Marching To 100 Million Steps with Trexo Robotics

We welcome Manmeet Maggu, Founder and CEO  at Trexo Robotics. His team are re-imagining pediatric rehabilitation, while also redefining mobility solutions for all people. 

Manmeet started the company when he found out that his nephew had Cerebral Palsy and was unable to walk. Instead of waiting for the future to happen, Manmeet and his team decided to build the future he wanted to see and made the first-ever exoskeleton that helps children walk at home every day, in many cases for the first time in their lives.

Trexos are now being used by top hospitals and customers all over North America.

At Trexo, they’re out to create devices that are designed with the user in mind, building wearable robotic devices that can be used at home to help children with disabilities experience walking. It’s a mission that’s steeped in really cool R&D and innovation—and they’re just getting started!

I’m thrilled to pick Manmeet’s brain on the incredible innovation his team is driving, his team's goals for the future, and what it takes to drive innovation in 2024. 

Boast accelerates the success of innovative businesses globally with software that integrates financial, payroll, and engineering data into a single platform of R&D intelligence.

Visit Boast.ai, sign up for our Blog newsletter and follow us on LinkedIn for weekly #InnovatorsLive sessions and the latest news to fuel your growth.

Intro and Outro music provided by Dennis Ma whose mixes you can find on Soundcloud at DJ DennyDex.

Transcript

[00:00:00] Recording now We're not going to push anything live without your approval. is this going to be video or audio audio is the primary deliverable, but we do record the video as well. with your permission, we like doing 30 to 60 second [00:01:00] video snippets of the conversation.

to share on our social media channels, if that works for you.

Okay, great. I'm just going to get myself set up here. Drink some water

Can you pronounce your last name for me? Just so that I don't mess it up when I go to introduce you. Yeah, it's Magoo. Magoo. Okay. That's what I thought. Fantastic. All right. And, the first name is, it's spelled Manmeet. It's pronounced Manmeet. Manmeet. You got it. Manmeet Magoo. Awesome.

Hello, and welcome to What the Tech from Boost. ai, where we talk with some of the brilliant minds behind new and exciting tech initiatives to learn what it takes to tackle technological uncertainty and eventually change the world. Today, I'm thrilled to welcome Manmeet Founder and CEO at Trexo Robotics, his team are reimagining pediatric rehabilitation while also redefining [00:02:00] mobility solutions for all people.

Mahmoud started the company when he found out that his nephew had cerebral palsy and was unable to walk. Instead of waiting for the future to happen, Mahmoud and his team decided to build the future he wanted to see and made the first ever exoskeleton that helps children walk at home in many cases for the first time in their lives.

Trexo's are now being used by top hospitals and customers all over North America. And at Trexo, they're out to create devices that are designed with the user in mind, building wearable robotic devices that can be used at home to help children with disabilities experiencing walking. It's a mission that's steeped in really cool R& D and innovation, and they're just getting started.

So I'm thrilled to pick Mamit's brain on the incredible innovation his team is driving, his team's goals for the future, and what it takes to drive innovation in 2024. So without further ado, welcome to the show. Hi, Paul. Excited to be here. Awesome. I am very, very happy to have you. I know that we are featuring lots of folks who are part of the Mars discovery district on the show 

And I know I gave a little bit of a background, but could you tell some of our listeners specifically [00:03:00] about yourself and how you got into the startup game in the first place? Yeah, for sure. So, started the company with my co founder Rahul both of us have been friends for, you know, pretty much first year undergrad, which where we studied mechatronics engineering from Waterloo.

after graduating, we worked in the industry for a few years, building hardware and robotics products and taking them from idea to market For our masters, I studied my MBA from the University of Toronto and Rahul did his master's in robotics from UFT as well. the idea for Trexel started through a very personal need when I found out that my nephew has cerebral palsy and that he would never be able to walk.

as we started looking into this, we realized that, you know, You know, there's just no solutions out there. And, you know, they say sitting eight hours a day at your desk is bad for your health. Imagine how bad it is for a child spending their entire life in the wheelchair. And so we just wanted to change that.

