Designing for Access, Not Just Affordability: Interview with SS Innovations Founder Dr. Sudhir Srivastava

In this episode of Medsider Radio, we sat down with Dr. Sudhir Srivastava, founder, chairman, and CEO of SS Innovations (Nasdaq: SSII). The company’s SSi Mantra surgical robotic system supports a variety of surgical robotic procedures, including cardiac surgery. Sudhir brings more than three decades of experience in minimally invasive and robotic cardiac interventions, having served as Director of Robotic Cardiac Surgery at the University of Chicago and founder of the International College of Robotic Surgery. A pioneer in the field, Sudhir has performed more than 1,400 robotic procedures, including over 750 beating-heart totally endoscopic coronary artery bypass (TECAB) surgeries.In this interview, Sudhir discusses what it takes to democratize robotic surgery beyond affordability, how SS Innovations built teleproctoring, telesurgery, and the supporting infrastructure for its robotic platform, and his milestone-based approach to financing a capital-intensive medtech company. Before we dive into the discussion, I wanted to mention a few things:First, if you’re into learning from medical device founders and CEOs and want to know when new interviews are live, head over to Medsider.com and sign up for our free newsletter.And if you’re ready to level up your medtech game, you should check out Medsider Courses — 8-week masterclasses covering topics like fundraising, M&A and exit planning, design and development, clinical and regulatory strategy, and commercialization.These courses, featuring hard-earned lessons from elite medtech CEOs, can be purchased individually or come free with our All-Access Pass.If you'd rather read than listen, here's a link to the full interview with Sudhir Srivastava, which includes a link to ScottBot — an AI version of host Scott Nelson trained on every Medsider interview and playbook. Feel free to ask ScottBot any questions you'd like!KEY MOMENTS FROM THE INTERVIEW(03:01) - Sudhir's journey from performing the world's first beating-heart robotic bypass to founding SS Innovations (07:14) - The 22-year-old patient who became the catalyst for Sudhir’s affordable robotic surgery platform (08:59) - Building Mantra 3 from the ground up in just five months (12:14) - Inside the engineering process that eliminated months of costly iteration (16:20) - The question that shaped SS Innovations: "How do you democratize access?" (27:10) - From one office to performing 24 telesurgeries in 12 hours across India (29:29) - How a mobile training bus became part of Sudhir's answer to make robotic surgery accessible (33:49) - Lessons from commercializing a surgical robotics platform across developing markets (39:43) - Starting with just $5 million: Sudhir's milestone-based approach to fundraising