second, third and fourth companies, I can’t claim to have any area of expertise. They were not my domains. The second one was chip design. Third one was consumer mobile video. And the fourth is molecular diagnostics. There, I moved into those spaces more because I just enjoyed the people I met at those companies. And I felt that they were passionate. They believed in the mission. They were not driven by the idea that this is going to be a big moneymaker, they were driven by the thought that we can change the world.

And it sounds very cliche, but frankly, when you’re around that type of energy, and it comes across as sincere. It’s easy to get attracted to it. And I got attracted to it. And I frankly didn’t do any great amount of due diligence about, well let me see how big the market is. I said, We’ll figure all of that out. And so each of those companies also, fortunately, ended up being very successful. But I would say that what we started off with, as our hypothesis, in all cases, was never where we ended up as where the company succeeded.

And that to me, is the magic of being around smart people, being around passionate, mission driven people who are also very flexible. They’re willing to evolve, they’re willing to let the market tell us what is needed, and then react quickly and pivot quickly. And so they all ended up in a great place. But it was not from a place of great due diligence about the market, but it was more from a place of great due diligence about the people, their motivations and their personalities.

Amit Somani 04:37

Great, so my question for you is, how do you, let’s say you come up with a new, “random topic”, today crypto is all the rage. You could have been doing that, you’re doing molecular diagnostics, and you know nothing about it. Yeah, you like the people. They’re awesome. How do you figure out that you are going to be able to make a contribution? How do you go through that exercise? I mean, yes, you’re passionate about it. But if you know nothing about it, what are you going to do?

Nickhil Jakatdar 05:07

Yeah, that’s a great question. That probably answers the question as to why I didn’t get into crypto. Because not only do I not understand it, I don’t see how I can add value, nor am I passionate about it. Now, that doesn’t mean it’s not a big market. And there are obviously very, very successful companies. But what I have found is, when I’m starting, when I get excited about a group of people and their mission, and all of that, I try to understand what is it that they bring to the table? And what is it that I can bring to the table that they are not already bringing to the table and view as a whole.

Because, for example, maybe I can add a lot of value on the product side, or on the commercial side, or on the marketing side. But they have to believe that that’s a whole they have, and that they want the help. And so one of the ways I go about figuring this out, is the courting period, when I meet a group of people who I’m excited about is not a two conversation type of a period, I would look at probably between three to six months of lots of conversations, ask some of the hard questions, have some of the very difficult conversations and difficult in quotes, because they’re difficult only if you make them difficult. Otherwise, they’re just very good, honest conversations.

And through that, by asking not questions like, hey, so how big do you think this market is, but rather asking questions like, if we got into a place where we had different opinions? How would we conclude on them? And is it a function of whose domain is it? If we run out of money, how much time do we really have to continue moving with it? Or look in three months, if I don’t get a salary, I’m out. Those are all practical issues. And there is no right or wrong answer. But there is an answer that tells you whether it’s a good fit for you.

And that’s the process, I would go through a long courtship with tough, constructive, honest conversations. And at the end of it, if we still love each other and want to continue taking this further, then it’s the right thing to do. Because by then your passion has been tested, your value has been tested. And I would say the last comment or add to that is, over time, as I’ve gone further and further down this journey, the impact that it makes, to the world, again, sounds very cliche and sort of high level.

But I actually believe that as we get older, we start thinking about those things a lot more than we thought about it or younger. And so that has also become an additional filter now, in addition to Am I good at it, am I passionate about it? But is it also going to make a real difference? Or am I just doing things that are nice?

Amit Somani 08:13

Absolutely. Has the process of “dating and finding interesting, smart, motivated people”, whether they’re co founders or others that you bring on, changed for you across these three, four journeys that you have taken, were there things that you were doing that were very naive 15,20 years ago, and now you’re like, Okay, it’s a little bit more sharper. Because there are many entrepreneurs that we have, listening possibly to the show who are first time entrepreneurs, they don’t have that experience. They’re like, I just want to go make my first big successful company or get an exit or make a unicorn. So they’re like, I’m trying to see if they can learn something from this, your journey.

