Adesola Akindele

Introduction and Why HyGear Now

Taryell Simmons: Welcome, ladies and gentlemen, to another episode of Rise Urban Nation. You know we can't do an episode without speaking to Sola. Ever since we released our article on founders you should be on the lookout for, people have been asking, wait, she has another company? So let's take it back. How did HyGear begin, and who's involved?

Adesola Akindele: Thank you so much for having me again. HyGear is something we've been working on for the past couple of years in stealth mode, because we're working on our patents. Now we're coming up for air because we're about to commercialize one of them. HyGear Technologies is a hygiene tech company focused on research, development, distribution, marketing and education of disinfection technology. We're developing UVC disinfection products, and we've partnered with UVC disinfection companies from Europe that are introducing their products around the world.

Three Women and One Common Problem

Adesola Akindele: In 2019, three of us sat together at Thanksgiving. We all wanted to do something intentional that would make a real impact. I work with entrepreneurs and encourage ethnic minorities to take on entrepreneurship, because I believe it's a vehicle for real economic change. Another was a former educator of over 20 years. The third had worked in government in Africa and had seen the challenges on the continent. We're all from Africa, and we came up with one common thing across the board: hygiene. The one in education said every time she goes back to school, she gets sick. Every household knows that feeling. That was 2019, before COVID-19 hit.

Growing Up Without Safe Tap Water

Adesola Akindele: We were researching technologies for communities that are off grid or lack consistent electricity, where homes power themselves with a generator and get water from a well. Our technology can disinfect water, surfaces and air. I grew up in Nigeria until I was 14, and it didn't register until I lived with family in England and saw my aunt take water straight from the tap. I stared at her for twenty minutes every time. Back home, once we pump water, it's boiled, cooled, poured through a stainless steel filter and bottled. For a bath, we put Dettol in the bucket. We disinfect our water before we put it on our skin. That's standard.

Adesola Akindele: So when people hear hygiene tech, they assume personal hygiene. I say no, we're going down to water, surfaces and air. With COVID, we saw an opportunity in air, because air purification was a major part of mitigating the risk of passing it on.

From Research to Distribution and Education

Adesola Akindele: We're a life sciences company, so research could take about three years pre-revenue. As an entrepreneur, I couldn't wait for that, so we opened distribution and marketing divisions to help partner companies introduce their products into the US, Africa and the Middle East. That was challenging because many people didn't understand the technology, even though UVC has been around for a hundred years and is used in the US to disinfect water and hospital spaces. People hear UV and think of dangerous rays from the sun. A specific range, between 200 and 290 nanometers, disinfects, and the range people know best, between 250 and 280, can be dangerous to skin and eyes. It's hard for people to perceive that light can disinfect, and educating would be hard in a for-profit, so last year we set up a nonprofit called Keeping It Clean. We've registered it and we're getting our charity status.

Adesola Akindele: Collaboration is part of the fabric of HyGear. If you're sitting on a patent and can't create the product yourself, the best thing to do is collaborate with someone who needs it to up their own game.

The Sponsored Teacher Campaign

Taryell Simmons: At the beginning of the pandemic, somebody told me you could disinfect your mask by leaving it in the sun in your car. I looked it up and thought, wow, the power of light. In New York, kids are back in school, but children five and younger still can't get the vaccine, and teachers say masks are delaying speech and development because kids can't see how to enunciate. I see your product as a way to solve that. Tell me about the Sponsored Teacher campaign.

Adesola Akindele: Sponsored Teacher was a campaign we set up last year to equip teachers around the world with a wearable air purifier. Taryell, you've been wearing one around. It's a collar with UVC lights and an air filter. It takes air in from underneath, and you breathe the clean air on top, with a face shield if you're in a less safe location.

Taryell Simmons: You've probably seen me wear it at events and trade shows. One time somebody thought my neck was broken. My neck isn't broken, guys. It's an air purifier, and it let me speak freely without a mask on during COVID-19.

Adesola Akindele: Children and educators remained among the most vulnerable in close quarters like classrooms. Many can't open their windows, and here in California some had to turn off the air conditioning and leave doors open. Updating HVAC costs a lot of money, so we advocate for innovative products that work alongside it. Kids lost social and emotional interaction, which is detrimental to learning, especially for dual immersion students who must see how the mouth and tongue move. A lot of teachers resigned because they didn't feel protected. I met a COVID consultant at a Village Up event who only passed along what the CDC and federal government were saying, and there were no budgets earmarked for fixing the problem.

Adesola Akindele: So we launched the campaign to create ambassadors: get a thousand teachers to use the units, share their experience and give us data showing they're not getting ill. The units have been independently tested in labs against COVID-19 and variants, and they also help during flu season. For two years, with masking and distancing, we barely had colds. I believe we were our healthiest, so why not build that into our infrastructure?

Taryell Simmons: Working in HR and labor law, guidelines from the CDC and OSHA constantly changed. Instead of setting up dual stations at home and the office, it almost could have been less expensive to order a batch of these.

