∏ Unnava
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U P S TA R T
Partha Unnava, Co-founder and CEO of Better Walk
BETTER WALK OVERVIEW As a biomedical engineering student
at Tech, Unnava had an entrepreneurial breakthrough shortly after breaking his ankle. He spent six miserable weeks moving around on crutches, and became determined to find a better solution. With the help of some fellow students, co-founders Frankie Swindell and Andrew Varghese, he built a prototype for a new crutch that distributes the body’s resting weight more efficiently. His idea drew a lot of interest, and he built a company called Better Walk to commercialize it. He took a break from
classes to focus on refining his new crutch and get it ready for manufacturing. “We’ve redesigned it to make it more cost-efficient to produce,” Unnava says. “It’s just the reality of ∏ Partha Unnava turning a prototype into a real-world product.” The first Better Walk crutches are scheduled to come off the manufacturing line this summer.
Along the way, Unnava has consulted with many movers and shakers, including President Barack Obama when Unnava was invited to attend the White House Maker Faire last year. “That was pretty unbelievable,” he says. He was later named to the Forbes 30 Under 30 List in Manufacturing. “I’ve wanted something like this since I was 16 years old,” he says. That’s not the only list Unnava found himself on recently. Elle Magazine named the 22-year-old as one of its 41 Most Eligible Bachelors. Whoever said running a startup wasn’t sexy?
STARTUP PATH: Unnava built the prototype for his Better Walk crutch at Georgia Tech’s Invention Studio, and he says he used the biomedical engineering machine shop a lot. He also received great business advice from department chair Ravi Bellamkonda who was very supportive of Unnava and his
idea. Better Walk was a finalist in Tech’s 2014 InVenture Prize competition, and Unnava then took it to the Zero to 510 accelerator in Memphis, Tenn., where he secured venture capital funding. Better Walk is currently based in Atlanta, and Unnava is back on campus helping to teach Tech’s Startup Semester course.
WORDS OF WISDOM: “My biggest advice to other entrepreneurs is to find some experienced mentors and spend as much time as you can learning from them,” Unnava says. “Ultimately, you’re going to make many mistakes along the way. And while you may feel like you should avoid them, you need to let yourself fail so you can learn from them.”
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