Neolight started as a dorm room idea at Arizona State University and that idea has grown into an international medical device company.
The Scottsdale, Arizona-based company began with a single product aimed at treating neonatal jaundice, but last November it acquired Phoenix Technology Group, a California company that makes ocular screening tools for newborns.
Vivek Kopparthi, co-founder and executive chairman of NeoLight, said the company’s vision is now to become a leader in all neonatal health care and that this expansion of the mission was spurred by the Covid-19 pandemic.
In the spring of 2020, business slowed down at NeoLight as hospitals dealt with the first waves of the pandemic and spent less attention on neonatal jaundice, which is extremely common among newborns.
“We also used the opportunity — we had a little bit of downtime in 2020 because of Covid — to sort of build up a new vision, a new team,” he said. “We quickly pivoted from what was a product company to being a world class sales team that is elite in terms of the niche, the neonatology, labor and delivery niche that we have set eyes and focus on.”
As NeoLight reconfigured to meet its new, broader mission, vaccines were developed and hospitals learned how to better handle the off-and-on waves of the pandemic. By the end of 2020, Kopparthi said many hospitals had decided it was best to get babies out more quickly.
“We started seeing a shift in the hospitals' mindset where they would like to send the babies out of the hospital as quickly as possible,” he said, to avoid exposure to Covid or other infections. “What that means is more incentive for devices like NeoLight to be in the hospitals, and so that sort of started spreading like wildfire amongst the community, amongst the hospitals.”
New products, new hires
NeoLight’s flagship product, the Skylife, treats neonatal jaundice with light therapy. The device was granted FDA clearance in 2017 and Kopparthi said it is now deployed in 99 countries around the world.
By acquiring Phoenix Technology Group, NeoLight adds products that test premature infants for retinopathy of prematurity (ROP), which can potentially lead to blindness. In addition to the ROP testing equipment, Phoenix also developed a telemedicine platform so physicians can screen patients from afar.
Kopparthi said the company is focused on maintaining growth and scaling this year, including hiring about 20 more people by December to bring the NeoLight headcount to about 50. He also said the company is also considering making more acquisitions in the future to bring the best neonatal tech under the NeoLight umbrella.
NeoLight has raised $20 million in outside capital since its inception, including money from Ben Roethlisberger, longtime quarterback of the Pittsburgh Steelers who retired earlier this year after 18 seasons in the NFL. Roethlisberger also sits on NeoLight's board of directors. Roethlisberger and his wife, Ashley Roethlisberger, invested $2.5 million out of the startup's $7.5 million Series A funding round in August 2019. At the time, Kopparthi said the capital would be used to scale the company, grow the commercialization of NeoLight's flagship SkyLife phototherapy treatment device and help with the life cycle for future products.
Kopparthi said that NeoLight’s success is due, in large part, to the support he and the company have received from people in the Valley.
“I'm a first generation immigrant in the U.S., I came to the U.S. about nine years ago. I fell in love with this idea and I was able to get to where I am sheerly because of the support of ASU, because of the support of some of my investors, my board members, my team."
Kopparthi also noted that the Arizona startup community is still in its early stages when compared to cities like San Francisco and New York, but things are heading in the right direction.
“I'm very happy, very excited to be seeing this transformational shift,” he said of the Valley's startup growth. “It's a generational shift that we've seen in the last five, seven years.”
