Celebrating International Women’s Day 2021 : Metabiota

To celebrate International Women’s Day, we are interviewing Nita Madhav, CEO of Metabiota. Metabiota were selected to participate in Cohort 5 of the Lloyd’s Lab. Metabiota took on the challenge of new types of insurance to support the Covid-19 response during the 10 week programme; helping the Lloyd’s market to assess Covid-19 risks; and helping Lloyd’s customers to adapt to a changing workplace. Their startup is focused on quantifying and mitigating epidemic and pandemic risk. They draw on rigorous epidemiological analysis and a wide range of analytic tools to advance the science of modelling infectious disease outbreaks and estimating their socioeconomic effects.

Tell us about yourself and your entrepreneurial journey?

I come from a technical background, with a degree in epidemiology and experience working in both the public and private sector. Over the past ten years, I’ve worked to develop data and analytic tools to measure, manage, and mitigate epidemic risk. I came to Metabiota to head up the data science and modelling division and, about eighteen months ago, I took the helm as CEO.

As your company grew, what were the primary challenges? 

One of the biggest challenges that we faced prior to the COVID-19 pandemic was getting people to understand the full implications of pandemic risk and why modelling and building tools for economic resilience was so incredibly important. We were, quite simply, too early for the market. Now we’re working hard to raise awareness about the data and tools that can be used to understand and mitigate pandemic risk. COVID-19 is just one example of an infectious disease event and we must now prepare so that we can adequately respond to a wide variety of future threats, which are inevitable.

As an entrepreneur, what is it that motivates and drives you?

Challenging problems that take tenacity to tackle. I also believe passionately in the company’s mission and the global need for better tools to manage epidemic risk.

What advice would you give to other women entering the entrepreneurial world?

Build a team that strongly believes in the mission and have patience and determination in growing towards it.

What’s been the most rewarding moment of your journey as an entrepreneur?

It’s not really a single moment, but rather every time I see that the work we are doing is truly having an impact by making the world more resilient to infectious disease threats.

Where do you see your business in the next 12 months?

Providing our best in-class risk tools to protect the insured against future epidemic and pandemic risks.