UC students see rapid rise with their startup idea

Joe Kuncheria Panjikaran and Aniruddhan Ramesh are the founders of PhizzIO (pronounced “fizz-e-oh”), a startup that’s creating a business-to-business solution to improve physical therapy.

They were the runner-up in the first pitch competition they entered, the Startup Weekend 2023 hosted by UC’s Carl H. Lindner College of Business’ Center for Entrepreneurship, and last month were one of three winning teams in Main Street Ventures’ Launch It: Cincy pitch competition.

“We knew we wanted to be entrepreneurs and explore that area, but we never thought that startup weekend would allow us to grow so much and learn so much,” Panjikaran said.

Panjikaran and Ramesh are both second-year students from Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates. Panjikaran is studying mechanical engineering while Ramesh is studying computer science.

Although they grew up five minutes from each other in Abu Dhabi, they didn’t meet until they came to UC.

Both students said they were drawn to UC because of the university’s cooperative education program along with outreach from UC ambassadors who visited Dubai in the UAE.

“It was definitely the co-op program that really attracted us [to UC],” Ramesh said. “The ability for you to get industry experience by the time you graduate is extremely valuable. And we heard a lot of great things about UC.”

At UC, both Ramesh and Panjikaran were drawn to entrepreneurship. They liked the opportunities to solve real-world problems, create new technologies and work in a quickly evolving environment.

Their initial venture into the world of entrepreneurship came during their first year at UC with the Startup Weekend.

Other students in the competition tried to recruit Panjikaran and Ramesh to join their teams, but the duo didn’t connect with any of the other teams’ ideas. So, they decided to brainstorm ideas for their own pitch, limiting themselves to half an hour to come up with a plan.

“We believe the strongest startup ideas come through personal experience,” Ramesh said. “What you relate to the most is something you’ll be really passionate about, so that’s the approach that we took.”

The spark for their creation came from Panjikaran’s experience with physical therapy after he tore his ACL. He attended therapy both before and after his surgery and found his sessions with therapists went well, but his at-home exercises proved very challenging.

“When I’m at the session, it’s a very helpful situation,” he said. “The therapist was actually interacting with me, giving me the right exercises, asking me about my pain level, guiding me through my exercises. It gave me the confidence to do whatever my therapist told me, even though it might seem quite daunting.”

At home, Panjikaran didn’t have the guidance of a trained professional. Rather, like other physical therapy patients, he only had a sheet of paper describing his exercises to guide him.

“At home, you don’t have a way of measuring yourself, a way of checking whether you’re doing it right, is the pain good or is the pain bad,” he said. “Post-surgery is very painful both physically and emotionally, so it was very difficult for me personally to do my at-home exercises.”

Panjikaran and Ramesh decided to create a business-to-business solution for the problem.

PhizzIO will provide a dashboard for physical therapists that tracks patients’ progress with their exercises. The doctors also will be able to give their patients access to PhizzIO’s app, which will offer a guide and track users’ movements to ensure they align with what they’re supposed to do. The app will work with smartphones, laptops or any other device that has a camera.

For help with creating the exercise guides, the students have reached out to orthopedic surgeons and physical therapists. Ramesh and Panjikaran have added four exercises to their app so far and are seeking a mentor who can help expand their medical knowledge.

On the business side of the startup, they’ve received guidance from Kate Harmon and Josie Dalton from UC’s Center for Entrepreneurship. The encouragement from Dalton and Harmon is what gave Ramesh and Panjikaran the confidence to pursue their idea in the first place.

“We weren’t very confident about it,” Ramesh said, “but when Kate and Josie just walked in and said it was a great idea, that’s when we thought, ‘Let’s go for it.’”

Following their runner-up finish in the Startup Weekend competition, the PhizzIO team won the 2023 IQ-E Pitch Competition hosted by UC’s Center for Entrepreneurship and finished second in the 2024 RevolutionUC hackathon hosted by the Association for Computing Machinery @ UC.

Ramesh and Panjikaran also have become involved with Bearcat Ventures, UC’s venture capital-focused student organization. They’ve taken on leadership roles within the organization, and Ramesh was a part of the Venture Capital Investment Competition team that finished in second place at the Midwest Regional.

“We wouldn’t be where we are today without the Center’s relentless support,” Ramesh said. “And also the community that they’ve managed to create. All of the students are always ready to look at our pitches, give constructive feedback.”

Through the Center for Entrepreneurship, Ramesh and Panjikaran were able to visit San Francisco as part of a trip to connect students with successful UC alumni who have made their mark in some of the world's largest technology companies.

“The fact that we were there as student entrepreneurs representing UC in the birthplace of venture capital and startups, it was so inspiring that it helped us put all of our focus into PhizzIO,” Ramesh said.

With their success in the Launch It: Cincy competition, Panjikaran and Ramesh will have even more opportunities to further develop PhizzIO. The three winning teams will spend the summer developing their ideas provided with office space, mentoring, finance support and other resources to help grow their business ideas provided by Main Street Ventures.

By the end of the summer, Ramesh and Panjikaran hope to have software ready for a beta test in the fall.

“It’s going to have a huge impact on the future of PhizzIO,” Ramesh said. “Right now we’re basically doing PhizzIO part time, outside of our classes, extracurriculars and our part-time jobs. Their providing all of these resources and helping us focus on it without worrying about anything else, not worrying about how we pay our rents and how we find mentors, is going to be a huge benefit for us.”

Featured image at top: Joe Kuncheria Panjikaran, left, and Aniruddhan Ramesh, founders of PhizzIO, received $1,250 to fund their business plan from the 2023 IQ-E Pitch Competition hosted by UC’s Center for Entrepreneurship. Photo/Suzanne Buzek