Nickhil Jakatdar 08:52

Now, another amazing question, because I didn’t think about it until you said this. But yes, there have been learnings and I would say there are two points. One is a more trivial point, which is the amount of people that come to me now, wanting to talk about an idea that is worth taking up together has increased simply because of the past credibility. But as a first time entrepreneur, what is it that one can look for, and I can tell you that having gone through it enough, my thinking has evolved a lot on this topic. The number one thing I’ve found is, the people who are the first 5-10 employees are the ones you want to spend a lot of time with.

And you better really have a frequency match on your value system. I think that is number one. It sounds very hand-wavy, but you can figure it out when you spend enough time with people. How do you view the same situations? Do you view it similarly? Or do you view it very differently? How would you act in certain situations, and that’s something I would never have done as much as I do it now.

Because there have been times where a potential co-founder was very smart, technically, could write up code, could solve problems in hours and others would take months. But the values match was not there. And then that shows up in very ugly ways later on. And so it’s not worth it, you need to get that values match upfront. That’s the first thing.

And the second thing is, each side, each person involved in the early days, has to be clear about what they bring to the table, as well as what they’re willing to trust the other person with. And they’re two very different things because I can bring something to the table. But then what you bring to the table, I’ll constantly question you.

And it’s okay to question but not question in a way that you don’t know what you’re doing. Are you willing to truly, truly trust? And you can question but question from a place of I know what you’re doing but this is more for me to understand versus I don’t trust anything you’re doing. But whatever I’m doing is amazing. You have to have both aspects. And so that’s, this is something I did not even think about in the early days. But now I understand that for the long term benefit of the company, it is critical that you do those aspects as well.

Amit Somani 11:39

No, I love this notion of what are you willing to completely trust, the other co founder, partner colleague with? I think it’s quite interesting. So, moving along, you’ve done these three companies, and we will come to Genepath in a few minutes. You cultivated them and you actually even got, I think all of them to successful exits, how do you figure out when is the time to “ let go”?

And because there is obviously, this romantic notion of, you’re going to build this company forever. And this is going to be a 50 year institution and all that. But the reality is, technology is so disruptive, the markets move so fast that or maybe you just picked something where maybe the market wasn’t big enough, or the team wasn’t all that exciting, or something changed. So how have you decided when it’s time to move on from something and maybe just a little bit about the exit process as well, if you may?

Nickhil Jakatdar 12:40

Yeah, Amit I’m gonna add one more aspect to this question. Because I think, one is the move on that you’re talking about, when is it time to sort of get out of the company for various reasons. But I actually think there’s one more important lesson I have learned in my journey, which, as a first time entrepreneur, I was not comfortable with, which is, when you are the two founders, a dog and a dream, you have a certain view of the world, and you want to do everything yourself, and then you hire your first five employees. And they have to be given certain freedoms. And that’s also you have to move on from I am everything to I am this, and I need to let go, and have these people do this.

And that is going to keep happening more and more and more as that company grows. And as our company scales and, and now you find yourself not being as involved in the product maybe. Or maybe you find yourself being completely involved in the product and not as much in sales. Whereas earlier you’re doing everything. And so this is the type of thing that goes back to the earlier point of how do you let go, give control.

And I think the biggest thing that a startup can do, and a startup founder and entrepreneur can do is be very careful about who you bring into the company. Do your due diligence, test them out, figure out all the tough conversations, but once they’re in, then they are an insider, then don’t do this, I am going to play everything and everything is going to go through me. And that’s the first step to move on. You move on in your role into other roles.

And then we’ll come to the second step, which is, when is it time that this is not the right place for me anymore, doesn’t mean the company is not doing well. Or it may be that companies are doing well, but there could be a number of different reasons. And I’ve had to move on four times. And each time it was a startup I either started or ran, and then it was acquired. In all four cases I was lucky enough that the company did very good exits, but I had to make a decision. And that decision came down to a very simple rule of thumb I set for myself.

