Portrait No. 001
Nishita Deka
CEO and Co-founder
Sonera
Raised — $21M
I co-founded and lead a hardware-focused startup building novel sensors for next-generation brain and body sensing. My mission is to scale a new sensing modality that provides rich information about the human body that can help bridge our gap in understanding about human health. This is deeply personal for me because I’ve experienced first-hand the impacts of mental and physical health challenges – through my own battles with OCD, helping family members with physical and development disabilities, and supporting close friends and partners with addiction. This motivated me to build technology that could advance our understanding of the human body to improve quality of life across all levels of society. That’s why the focus of my work is to not only build a more advanced solution, but also one that is more accessible. My training as a scientist (I have a PhD in Electrical Engineering from UC Berkeley, specializing in semiconductors) coupled with my life experiences make me uniquely well-suited to lead innovation in hardware technology that can address core problems in human health.
In her words
“My early motivation in starting my company was to build new sensor hardware to understand the human brain and body. But along the way, I uncovered a subtle, but arguably more powerful, motivation - the opportunity to learn from, lead and empower some of the smartest, most creative humans I've ever met.”
Chapter I
The toughest challenges you've faced as a founder.
There are very few female-led hardware startups, so I’ve encountered all sorts of biases, like assumptions that I’m not technical enough compared to my male counterparts (despite having a PhD in engineering) and assuming I won’t be able to raise money because I don’t match the archetype of a typical engineer or hardware CEO. I decided to ignore it all, networked aggressively and kept putting myself out there. I’m proud to say that I’ve raised over $20M in venture capital from Tier 1 funds (Spark Capital, Amplify Partners) for what some investors now tell me is a “double black diamond level startup”; that we built a novel sensing technology that has garnered serious attention from Big Tech and closed multiple contracts; and I lead a brilliant team with incredibly high retention (in fact, several external industry leaders have asked what I did to build such a harmonious and motivated team). Direct quotes from prominent investors I’ve met along the way: “I think she is very talented. Can make it big.”; “I think incredibly highly of Nishita. She is one of the rare PhD founders who is deeply grounded, personable, and commercially minded.”; “Nishita is brilliant.”; “Nishita is easily one of the most resilient and talented founders I’ve met over the (many) years in the business.”; “Congratulations on your background and what you’ve accomplished, it’s very impressive.\"
Chapter II
Your vision.
It’s unacceptable to me how little we know about the human brain and body and I’m obsessed with figuring out ways to close that gap. The fundamental change that our work will enable is unlocking access to a completely novel, rich set of information about the body at a scale that is unrivaled at this performance level – ultimately I want to make a truly ubiquitous brain and body sensing technology that impacts industries as wide as human-computer interaction and medical diagnostics. Imagine if you could use the movement of your fingers and hands to control a digital device or track early onset of Parkinson’s or essential tremors, just by wearing a smartwatch. Imagine if an AI assistant had direct information about your moods and feelings and could use that information to customize how it assists you. Imagine if you could monitor conditions like anxiety, OCD, depression, and addiction on a regular basis in a very user-friendly way and craft personalized healthcare plans based on that data. All of that is going to be possible with our sensor technology and that’s the change we’ll enable in the world.
Chapter III
The impact you want to leave behind — for your industry, your community, and the women who come next.
For my industry, the impact I want to leave behind is the idea that true innovation in hardware, while risky and capital intensive and slow, is critical for enabling truly revolutionary changes in healthcare and human sensing and the long-term impacts are worth the wait. For future women, I want to be an example of a female leader who is a founder, CEO, scientist and businesswoman all at the same time. I want my work to be proof that female voices matter, especially in male-dominated spaces where decisions are made on products being used by the entire world. I want to be an example of how capital and talent follow if you trust your intuition and ambition, even if you don’t fit the archetype. That’s the legacy I want to leave behind in the future.