Understanding Air Purification and Product Claims

Adesola Akindele: Exactly. The CDC took an active role in understanding how UVC could help, calling it ultraviolet germicidal irradiation. When someone expels a virus, it rises and then comes down, so it's in the air where we breathe before it reaches surfaces, and some variants linger mid-air. With air purifiers there's residential, commercial and hospital grade. You want hospital grade, or at minimum commercial, with at least a HEPA 13 filter. A lot of what's in stores or on Amazon under $100 is residential. Eventually the EPA clamped down on companies claiming to get rid of the virus. These products mitigate the risk of catching and spreading it.

Adesola Akindele: A mask was still the best protection, as long as you disinfected it regularly. Our hope is that companies like ours can come together to advise governments and policymakers. In parts of Asia, air purification is standard, and there's technology that disinfects escalator handles and sensor-operated UVC for public bathrooms. When people visited my home and saw the air purifier and UVC on the doorway, they asked if we were going overboard. But no one in my family caught COVID, and we haven't had the flu.

A Charity and Clean Water Access

Adesola Akindele: The charity gives us an opportunity to educate everybody, because COVID didn't see borders. One project we're looking forward to will use our tech to collectively sanitize water stored and used in houses in an estate, probably starting next year. It's like going back into my past and fixing something there. No matter how rich you are, it's the same problem. We're self-funded, and it's been a long road.

Taryell Simmons: A long and much-needed road. Here in San Diego there were people who couldn't or didn't want to get vaccinated, and this could have been an alternative. And the water problem isn't only overseas. My parents in DC sometimes get alerts not to drink the tap water or to boil it first. Think about Flint, Michigan.

Adesola Akindele: Some people medically couldn't get the vaccine. What surprised us is that thoughtful community leaders were the ones with a budget. An organization we're working with wanted the wearables for their older population and products for their congregation. On water, two million Americans still live without basic access to safe drinking water and sanitation. That's a market. Another is emergencies, when you need water in your home until the city fixes the problem.

Patents and the History of Black Inventors

Taryell Simmons: One of our most listened-to episodes was about a patent process. We've had so many Black inventors who haven't gotten their credit or owned their patents. Here's a shameless plug: we're doing a webinar on why patents matter to Black founders and people of color. Give us a little of your story.

Adesola Akindele: Deciding to get a patent wasn't difficult. At an event, I met a woman who had worked for NASA and spoke about patents. I'm a geek, so I dove into the history of patents and Black people, and realized many inventions used around the world started with us. During slavery, many came up with ideas to make their work easier, and a lot of them had to give up their patents as part of their freedom. Generations of other families still benefit. In a typical Western household, when you come up with an idea, someone tells you to get a patent. It's not the same in our community. When the three of us came up with a viable invention, we said, we've got to get a patent. I'm grateful to one of our co-founders who is military-style organized, so I assigned the patents to her.

Protecting Equity and Self-Funding

Adesola Akindele: We've met people with patents whose problem was money. People don't understand the cost of going from idea to prototype to commercialization. Every time you bring in an investor, you lose equity, and every time you let go of equity, you lose decision-making power. In our community, entrepreneurship is key to building wealth, and so is IP. A lot of ideas are being given away for free.

Adesola Akindele: Our mentor and advisor told me, no matter what anyone tells you, don't quit, and she carried us until we made our first breadboard prototype. Engineers around us still didn't see the value. But sometimes when you're given the vision, it's not for everybody else. It's for you to see through. We stayed a trio and self-funded. Everything you see with HyGear is paid for by three women, split evenly. We're registered in England and the US and getting our charity registered, which lets us partner with organizations on the ground. When we sent teachers a questionnaire, we had heavy requests for the units from developing countries.

Taryell Simmons: No wonder, because there was no other solution out there.

Adesola Akindele: Because they weren't getting vaccines.

The Upcoming IP Webinar and How to Connect

Taryell Simmons: Now people know the story behind Sola's venture, HyGear. Tell them what we're going to do in the webinar.

Adesola Akindele: The series is focused on IP, patents and monetizing them to build generational wealth. If someone in your family has a patent, they can put the earnings in a trust that can feed your family for generations. We'll invite other founders with patents to share their journeys, so you see it's not impossible. Three women now have two patents in the USPTO non-provisional phase after three years of consistent work. Just like a business on the side, a patent takes time and research. In the US, Village Up has been very supportive and connected us to our first grant, and you've got the SBDC, the SBA and PTAC. In the UK, we did an accelerator with London and Partners and connected with an economic advisor in the East Midlands who helped us find a partner. In the next six to eight months, we're looking at having a product in the market. The biggest problem I saw was fabrication: you could put your patent at risk at a fabrication house if you don't know how to protect it.

Taryell Simmons: Don't give them too much. Let's save it for the webinar. By the time this episode releases, I'll have a link to sign up and get notified. How can people connect with HyGear right now?

Adesola Akindele: Go to www.myhygear.com, spelled H-Y-G-E-A-R, and find us on Instagram, Twitter and LinkedIn. LinkedIn is the best place for announcements. Thank you for listening.

Taryell Simmons: Thank you so much, sis, as always, for everything you're doing for the global community.

Adesola Akindele: Thank you, brother. It's always a pleasure.