Instead of making it too complicated, I realised that actually, we know the answer deep inside us when it’s time to move on. But sometimes we’re willing to not accept it. And the rule of thumb became very simple, which is, if I wake up for a whole month, and my first thought in the morning is, man, I have to go to work. It’s time to move on. It can happen one day, it can happen two days, we all go through ups and downs.

But if it lasts for a month, and you still can’t get that energy, out of the 22 years I’ve been doing this, I think most of that period, I was like, I can’t wait till the morning, 24 ideas have come to my mind. And so many things have to happen, but there have been those periods when, I’ll give you examples or reasons. In the first company, we had been acquired, it had been three years since the acquisition, the technology, we had got 60 patents for it. It was in a really, really good place.

Now, or at that point in time, it was no longer about the next technical innovation. It was not about convincing customers, every customer in the world, which was all the semiconductor fabs wanted our technology. Now it was about going selling, giving an 80% discount versus a 20% discount type of conversations. And I said, this is super critical. This is what’s going to get the company to scale, but I have no interest in doing it. So it’s not that it’s important, it’s just that it doesn’t appeal to me.

And so I said, time to move on. In the second company, it was a case where we had again been acquired for two years. And I found that I was spending too much time in meetings, justifying why certain people should be promoted, not promoted. And, I just did not find that very exciting. Time to move on.

The third company, it was more because of a personal family emergency, medical health emergency because of which I decided to move on. The company was about to go public, and was in a very, very good place. But I realised that it’s time to prioritise certain other things that maybe I might not have prioritised 20 years back. But this was the time and so it was almost never because the company was doing badly in this case. And in some other cases, it might be because the company was not doing well. And I was not the right person to take it to the next level. But there are various reasons, and you have to get up and want to go back in.

Amit Somani 17:47

Absolutely, thank you for sharing that. Very, very interesting. So let’s switch gears and talk a little bit about some of the new stuff that you’re doing. Maybe talk to us about molecular diagnostics, and what does that mean really and what is it that you guys are trying to do at Genepath? I, of course, had an experience doing something with your company, and I’ll talk about that in a minute or two. But why don’t you tell us about what you guys are trying to get done with Genepath?

Nickhil Jakatdar 18:18

Yeah, so luckily, I myself was in the same shoes as you are. And most people are like, what is molecular diagnostics, not more than two years back. But at a high level, molecular diagnostics is a way to study either the person’s genome, or the genome of some bad bacteria, virus and so on, in order to understand a certain disease, for example, with cancer, it’s not a bacteria or virus, it’s our own body has gone out of control. So to understand cancers, you study the human genome, to understand infectious diseases like chikungunya or dengue, COVID. You study the virus genome. To study genetic disorders like alpha thalassemia, Down syndrome, you study the genome of a newborn baby or of the parents.

And so molecular diagnostics is nothing but the study of, has something changed in you, in the way your genome was supposed to be, that’s causing a certain issue. And if you can study those changes, what are sometimes called mutations. It gives you insight into what type of cancer or what type of the genetic disorder you are going to be facing, or is it Chikungunya versus dengue versus COVID? Because many of them have very similar symptoms. How do you know which one it is? And so molecular diagnostics is a study of that and that’s what Genepath does.

Genepath has both a lab, like a metropolis has a lab, Genepath has a lab. And we do all these molecular diagnostic tests to test for these types of things. And it also has a business focus on selling test kits, so that any lab in the world can use our test kits with a high quality and that are pretty inexpensive, to study the same test that we study in our lab. So that’s one part of what Genepath does.

And the second part is, the part that you have had the experience with, which is more on preventive health. And that’s more before you have an issue, because the first part is focused on people who have an issue. And we try to diagnose what the problem is. The second part is, you have not had any issues. But you’re moving towards one, can we tell you in advance. And so that’s what Genepath does at a high level.

Amit Somani 20:57

Great, so before I talk about the personal kind of experience with the product and the company and the thinking, what is the difference, perhaps in what was the state of the art before you go into molecular diagnostics in terms of studying the genome, whether it was for Chikungunya, or for COVID or for your own genome and so forth? What is the current state of the art in terms of what people were doing prior for decades, if not longer?

