He calls himself India's first ENT-repreneur. Bengaluru-based Dr. Jagdish Chaturvedi has been recognised as one of the ‘Innovators under 35’ in the Humanitarian category awarded by the MIT Technology Review for 2016.

Dr. Chaturvedi won the recognition for his work in developing low-cost tools for ENT and related fields, which have found use in rural settings. “My first invention, which I started developing in 2010, was a low-cost portable ENT endoscopy device primarily developed for picking up ear, nose and throat lesions,” said Dr. Chaturvedi, who was pursuing his MD in ENT at the city’s St. John’s Medical College at the time.

The 32-year-old doctor is also an amateur stand-up comedian, with a YouTube series called ‘The Magaa of Small Things’.

According to him, “one needs to be a good actor to be a good doctor”. His wife, Dr. Soumya Parameswaran, is a psychiatrist who trained at NIMHANS, and the couple has a four-month-old baby.

In 2012, Dr. Chaturvedi trained in what’s called Biodesign at Stanford University through the Department of Biotechnology’s Stanford-India Biodesign programme. “It’s there that I saw doctors designing products with the help of engineers and designers,” he told The Hindu.

His innovations are user-friendly and inexpensive. “I could make a prototype device for Rs. 10,000, while endoscopy devices for ENT are sold at Rs. 1 lakh,” Dr.Chaturvedi said.

He returned to Bengaluru and started working with design firms to make commercially viable products, while continuing with his practice. He recently published a book, ‘Inventing Medical Devices: A Perspective from India’, on his experiences as an entrepreneur.