And then we couldn't find any [00:04:00] solutions. We said, let's build something ourselves. Initially, it didn't start off with this whole idea of, we're going to build this company and we're going to do all these things. It was just a simple passion to, build something for Pranit my nephew.

I took the summer term off doing my MBA and Rahul decided to Set up his master's thesis on building this exoskeleton as well. And, you know, build the first prototype up in, in kind of our, in our, in our dining room. with the help of. Some UFT resources and some of the programs that we were part of built the first prototype, packed it up in a suitcase, took it to India where my nephew was, and, tried it out with him for the first time.

in the beginning it did not work and we were so disappointed. I remember, watching the next morning, watching videos of SpaceX rockets blowing up, [00:05:00] trying to motivate myself to keep going. it's okay, failures happen. then my brother in India had a machine shop. So we went there made a few more modifications and tried it out again.

And it. I know work, which is like a proof of concept. It showed that this can be done. we came back, started working on the next version, but based on that, we had a newspaper article. before we knew it, other families started reaching out to us saying, Hey, we want something like this for our child.

We had clinics reaching out to us because for a clinic, there is no solution to provide rehabilitation therapy and exercise in a nice manner. that's what got us to thinking that, it's not just my family, but families all over the world that want to see their kids walk and are willing to do anything to make that happen.

And so that's where This idea for Trexel started and that's where Trexel Robotics was born as a company as well. Mamee, this is a very different founder story than a lot of the folks that we have on the show, because this [00:06:00] came from you trying to solve a very personal and acute problem, but not one that's unique just to you, or not unique to your family even, which I know a lot of founders, they get into the game because they have that experience.

Yeah. Maybe itch to start a business, see growth, play the game, but you really want to solve a key problem. And I'm thinking back to some of the other founders we've had on the show who follow a similar path that you did in terms of actually reaching out to the community and the people who are going to need the solution.

First and foremost, in your case. It was family. So you went to your family, you tried it out. And I love that trial and error was a big part of what you did as well. at Boast, we work with companies that do a lot of trial and error. we had Chris Hobbs on the show a few weeks ago and he actually, title of episode was failure is okay, because again, it means everything is okay.

If you aren't discouraged by it, you can actually use that as an opportunity to really learn and develop something extra powerful. being able to keep iterating, not losing that momentum. And maybe turning [00:07:00] on some Elon Musk examples of how he felt but then found a path to success.

We don't have to go down that route, but that's just a very cool and refreshing angle to the whole startup game. And again, for us too, we would talk to professors or researchers and people would be like, what you're trying to do, these are giant companies or giant research organizations trying to solve exoskeleton.

You're like two guys. What makes you think you can actually build something? given the fact that we didn't know anything at the time, probably helped that we were like a little bit clueless. They were like, yeah, you know, we can figure this out. I love that spirit.

So that'll be my next question. you talked about how you were in the MBA program and your co founder Rahul was in the robotics program. how did you guys come together and how has it worked with your complementary skill sets and building tracks so, so far? Yeah, I mean, so this was in our masters, around [00:08:00] 2016 but we did our undergrad together and we've been friends since 2008.

we studied in the same class in the beginning, both studying mechatronics engineering. We had done a lot of projects together, so we really loved working with each other. And When it turned out, both of us are doing the master's in the same school. We decided to room together for the duration of the term.

It was just super easy, super smooth from the point of view of, why don't we just work on this as a project and convert our apartment into the main workshop, essentially. I love it. And I liked that you were even saying a lot of that trial and error was taking place in your dining room, then threw it into your suitcase, bring it to India and see how it works in the wild.

And you have your proof of concept right there. And the trial and error has been part of our ethos for a while. Cause even after that, once we came back and started working on the next version, we would regularly invite families to our offices to come in and trial the device and give us feedback.