Nickhil Jakatadar 21:26

Yeah. So maybe it will be best illustrated with a few examples. And so, for example, I’ll take cancer, because that’s something that most of us have had somebody in our family is affected by it. Cancer is caused because our bodies don’t do what they’re supposed to do. So they start attacking itself. Most cancers, like breast cancer, lung cancer, and so on. It may be because of some external effect, or it may be just the body, just something driving it crazy, we don’t understand what. For many, many years, many people died of breast cancer.

And so people said, well, the oncologist said, well, the way to solve it is to give them chemotherapy, or radiation. And it was based on the belief that all breast cancer is caused because of the same issues, and everybody gets affected in the same way. And so everybody got the exact same treatment. So it was one size fits all.

However, what genetics and genomics and all that has taught us is, if 20 different women have breast cancer, they might have had 20 different mutations that cause that breast cancer. And if you understand those mutations correctly, then the treatment can be personalised for those people. And the moment you do that, there is no one size fits all, then it’s to truly what has always been spoken about personalised medicine. And the way this all manifests itself in terms of so what, Okay, great, it was your one size fits all now it’s personalised, what does that translate into?

And what that translates into is, when there’s a one size fits all, which, for many years was true worldwide. And it’s still true in many countries, including many parts of India, the five year survival rate of somebody who has breast cancer is 60%, which means from the time it was diagnosed, five years later, only 60% of the people were still alive.

However, in markets in the US, where they do this personalised treatment based on genomics, the five year survival rate for breast cancer is 90%. And that’s, I think, a perfect example of the power of what genomics, genetics brings to the table. And the same thing, like for example, everybody is aware that COVID would not have been tested, had it been for a simple blood test. A blood test like this antibody test will tell you whether you had it, by which point is typically quite late, COVID will tell you before you even have the symptoms, that hey, you have it. And so, again, knowing things earlier, because of genetics, and genomics, allows you more time to treat it before people get serious.

Amit Somani 24:26

Very helpful, very, very fascinating. So I’ll tell you what I did with your company, which you know, but for the listeners so I saw you kind of wear this continuous glucose monitor, it is something that you put on your arm and it continuously monitors your sugar response in your body based on the food you’re eating, the exercise you’re doing, and all this and I wore this for 14 days. And it was really, really fascinating.

In fact, we haven’t spoken about it. And the idea was that you will see almost I mean, not quite on a real time basis, but almost on a near real time basis. How does your body react to exercise? How does it react to a particular kind of food? How does it react to the sequence in which you eat the food? How does it react to the combination of the food you eat, and all that stuff?

And while I did it more out of possibly intellectual curiosity, it actually helped me understand better for myself, what works for me and my body and so forth. Thankfully, there was no particular issue that that one was trying to solve, or one figured out, and I could see this being quite revolutionary. Not just for a kind of curative health, but for preventive health, because I have nothing. So even your nutritionists and your doctors were like, why are you doing this? I mean, you’re like eating healthy, you’re doing yoga, you’re doing this, what’s up with that?

And at least I thought this was very fascinating. I could see this becoming very, very commonly used for everyone. So I really had a good experience. And I know, you’ve done a lot of instrumentation on yourself as the guinea pig, not just with Genepath, but many other things. So maybe if you’re comfortable, you can talk a little bit about that as well. And I think preventive health can really become very interesting, even more than curative health?

Nickhil Jakatdar 26:16

Yeah, Amit, I’ll start with what got me to this point. It started from a personal experience about 10 years back, I had just turned 40. And there is this whole thing that South Asians have a higher tendency of heart disease. And so I heard that, I’d always heard that. But like most people, I didn’t think it applied to me, it applies to others. And I’m about six feet tall, I am not overweight by any stretch of imagination. I eat some meat, but mostly vegetarian, I don’t drink alcohol, or smoke. Everything that one would say, wow, I play competitive soccer and all of that.

And I went in more at the insistence of my wife, then because I really believed I needed it. And I found out within a day or so, after they did the test, that I had heart disease. And I was at the 90th percentile of calcification of arteries for my age. That came as a huge shock. Because nothing seemed to indicate that. And that led me on this journey to understand what caused it.

