Sean James Miller: A Healthcare Pioneer, Introducing Advanced Solutions in Neurodegenerative Early Disease Detection

Dr. Sean James Miller, a renowned neuroscientist with well over 1000 scientific citations, is the founder and Chief Scientific Officer at Pluripotent Diagnostics Corp. (PDx).

A researcher with experience and insight, the doctoral degree holder from the prestigious Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, Sean James has a career spanning more than 13 years. Over the years, he has successfully transformed the lives of thousands of patients by introducing advanced technologies in stem cell and neurodegenerative medicine.

PDx is focused on early disease diagnostics for aging-associated neurodegenerative disorders, beginning with ALS genetic screening with results in 5-7 days, and longitudinal comprehensive client biological analyses on an annual subscription or as deemed necessary.

PDx ships sterile FDA-approved cotton swabs for easy nasal or oral cavity sampling for their clients. Upon return to PDx, they perform a computational and genetic disease classifier analyses to detect ALS associated genes at an affordable price.

Due to the majority of ALS patients having sporadic etiology, they will sequence annually with their subscription service to detect for any de novo or spontaneous mutations that arise during life.

The Inspiring Story of the Visionary

Dr. Sean James was born in Reading, Pennsylvania, at the time it was statistically one of the country’s poorest
and most dangerous cities. In studies, Sean was excellent but after school, he used to execute illegal behaviours in the evening for money. Due to this, he was expelled from school and sent to maximum security juvenile detention. Sean did the majority of his secondary schooling in a Pennsylvania’s “Alternative Education” program for students deemed an issue to society.

In Sean’s senior year, he returned to public high school because of his academic capabilities and promise. During this eventful year, Sean had his first child, Yasmine Elizabeth Miller, worked >30 hours per week at Target Corp., maintained exceptional grades in advance placement courses, and finally got admission to Drexel University on a Dean’s Scholarship in the Organismal Physiology Bachelor degree program.

Within the first year at Drexel, Sean held >3.75 GPA and was accepted into the Students Tackling Advanced Research (STAR) program at the Pennoni Honors College at Drexel to conduct molecular research to understand the neuropathology of Alzheimer’s disease under the mentorship of Dr. Aleister Saunders. Sean genetically engineered fruit flies to recapitulate Alzheimer’s disease pathology including dementia. This model is being utilized for drug screening for Alzheimer’s disease. His contributions have led to several internationally peer-reviewed publications. In three accelerated years, Sean graduated from Drexel and moved to Boston to further his research on Alzheimer’s disease at Harvard Medical School.

At Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital, Sean continued in the neurogenetics division on Alzheimer’s disease under the mentorship of Dr. Rudolph E. Tanzi. During this time, Sean advanced the therapeutic and biomolecular comprehension of neurodegeneration. His contributions led to several authored manuscripts in journals including two in Science. With the knowledge and experience Sean obtained at Harvard, he felt more passionate about finding a cure for neurodegeneration.

In 2013, Sean matriculated into Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in the doctoral program in Cellular and Molecular Medicine. Sean performed his doctoral studies in the Department of Neurology and the Brain Science Institute under the mentorship of Dr Jeffrey D. Rothstein. Sean was awarded prestigious funding opportunities such as a three-year National Science Foundation (NSF) fellowship, seven first-author manuscripts, co-authorships, and holds an international patent on the modulation of neurons in neurological disorders. At this time it became a greater pivotal point in Sean’s life… Sean was diagnosed with bipolar disorder.

In 2018, Sean moved to Silicon Valley to pursue his Post-Doctoral studies at Stanford University School of Medicine in Neurology. