Title of Project: MBA+ Consultant for Diligent Robots Inc.: Creating a go-to-market strategy for a local startup company creating robotic hospital assistants
Aims: The goal of this project was to create a go-to-market strategy for a robotic hospital assistant including recommendations on target market, possible industries to enter both within and outside of healthcare, and the creation of a targeted list of hospitals for Diligent Robotics to approach for sales.
Background: Diligent Robots is an A.I. startup located in Austin, TX, that creates hospital robot assistants (Moxi) to assist clinical staff with non-patient facing tasks. Diligent Robots had performed 4 month long clinical trials at 4 hospitals within Texas at the start of the project.
Method: Performed market analysis and opportunity sizing within Texas, finding a serviceable obtainable market of $22.7M. Analyzed competitive landscape and identified value proposition of five competitors within the target market and an additional four competitors within the AI robotics industry. Researched alternative use cases for Diligent Robotics’ technology, identifying three sub-sectors within the healthcare industry and 5 industries outside of healthcare.
Conclusions: After reviewing hospital prospects for Diligent from a revenue, value, and qualitative standpoint we put together a prioritized list of hospitals for the company, 5 each in Austin, Dallas, and Houston. Each one represents a significant opportunity for Diligent and has the appropriate opportunity to scale into networked hospitals, spending accountability and administrative culture. (List excluded for firm privacy). Outside of Diligent’s core market, there are opportunities for the company to expand into healthcare, manufacturing, and warehousing. Given the versatility of the product, there is potential for Diligent to compete against other products and utilize its’ core capabilities, such as machine learning to become the product of choice. Lastly, Moxi is a strong competitor in the robotics market, but should look into adding a pallet option to Moxi, which would make it an appealing choice to use in the aforementioned industries.
Discussion: This project was a huge learning curve from the start. In the MBA program you have the ability to be a consultant for companies in your first semester. I had no experience in business before starting this project, but it allowed me to get familiar with key concepts early on and primed me to do another MBA+ project in the spring. It also allowed me an insight into what impact I can have in healthcare outside of face-to-face interaction with patients. It was an immense amount of work and I would not recommend taking on an MBA+ project if you are also involved in many other projects/classes/extracurricular activities.