Startup Circle: How is MY Protection propelling safety-tech as a dynamic lifestyle choice?

One of the most debatable sections of the healthcare society is that "Prevention is better than cure". Further, the quality of productions available for the people to "prevent" diseases is also a questionable pursuit. In that regards, MY Protection, a safety-tech startup, built on the premise that protection doesn’t have to be cumbersome or tedious, designs protection gears. Right from shoes to grocery, the company offers lifestyle products that enable safety as well as style.

With CiOL, the Co-founder of MY Protection, Kavin Kumar Kandasamy talks about how the first-of-its-kind startup is enabling people to use healthy and safe lifestyle products. Excerpts from QnA.

What is MY Protection about? Tell us about the team.

MY Protection is the World’s first Safety as a Lifestyle Company. We aim to make Safety and Protection a contended lifestyle choice for people rather than a compulsion. The whole vision of MY Protection is to prevent another breakdown from happening again. Our team is made of individuals with different creative skill-sets starting from Engineers to creative storytellers. Domain experts from virologist to apparel experts and people who understand fashion and lifestyle, we are a unique safety lifestyle company.

How did you come up with the idea?

When the pandemic broke out, my partner Raja Palanisamy and I saw what was happening in the world around us. We wondered what exactly the problem was. Upon close examination, we identified lifestyle as the root cause. Lifestyle is something that is developed over the years, even centuries. Every action of yours is something very innate to you. You act in a certain way because your parents and your forefathers did the same. But what if we were to enhance our lifestyle and take it to a safer place?

We understood if we make innovative products that people can use daily like the anti-virus for computer then we would be omnipresent in their lifestyle and prevent another breakdown from happening again and hence, ‘MY’- World's first safety lifestyle Company.

What are the changes you are bringing into the market?

History has shown us that there’ll always be an outbreak of some sort or the other every once in a while. We’ve had Ebola, SARS, MERS, and what have you not. Now it’s Covid-19. Personal hygiene is no longer a choice, but a necessity. It is essential for our safety and the well-being of the people around us. That’s the biggest lesson the pandemic has taught us and that’s exactly the change we are trying to bring into the Market- “Seeing Safety as a Lifestyle”.

Hence, the contribution of ‘MY’ to the market would be to understand that safety is an ever-evolving process to be able to keep up with micro-organisms around us. We need to make sure that our lifestyles are constantly evolving and that I feel would be the biggest contribution to the market and hence we aim to focus on safety as a lifestyle choice.

How are consumers adjusting to the challenges of safety with tech?

In my interaction with the customers and as a customer myself, I believe that people are always on the lookout for enhancing their lifestyle and express interest in products that are ergonomic and yet easy on the pocket. COVID has taught us the importance of the health and well-being of our family and loved ones in a hard way. Hence more people are becoming aware of hygiene, safety, and technology has been very helpful in fighting this disease to the best extent.

Our products follow a very simple approach of being Practical, Innovative, Simple, and Sustainable. These 4 principles form the base of our products because we believe that any product that meets these 4 principles can become a part of your lifestyle. For example Gadgets like ‘MY’ UV One Portable UV Sterilizer which is engineered with superior UV-C lights kills viruses and bacteria with 99.96% efficiency while letting people carry it anywhere and sanitize any surface with a one-touch power button. Simple, innovative, and practical solutions like this are welcome by the customers because they can get their lives back to the New Normal with awareness and elegance.

What is your business/market growth? Who are your consumers?

MY Protection is building a space around the consciously aware customers. These are switching to upgrade their lifestyle by making safety, their priority. As for the others, we are consistently progressing by making them aware and educating the importance of safety and how simple and innovative solutions can help bring back their lives to the New Normal.

We are focusing on the Direct-to-Consumer market and Business to Business market as of now. The E-commerce business is doing pretty well with more than 200 new customers adding to our portfolio every week but our B-to-B market is where our bulk orders are from. We are adding more than 10 clients to our portfolio every week and that is a sign of how companies are looking to make safety a culture which is a very good proposition for MY Protection.

What has 2020 changed for you? How are things now?

Until early 2020, we were into the supply of protective gear. It didn’t involve much research from our side as they were everyday medical products. Post-pandemic, we figured that if we could blend these medical properties with lifestyle properties, we would have something in the safe lifestyle space. We aimed to bring the Safety products in a simpler form that people could adopt and adapt daily. The year 2020 has made us re-think our perspectives of Safety and our vision.

MY Protection truly cares about the safety and well-being of every individual. Now, the way people have been talking to us, passing down their satisfactory comments and safety reviews have been very rewarding. We are trying to increase our customer base, by going global. And as I said before, we are making safety a lifestyle choice available for everyone in the world.

Is safety-tech the new normal?

Yes, indeed. Safety is the only way to get through these tough times and preventing any breakdown like this from happening again. And, to achieve this, the best way forward is to make Safety a lifestyle with the use of technology. Sometimes when people hear the word technology, they think complex. But technology is already omnipresent and has become an inseparable part of our lives. At this point, adding the safety element to it is the only way to interact with people in the social world and help them transition from anxiety to confidence.

For us, safety- tech can be as simple as ‘MY’ Mask. We just replaced our layers of the filter with activated carbon and copper. This made it 99.96% effective against any type of viral or bacterial strikethroughs. Yes, the mask is in line with every technology in the Material design but the end product is a very simple and sustainable solution that leaves no compromise on the safety of people. This is what I call Safe-tech to be!

What are your plans for 2021?

It was a conscious decision to position ourselves so far as a B2B model. Because firstly, we have no real competitor. Thus, we want to ensure that we capitalize on this and drive repetitive sales through these corporates. The second thing is, most of our products are very innovative and therefore take quite a lot of time to manufacture. We are steadily increasing the capacity of our manufacturing bandwidth. Up until this point, we’ve been holding that bandwidth for the corporates.

Right now, we are growing steadily and B2C is also picking up because of brand awareness and our safety-tech product quality and uniqueness. We are looking forward to slowly tap into this market and expand our geographic base by caring for the Safety of many people, spread across the world. As for Retail Marketing, we will tap into this space only when the brand recall is high amongst our customers.

Funding

Financial stability is crucial for a start-up like us. But as of now, we are not worried about the evaluation game as much. I am happy to say that ‘ bootstrapped Company where Raja and I have been taking care of all the financials ourselves. Right now, we are focusing on making sure that ends meet and we become a sustainable organization. But we are looking at early-stage funding in the next month or two.