And that was a very interesting [00:09:00] thing because you can put a kid into, an exoskeleton and have the coolest actuator technology. It's not going to matter if they start comfortable from the child. The kid is going to let you know right away. They're not going to want to sit in something like this.

We spent a lot of time perfecting some of the other things like comfort, functionality, how easy it is to get in, how easy it is to operate, How comfortable it is. How enjoyable it is. Can you incorporate activities and games into it? And that ended up being quite a core component of the design and the secret sauce as well.

Absolutely. I think it goes kind of not always considered that doing that actual. customer research, where you're actually working with the people who are going to be using the solution. That's a big part of the R and D process too. And that's a big part before we go down into the whole shred conversation of it all, of what the government wants to see you do, if you're going to tap into those already tax credits, but also just what you have to do if you're building your MVP, 

In a different, [00:10:00] industry, those customers are going to be the ones who are paying for your solution down the line as well as be the proof points when you're trying to test out and build your MVP, build your proof of concept, build something that's going to be in market eventually. But I do want to come back to those differentiators.

So without giving away the secret sauce, you had said it earlier, there are giant companies who are working on projects like this. You're just two guys. What is setting you apart from those giants? What is a little bit of the secret sauce without giving away the recipe fully that makes trexo different than other solutions in the space?

that's a great question a core component for us was the decision to start in the pediatric market to build this for children a lot of the bigger companies looked at it as a smaller market compared to adults with disabilities or the elderly population.

a natural intention is to go after the biggest market. But what we realized was that the challenges that were facing the exoskeleton market, it was not about the big, tackling the [00:11:00] biggest market. It was actually about solving these technological challenges, the regulatory challenges, and the reimbursement challenges.

on the technological side, we saw some companies designing this for adults where you have higher costs because you have higher power requirements. So the cost of building a device goes up exponentially. we designed the system around an external frame.

This is a brain that it's already have, they're already comfortable with using. So it was less of a, big, Change from a sociological and psychological aspect we took a frame and attached our system onto it So that ensured the safety which made the regulatory pathway a lot easier It says, you know, you cannot fall in the device.

It's inherently safe and also Lower the technological barrier as well. Beyond that, we've, you know, designed by, by having a clear focus, we're building this for children with physical disabilities. The biggest population group is cerebral palsy. having our own family members as, the main users, we were able to really design this [00:12:00] for them.

as a result of it, you know, some of the innovations were like, We designed our own initiation engine, which detects when a child is assisting the robot and can actually display that we have LEDs on the side. So it can actually change color showing that, Hey, the child's initiating. It can also detect if the child is resisting the movement.

And be able to show that as well. that's based on these torque sensors and our custom algorithms And then beyond that, by focusing on EP and the population group, we've designed more unique gate patterns and controllers. we have a specific gate mode for.

Children that have high extensor tone, because it's harder to unlock that tone for them to go into that swing phase. So, you know, at the end of the day, the hardware becomes initial differentiator, but software becomes the long term differentiator like it is for most products.

Absolutely. The kids are going to tell you if they're not happy with it. So it's not going to be a huge secret if you're not hitting it out of the park. I think that's [00:13:00] really good for getting your proof points across. the software is a big part of what's the actual secret sauce, even beyond the hardware.

I think that's A huge thing you see in the startup space today, it's probably an obvious point, but it's one that bears repeating because a lot of us are working from a similar open source when we're talking about some of the hardware we start from, the real proof comes when you're working with those people to solve that acute issue and when you have that focus because you are targeting people with cerebral palsy and particularly children you can really zero in on those problems, you can really customize the software to really address those key Key problems, which is really cool.

And again, there's going to be downstream benefits for people beyond the CP population as well, which I think is awesome here. one thing I want to go back to is you talked a lot about how, you were in your graduate program. working on your MBA at the time when you came together with Rahul.

