Ishan Patel, owner of Audien Hearing, sat down with Paul Corvino on Southern California's CEOs You Should Know:
Ishen Ishan Patel was a boy, his grandfather — who lived with his family — suffered from severe hearing loss. "It went from him disconnecting to the family not even wanting to interact with him and some of the adults starting to resent him, even though they loved him," Patel says. "No matter how much you love someone, imagine having to tell them the same thing five times in a row. Hearing loss isn't just that you can't hear. It's affecting everyone around you."
Fast forward to Patel dropping out of college to start an AI company that didn't work out, and then, in 2017, learning that the Food and Drug Administration was going to change a rule and allow hearing aids to be sold over-the-counter, without a doctor's prescription.
"That was the moment when the space was formally regulated," he says. "In the medical industry, there's tons of advancements all the time, but this is a dramatic shift for one of the senses that controls your entire quality of life."
When the rule changed in 2022, Patel was ready. He had a hearing aid prototype and a proof-of-concept online customer base of a few hundred thousand Americans. He took that product to Walmart — which wanted his $189 hearing aid to sell on its shelves, but for less than $100 inside of six months.
It was every entrepreneur's dream, and nightmare. Today, Patel's company, Audien Hearing, is on track to have more than 1 million customers by the end of the year. All of this made Patel a finalist on our Entrepreneur of 2024 list of 20 innovative leaders.