Meet Gloria Klob, an Entrepreneur in Medical devices who designed a safe and non-invasive device to treat the problem of incontinence in women.
After pursuing engineering from the best universities in the world, Gloria Klob’s passion for designing, problem-solving, and helping people made her start a business of her own. She is the Chief Executive Officer at Elidah, a medical device startup commercializing ELITONE, the first non-surgical, non-invasive treatment for stress urinary incontinence (SUI). Gloria noted that every 1 in 3 women leaks urine when they cough, sneeze, or exercise that can affect their confidence. She wanted to help women and therefore made the pelvic floor stimulation device that is easy to use and can be obtained without a prescription. It is a woman’s solution to a woman’s issue.
Gloria describes her childhood as happy and carefree. She spent most of her time reading and exploring. She pursued her bachelor’s in Mechanical Engineering from MIT and master’s in the same from Stanford. Before entering the entrepreneurial world, she worked as a senior engineer for a few years. She also launched a startup in urology, where she came across the big problem of incontinence. She helped the startups in the university setting but had to take a break to take care of her twin girls.
Talking more about Elidah, Inc, she says, “Our organization is a small bootstrapped startup. Although constrained by medical device regulations, we are lean, efficient, and consumer-focused both in product design and customer service”. Elitone is an easy and effective solution to female stress urinary incontinence and improves the weakened pelvic floor muscles. It is a non-invasive device that has also been cleared by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). The device helps women to live a leakage-free life and regain their confidence. Also, 9 out of 10 gynecologists recommend this device to women suffering from SUI.
The customers are thankful to Elidah for inventing something new and effective keeping women’s welfare in mind. It took the consumers a while to figure Elitone out and how it can help them. But eventually, they realized the product was actually helpful. The venture has received several monetary grants and entrepreneurial prizes over the years. This includes winning the Best New Product of 2019 by MyFaceMyBody, CT Entrepreneurial Innovation Awards, CTNext Mentor Award, WomenWhoTech Top 10, and most recently a Top 10 award by StartupSG out of 7500 entries.
In the initial years of her career, Gloria was still trying to figure out her interest, what she liked, what she was good at, and how she could improve. She finally found her calling and is content and pleased to work for her passion and with her husband. Earlier she was very inward-focused. Now, she is driven to get inside the head of the customer to understand their thought process, how they feel about their situation, the product, website, and why and why not they get treatment. Owing to her hard work and problem-solving skills, she has been named in the “Top innovator under 35” list by MIT’s Technology Review. Gloria is proud to see that the entrepreneurial bug has also rubbed off on her daughters.
Inspiring women to not shy away from sharing their health-related problems, she says, “I really hope that women would put themselves first and take care of themselves. Yes, there is a season where the focus will be on kids by necessity, but then quickly get back to taking care of your mental, physical, and spiritual self. It is so much easier to maintain health (yes, pelvic health too!) than to try to undo a decade of neglect. And if you need help to make things easier, it’s ok!”