UV Set is gearing up to launch its product into the market while half of its founding team is still looking to graduate high school.
Already with a patent pending on their UV-C-based sanitizing device, the local startup is expecting its first product to begin fabrication next year. The device aims to slow the spread of the current pandemic and other viruses in the future.
“When COVID hit, everyone realized how important hygiene is,” said Aimen Khan, UV Set's chief operating officer.
Over the past two years, the UV Set team has developed and prototyped a device that fits around common door handles, sanitizing it with UV-C light at pre-determined intervals. A sensor detects hand movements, opening the casing to the handle automatically and shutting it before sanitizing the handle for the next person. The team is aiming to place its devices in a variety of high-use settings, with Khan adding that they see offices, nursing homes and health care facilities continuing to use increased safety beyond the pandemic.
“We wanted something that would be able to be safely, as well as effectively, used without having to have a person be a part of the actual cleaning process,” said chief technology officer Humza Sheikh.
Sheikh said he’s received interest from the superintendent of Carroll ISD, where he attends Carroll High School, in implementing the devices on campuses. However, the company is also seeing traction beyond the school setting. Already, it has received letters of intent from clients, to potentially purchase nearly $750,000 in UV Set units.
“This pandemic has taught businesses that hygiene is very important, and as more workers start coming back, they know this is a safety net,” Khan said.
The four-person UV Set team consists of Manish Rangan, CEO and junior at Frisco’s Reedy High School; Khan, a master’s student at UNT; Sheikh, a sophomore at Southlake’s Carroll High School; and Hisham Ahmad, a freshman at Brighter Horizons Academy in Garland.
The four came together at DiscoverSTEM, a Plano-based entrepreneurial education organization that teaches students ages 10 through 18 how to identify problems and form patentable solutions around them. After completing DiscoverSTEM’s Innovation Program, the organization developed a new entrepreneurship program to help UV Set, and eventually others, commercialize their technology. DiscoverSTEM – founded in 2016 by brothers Mirza Faizan, a former head of aerospace for Capgemini, and Mirza Rizwan, CIO of India’s Si2microsystems – also provided UVSET with about $38,000 in seed funding.
“That essentially taught us how to isolate a problem and how to innovate a solution for it,” Rangan said. “Right now, we're focusing on just getting everything this needs to get to the market, but from there we can expand.”
Ahmad said the company will be looking to raise new funds in the near future, though he declined to say how much it’s looking to raise. That new money would help bring on more vendors than the two the company is currently working with, which would help bring down production costs, in addition to helping with marketing.
“As for us being potentially inexperienced or something like that, I do understand,” Rangan said. “But, at the end of the day, we are still… being mentored by some of the best product designers, some of the best managers in the world.”
