Lifetrons Founder’s Dilemma: Build or Sell (A)

In 2017, a doctor left his medical practice to start his new business venture, Lifetrons Inno Equipments Pvt. Ltd. As a practising doctor in the neonatal intensive care unit of a hospital in Karnataka, India, he witnessed the struggles of parents and their newborn babies that suffered from complications arising from jaundice. He thought about developing a portable low-cost phototherapy device that could be installed outside the hospital’s neonatal intensive care unit to provide treatment to many newborns in rural and semi-urban regions, where hospital NICU facilities were not available and the cost was prohibitive and to spare parents from the emotional trauma of separation from their newborn babies. The doctor developed a portable low-cost medical device called Aura, after three years of work and many iterations. However, he soon faced his first dilemma for the launch of Aura in the market: lead a small sales and marketing team for a low-profile local launch or hire an experienced sales and marketing team of professionals for a high-profile nationwide launch (Part A of the Case). In 2024, having chosen to launch Aura on his own, the doctor managed to sell only 60 units, compared to his target of selling 3,500 devices by 2025. He was contemplating his venture’s future when a business advisor and mentor presented a new dilemma, with another two options: adopt a new business model with a team of sales and marketing professionals to launch an aggressive nationwide distribution strategy or sell Aura to an interested buyer in the medical device industry and focus his energies on developing other new low-cost devices (Part B of the Case).