And it turned out that what caused it was some of the foods that I was eating,which I considered very good. But for me, they were not good foods. As an example, I thought, when you’re growing up, you’re always told by your parents, please don’t have coke and thumbs up, have fresh squeezed juices, don’t drink Coke, drink a bournvita or Horlicks again, Well, it turns out, all of that are actually really bad advice. Because the amount of sugar in fresh squeezed juices, or frankly, even in stuff, like bournvita or horlicks if you look at the packaging, we don’t pay that much attention, typically, but it’s a lot. And then, of course, this is where your genomics come in. In my case, it caused huge spikes in my blood sugar that caused me to become pre diabetic that caused heart disease.

And if I’d known this 20 years earlier, I would have stopped many of these things. But I was doing them because I thought they were good for me not, I thought they were bad for me. And so I decided to ask, my doctor said, what should I stop eating? And what should I continue eating? And they said, Well generally eat less carbs, less sugar and eat more protein and more fat and more fibre. But that’s very vague, at least for me. So I went on this quest where I, as you said, instrumented myself up, I put every possible sensor, one could find a heart rate monitor, blood pressure monitor, a continuous glucose monitor, you name it, and I had it.

And I started tracking all the foods I ate and what it did to all these various metrics. And I came to this amazing realisation that there were many foods that I thought were good for me, that had very bad influences on my spikes. On the other hand, there was food that I thought was bad for me, that actually caused almost no issue. And when I tried this experiment on other members of my family, they had very different conclusions. And so I finally came to the conclusion that there is no such thing as an ideal diet. However, there is such a thing as an ideal diet for you. And so that led us to go down this path of creating this programme that we call gene clinics, which is the one you just described that you went through.

So that healthy people, when they’re still healthy, can go through it, and figure out what foods are causing them issues and what not. And together with the help of our dieticians get insight into the ones that are not working, what can you do about it? I can’t tell you to stop eating rice, because rice causes a spike. But if I told you, hey, along with the rice, sprinkle some methi powder or add some nuts. That’s an easy fix.

And if that can solve the problem of getting heart disease later in life or diabetes later in life, which in India is a huge problem, 60% of the world’s heart disease patients are South Asians, which is mostly Indians. And so if that problem can be solved, what is the downside? To me, this is data driven, personalised preventive health, rather than people saying, Hey, stop eating this. That’s neither data driven, nor is it personalised. That is generic advice. And so yeah, I think we take our health too lightly. And I’m a perfect example of that. Like I said, I wish I had known 20 years ago and what I could have changed. But for many of your listeners who are younger, and frankly, it’s never too late. Start many of these types of things early in life. Because why not give yourself that edge?

Amit Somani 31:31

Yeah, I’d love for you to elaborate a bit more on that for entrepreneurs. Because entrepreneurship is such an adrenaline pumping rush journey that you’re like, trying to get to the promised land all at once, do 120 hours a week, don’t sleep, don’t worry about what you eat, skip a meal, it’s all fashionable. And obviously, there are many others. And folks, like you’ve been through this many times over, where you kind of realise it’s a marathon? Yes, there are going to be surges and so forth.

But it is not a nine to five job by any stretch of any imagination. But if you don’t take care of your health, you may not be there when you get to the promised land. So any tips for younger folks in particular, who are maybe in their 20s or early 30s? What are some of the things that you wish you did? And from a health perspective, purely?

Nickhil Jakatdar 32:22

Yeah, I want to say this, with the knowledge that, if someone had been saying this to me, when I was in my 20s, I probably would have ignored the advice. And so I’m trying to think about what I can say that I would have listened to myself when I was 25, Practically. Because otherwise it comes across as okay, but you have done this enough number of times, so it’s okay for you, but for us is different. It is not different. At the end of the day, we all get affected to varying levels, to all the same things. Lack of sleep does have an impact, not eating the right things does have an impact, not having exercise does have an impact.