What other partners, in the tech ecosystem have helped Trexo get off the ground? whether those are institutional partners, University of [00:14:00] Toronto, how supportive they've been directly in helping you guys come together. I know I shouted out Mars Discovery District at the top of the call, but tell me about the ecosystem you're in right now and how they've helped Trexo capture the success you've had to date.

I think Trexel, would not be here without the partners and the support we've received from this ecosystem. whether it's from the very beginning, the University of Toronto and some of the accelerator programs we participated in, we were part of the hatchery program, the CDL program, the H2I program, DCFL, then, you know, support from University of Waterloo.

Being a partner, we hire so many amazing full time and interns from, from both schools, the, the support we've had, other accelerators that became part of it, there's Y Combinator or Techstars, and other programs like the Mars Discovery District. so the, the ecosystem in Toronto has been, it's, it's really unique because it feels.

big enough that you can find [00:15:00] support for whatever is the key problem you're trying to solve. And at the same time, small enough that it's easy to connect with people and people are willing to help many times it's been a case of, finding the best person in the world to answer this problem and just reaching out to them and they're supportive to help another startup.

I've made amazing connections through that process that was really refreshing to see and very encouraging for any startup. I love that too. And again, I know that hospitals and clinics across North America are going to be leveraging Trexo, but I love that you did shout out the local tech ecosystem in Toronto.

People who listen to this podcast regularly are going to think I'm picking a favorite city at this point, but I mentioned Vancouver companies in the last episode. I have to shout out Just how impressed I am with the entire ecosystem around University of Waterloo, University of Toronto, going to Elevate Festival, going to Collision Conference, which isn't going to be at Toronto next year, but it was great the past two years going there and seeing the ecosystem firsthand.[00:16:00] 

It is world leading. And it does seem like maybe when you're in there that it is a smaller community because you can reach out and have that arm's length access to some of the world leaders in these fields. But it sounds really big from my perch here in Boston too. And I think that's just really impressive.

I love everything that's happening up there. it's the support, it's the community. For other founders maybe who are listening to the show today and want to maybe get their idea going, whether it's in the field of mobility, whether it's in even bio, or whether it's just broad startup, what is some advice that you would have for those founders to get started in 2024?

I think the number one advice would be pick a good co founder. you know, you want someone that you can work with through, the next 10 years of your life, Someone you can get along with because startup is a crazy rollercoaster journey.

You're going to have crazy highs, crazy lows, sometimes in the same day. So you have to be prepared for [00:17:00] that. if you have the right support, then you can kind of go through all of those, and balance each other out, that would be the number one suggestion. the number two from my perspective is you want to find a problem that Inspires you and motivates you enough to go through these challenges and a problem that excites you enough that you are willing to spend the next 10 years of your life working on this.

The last thing you want is to pick a hot trend and, two years later, if the trend is gone, then you're just suddenly not that excited either. And you're ready to move on to something else. when you have these two things, that becomes visible, you're inspired, you're passionate, and then doors start to open.

there's a surprising amount that you can do when you have very little resources and, and dollar the dollars, like it's, that should never be, it should feel like the biggest constraint, because if you actually start trying, you'll be surprised at. What you can do, it becomes a great avenue for creativity.[00:18:00] 

I love that. We were talking with Jason from code launch and I asked him a similar question I framed it more in like, all you hear about is how bad the market is right now, he's like, listen, get creative. there's always going to be somebody there who's going to want to back a good idea.

And to be honest, in downtimes or in times when people think that there's On against you, they're going to bet on companies that get creative. And those are the ones that they're going to want to see through to the unicorn status. So I think that's awesome. I also want to drive back to your point about finding a good.

Partner to kick off the whole startup journey with, because 10 years, yeah, that's the ideal state You go through your early stage, you get your seed funding, you get your series A, you get your series B. Cheerleading, we got all our funding, we're off to the races, company's built, job's done.

