Interview
Melody International aims to improve fetal health around the world

Infant and maternal health remains a major global issue, particularly in the developing world. There is hope that new technologies can provide safer, cheaper, and more effective methods to address this challenge, and improve fetal health and make pregnancy safer.

One company developing innovative solutions in the medical device sector is the Japanese startup Melody International. Their main product is an iCTG, a simple, smart mobile fetal monitor, meticulously designed to supervise the health of expecting mothers and their unborn children from anywhere. The iCTG is digital, with the data is securely stored in cloud servers, and easily transmitted virtually to doctors’ smartphones, tablets, or computers in real-time. Brazil, the largest country in Latin America, has been one of the first places where Melody International is putting their technology to use.

Melody International has been recognized for their achievements, winning the Grand Prize in the pregnancy category at BabyTech Award Japan 2019, and being selected for the 'Open Innovation Challenge' by TSUBASA in 2021. More recently, Melody International was chosen as one of 30 startups to join J-Startup Impact, a program launched by the Japanese government. They’ve also participated in JETRO’s ScaleUp inBrazil program.

We spoke with Immo Oliver Paul and Nobuko Hasegawa with Melody International in Brazil, to learn more about their technology, its potential, and their plans to scale-up and address fetal health around the world.

The iCTG is a smart wireless digital device. The difference between it and traditional technology is that our iCTG is lightweight and wireless, and it enables remote checkups of pregnant women. Because the device is lightweight and easy to use, pregnant mothers can use it themselves without needing to visit a healthcare professional.

We're looking at Brazil right now because there are a lot of pain points with regard to pregnancy. More women are overweight, or are having children later in life, which are risk factors for pregnancy. Moreover, because Brazil is such a geographically large country, not everybody has access to the same quality of medical care. People might live outside the bigger cities, or far away from their nearest hospital.

JETRO is doing a great job in Brazil, and are very active and involved in this ecosystem. I'd like to express my gratitude to JETRO and all the people who worked at the ScaleUp inBrazil program. Without that program, I don't think we would have been where we are now. We were able to get connections, meet people at the highest levels of the institutions that we were introduced to. We got a lot of feedback and were actually able to turn some of them into real tangible opportunities. Even now that the program has ended, I'm still in touch with the people at JETRO Sao Paulo.

The Japanese government is also helping Melody to roll out our product in different countries around the world.

Melody chose Brazil because it was a market they knew already. I think for Japanese startups, whenever you go to a different country, you have to have some local help. You might have a perfect product at a great price, but if you don't understand the market, the ecosystem, the decision-making process, I think it will always be difficult. You will probably waste a lot of time before you get some reasonable results.

I would recommend that people get partners who are familiar with the local market and who can verbalize the differences between the culture there and Japanese culture. Ecosystems like Cubo or Renovabra are, I think, good hubs to start your expansion in these countries.

The innovation center Cubo at Sao Paulo (Photos provided by JETRO)

What we're trying to do is to convert our hardware into a service. We believe that the best way to sell our product here in Brazil is to have a SaaS model, software as a service, where we charge a setup cost, and then a monthly fee for the usage of the hardware and software.

The advantage in Brazil is that services are taxed at a lower rate than hardware. However, probably the margins might not be as high as you might see in other countries. I think Brazil is more known for lower margins, but maybe more volume. So, the idea is that you would compensate for lower margins with higher volume.

We want to be a company that helps to create an impact here in Brazil, where there are a lot of difficulties in healthcare, to make healthcare available and affordable for everybody. This makes a lot of sense for a country like Brazil, which has the biggest public healthcare system in the world. So, we want to be part of that revolution, bringing healthcare to everybody living in this huge country.

We currently intend to conduct a Proof of Concept (PoC) involving several hospitals in São Paulo. One of these is HOSPITAL ALBERT EINSTEIN, the largest hospital in the city. The PoC is scheduled to commence in spring 2024, and preparations are currently underway. Additionally, we are actively seeking partners interested in both utilizing and selling our products.

In this regard, I think Melody is kind of a pioneer. There are not a lot of Japanese startups currently trying to get market traction here. We should encourage other companies to do the same and maybe even work together with Melody, or JETRO, and follow in the same footsteps.

One reason I think more startup companies should come here is we don't have a lot of hardware. Brazil is very good in software, design and technology based on software. But we're lacking hardware. So, we invite all Japanese people and startups that have hardware solutions to come to Brazil, talk to us, and maybe find a niche here that makes sense for both sides.