The question is, most entrepreneurs definitely are very data driven. They don’t like to be given this generic gyan, about don’t do this, always do this. Each person each of us has to figure out for ourselves. What is that right amount? But I think step one is to first acknowledge that, if I don’t take care of this right now, I might not be there when I’m 40,45. And this sounds like well, you’re just making a scary statement. But I have seen in the last 12 months, six of my friends who passed away from heart disease, they did not have COVID. This is not a story about COVID, their story is about heart disease, which is to me, the biggest pandemic that nobody talks about, because it is completely asymptomatic. You don’t think you have it? Till one day, you either get a heart attack and live a miserable life after that, or you die.

And it again, comes across as dramatic. But look around, you will all see enough people who recently have had that, and it’s not happening at 70, it is happening earlier and earlier and earlier. Already heart disease kills more people in India than any other disease than all the cancers combined. And what is scarier is that it’s not only happening at a younger and younger age. So heart attacks, 50% of heart disease is happening in people below the age of 50, 25% below the age of 40. So we’re all in that sweet spot already. But more than it’s happening earlier, the rate of deaths is increasing. So it is already the largest source of death, but it’s also the fastest growing. This means it doesn’t happen to the other person, it is going to happen to us.

I think that’s the first realisation But then the second question is, what are you going to do about it? And here I’m not going to propose, do something completely huge, do some simple things. And a simple thing is, go get a blood test. But I know what most people do: they get a blood test once a year, they look at the report, glance through it and say, Hmm, generally Okay, and then do nothing.

And after the next year, again, you do it. The question is, what do you do on an ongoing basis that you can sustain? If it means taking a 15 minute walk after dinner, do it, that’s 15 minutes better than not doing it. Because nobody can say, I don’t have time to take a 15 minute walk. Even at my busiest, I might think about my work, but I can do it while walking.There is no excuse to not take a 15 minute walk. If you can do more, the better. The general rule of thumb is do about 100 minutes of exercise in a week. If you can do 100 minutes of exercise in a week, that takes not too much time, 15 minutes a day. Go for a run, do a biking bike ride, go for a walk, whatever it is. That’s one.

But the biggest influencer of your health is the food you put into your body. And exercise is important. But exercise is not going to undo the damage that putting the wrong food into your body is going to do. And so please pay some additional attention to what that food is that in your case, causes issues. And whether it’s a programme like GENECLINIC, or anything else that is out there,do it. It doesn’t matter which one it is. But understand that your body is unique. Figure out what you can do to ensure that you’re putting the right stuff in because it is going to give you a response back in a way that you never like if you put the wrong food in. So yeah, simple things but easy to implement.

Amit Somani 37:02

Absolutely, we are investors in a company called Dozee. It does your heart rate monitoring, your respiratory rate monitoring, your sleep patterns. So I love what you said, that instrument yourself in whatever way you want. It doesn’t have to be intrusive. Many of these things are non intrusive now. I mean, the CGM is intrusive. And just measure it and see it for yourself. Don’t look for generic gyan. Because once you see it, given that you’re used to running your businesses using all kinds of analytics and data and MIS, and what have you, you’ll see your own body, and that will probably trigger the biggest response than anything that you would have read. so fascinating, wide ranging conversation. Nickhil, just sort of quick last question for wrapping up any interesting things that you have practised in terms of reading habit or sources of information or whatever that you would like to share with our listeners, maybe any books that have had a profound impact on you, anything of that sort, as we wrap up here?

Nickhil Jakatdar 38:01

I have to admit, I’m not a voracious reader. Okay, I get a lot of my inputs. One of the rules I set for myself early on, is I said, I want to meet one new, interesting person every week. And my inputs come from identifying those types of people. And it’s been a very fascinating, simple exercise, but one that has given me amazing insight and value.

Amit Somani 38:34

I love it. Thanks so much, Nickhil for being on the Prime Venture Partners podcast and great to see you continue both the serial and the parallel entrepreneurship. And I’d love to see where you guys take GenePath diagnostics to, and whatever next thing you’re going to cook up some number of years later. Thank you again for being on the show.

Nickhil Jakatdar 38:54

Thank you Amit. I really really enjoyed the conversation. Thanks.

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