No, you gotta keep working at it and you gotta have a team who's gonna have the stamina and the passion and the genuine curiosity in what you are doing to take it on the long haul. Because it's gonna get lonely when you get to those later stages and you are an established business. And maybe your founding [00:19:00] team were just in it because they saw the flashy new thing at the time.

And then it's a tricky situation when you have to start rebalancing your cap table, but we're not there yet. I do think it's important though, to emphasize again, whether it's a college roommate, whether it's, I mean, I'm thinking we had Artemis, Josh and William from their team on the show. They were friends in middle school.

if not earlier their passion for something that's amazing is really, really dry. It's automating data. They love it. It's there. It's genuine. They don't see it as a flash in the pan and that's why they're going to see this business through that's why I think the DNA is here for Trek.

So, I'm just so happy to hear the momentum that you've built. And the ecosystem that's supporting you. I think it's a genuine ecosystem that shares your passion. I know we're almost at time, but I'd love to know what's on deck for Trek, over the next few months, what can we look forward to?

Well, we are working hard to launch in the U. S. and Europe. that's going to be coming, sometime next year. It's very exciting news because we have so many customers waiting to get their hands on this [00:20:00] device. so that's going to be super exciting for us to be able to deliver these to families all over the world.

Another exciting thing that's coming up is we are about to hit a hundred million steps. All the Trexel users combined. So we're going to have a big 100 million steps party. we'd love to invite you there as well. it's going to be awesome. It's equivalent to five trips around the earth.

it's an awesome milestone for us to be able to say that kids who difficulty walking or could not walk have together. Walked around the earth multiple times. that's the power of technology and that's the power that, that, that these kiddos have in terms of the resilience and the strength.

That is awesome. Congratulations. when you come down to the States, I'm here in Boston. I'm sure we'll be on your roadshow if you make it through there. So definitely let's cross paths when you do that. And I would love to come up for the party. If you guys are actually having it, that sounds amazing.

A hundred million steps, five [00:21:00] times around the world, nothing to sneeze at. Mameet, this is fantastic. I can't thank you enough. This has been an absolute pleasure. Yeah, likewise. Thank you so much, Paul. Awesome. I'm gonna cut it and leave it there. Truly, Mameet, that was so good. I think we covered everything on my end.

Was there anything you wanted to get in beyond that or any other questions? Maybe I can just add that snippet on. Absolutely. Yeah, I'll tee you up for it. So, so Mimi, how can we engage with Trexel today if you're an interested party?

Yeah, so if a family, We designed this with the goal to enable families this, this option to be able to walk, you know, whether at the comfort of their homes or in their community. So, you know, today, Trexo is available in Canada and a family can put a reservation deposit down of 500. And that starts the process where we will evaluate it.

This is a good fit for them. And then they can either purchase the device outright, which is roughly 40, 000. Or we also offer financing and leasing options for them. The key component for us [00:22:00] is you want to have long term benefits, you need long term usage and this can only happen when it's being done in a home setting and you're using this as part of everyday activities.

getting the benefits of walking while at home and, we have hundreds of families now using this device the positive messages that we see are what really brightens our day That is so cool. And again, I'm going to emphasize it a hundred million steps. That is incredible.

And you guys are going to be expanding to the U S and Europe after this. And I can't wait to see the magic that you guys are happening, play out in the real world, even more than it already has. This is so cool. Thank you so much. Thank you, Paul.

Cheers. Cheers. Great. All right. I will cut it there. Like I said, I'll make sure you get final say on anything, but I think that was a great interview. I'll make sure we get all the links and everything to you into the show notes before we push live. But I'll be in touch with Jen and yourself over email as well to make sure you get all the resources.

But thank you so much for your time. I really appreciate it. No worries. Thank you, Paul. Thanks for doing this. My [00:23:00] pleasure. Talk to you soon. All right. Bye bye.