Interview with Sujit Chakrabarty, CEO of DroobiSmit

In our latest interview, we had a chance to speak with Sujit Chakrabarty, CEO of DroobiSmit, a highly promising (as you're about to read) digital health startup that aims to help prevent, or manage and partially reverse chronic conditions such as diabetes and obesity.

Sujit is a guy with a plan to change the world for the better, and the company he runs has a world-class, clinically-tested solution. Here's what he had to say:

Can you tell us a bit more about yourself? What's your background?

Prior to starting the company, I was a Partner at McKinsey where I led the Digital and Technology Practice in India. After that, I founded Smit.fit, an expert-led app-based solution for managing metabolic health conditions like type 2 diabetes.

Earlier this year, we created DroobiSmit as the leading AI led diabetes management company operating across GCC and South Asia.. We are now more than ever determined to improve the way how people manage their chronic conditions.

Let's speak about your company. What is the market problem you want to solve and where do you see the opportunity?

If you look at the global diabetes map and take a longer view, say 'till 2045, you will find close to 50% of the incremental diabetes cases between now and 2045 will come from the MENA region and South Asia.

To put those percentages into perspective, the total increase in diabetes cases globally over the next 25 years is in the range of about 230 million, according to the International Diabetes Federation (IDF). And close to 115 million cases will come from the MENA region and South Asia.

The MENA region has the highest prevalence levels of diabetes in the world. Whether it's Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Egypt, Kuwait, or UAE - they're all in the 32 to 45 percent range of adult prevalence of diabetes plus pre-diabetes — as we have to look at those two together.

The scale of the problem is huge and that is the motivation of why we're doing this. In fact, we are doubling down on GCC and Middle East overall.

What are the features differentiating your offering from competitors?

We believe that digital health solutions like ours will only succeed when working with the existing healthcare ecosystem.

I think there are too many digital health companies trying to do everything on their own, whereas the way we are approaching it is to work with providers, insurance companies, pharma companies, employers and the governments. This way we can have a higher impact.

This business model, which involves working with the ecosystem, is what makes us different from our competitors.

We also did the extra work to validate our digital therapeutics with clinical grade evidence. In fact, we are quite differentiated in the area of diabetes not just in the region, but globally as we have conducted some of the largest studies published around the impact on diabetes.

One study in Qatar was conducted with the Primary Health Care Corporation, which was a 600-patient cohort study and published in the American Diabetes Association (ADA). The second one we just released is from India, which was again published in the American Diabetes Association, involving about 800 patients. So these are some of the largest studies globally and our first proposition differentiator is the quality of clinical impact that we have delivered.

We are also fast and have embedded AI into our solution, with a virtual AI-assisted diabetes coach on our platform helping people living with diabetes. This AI solution links back to the patient's data and is context-specific so that users can ask questions like "Hey, what diet changes would you recommend given the blood glucose trend over the last three months?"

That's something we have already built and deployed and because we are in GCC, this is a multilingual feature, available in both Arabic and English.

Lastly, I should also mention that we are in the process of building what is called a "digital health twin," which uses AI to mimic the patient's metabolic health performance, including their blood glucose profile. This can show the patient how their blood glucose changes over the course of the day, from the time they're sleeping till the time they have your breakfast, and so on. We are almost 70-80% there.

Add a connected device to the mix and you will be able to simulate a person's glucose profile with significant applications in the real world. For instance, it can enable precision medication with pharma companies because they will know the patient's glucose profile better.

Every individual is different, whereas medications are all standard medications. Once you know the exact glucose profile for that individual, precision medication becomes viable.

Can you share some numbers and achievements of the business?

First - the impact. As I mentioned, we have done two of the largest global studies on large cohort impact on diabetes. So that's kind of one marker of impact. Also, we have already worked with 20+ institutions across Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Oman, Kuwait, and also India — where we supported more than 50,000 patients.

Second, I am proud to say that our revenues are ramping up almost threefold every year.

What are your medium-term plans?

First, Saudi Arabia is a big focus for us over the next 3-4 years, where we hope to grow 2.5x to 3x per year. We will look to continue that momentum.

The second big priority is linked to AI, particularly the digital twin I mentioned, which is very specific to the GCC market. We want to get that out of the door in the next 12 to 18 months. This will allow us to offer a very distinctive solution, and given that we already partner with 20+ large institutions, we believe that will help us enhance the value we deliver to our clients.

Third, we want to evaluate the UAE market, which we have not done much of so far — but we would also like to cover that over a three-year time horizon.

Finally, from a client segment perspective, we want to become the partner of choice for insurance companies because diabetes is a big cost area for them. We want to dominate that space, and we are just getting started.

Do you have some advice for other entrepreneurs in the digital health space in MENA?

My biggest advice to digital health entrepreneurs globally, not just in the MENA region, is to work with the ecosystem. The digital-only approach has limitations both in terms of impact and scalability. Whereas when you work with the ecosystem — which is the brick and mortar clinics and hospitals and insurance companies and government institutions — that's where I think the magic happens.

So, it's moving from trying to disrupt the healthcare ecosystem to offering digital services as a complement to it.

As I mentioned, we work with clinics where they continue to do what they do, but we fill in the care continuum gap between clinic visits through our digital solutions.

So I think that is my biggest learning, and therefore, one implication of that is really questioning whether you need to be B2C, which is where you're trying to be everything for the end consumer, versus B2B2C or B2B.