A start-up to treat children’s burns

Business, medicine and social value

There are places in the world, especially low or average income countries, where heat is still generated by fire, a natural and age-old method which however causes a high number of burns, especially among children, who make up two-thirds of the burn cases (WHO). Corax Lifebox, winner of the Social category of the 2019 GoBeyond contest, is a medical device designed to deal with the complications arising from accidents involving children. It is currently being used in Sub-Saharan Africa. The team tells its story below.

“When we registered for GoBeyond, we never dreamed we would make the winners podium: while we were aware of the social importance of our idea, we had little experience and had just begun to think of creating a start-up. We decided to try as we believed in our idea, so we sent off our proposal, trying to make it financially sustainable while also meeting our stakeholders’ needs. We didn’t dare believe we would get anywhere so you can imagine how surprised and happy we were to receive the phone call telling us we had won the Social category!

The best part was the final evening event in Milan, confirming the focus and commitment of the GoBeyond team to organising this contest: there were excellent key speakers and participants included talented business people and professionals. It was an unforgettable experience culminating with our receiving the prize - very exciting!

For us, the GoBeyond prize is a driver from many points of view. It has allowed us to open our start-up with the necessary funding while giving us the courage to promote our idea and it has meant we have been able to work with our mentor frog design.

The mentoring aspect in particular really proved to us how serious the GoBeyond team and its partners are. Despite the outbreak of the pandemic, which has made everything more difficult, they were still able to organise a comprehensive tailored development programme for our product, which is being trialled at the moment.

We are working with our mentors, who provide us with advice and the tools to improve both our product and ourselves as bioengineers and entrepreneurs in the medical sector. This has been such a valuable experience for us and it will be too for all those participating in the 2020 edition!”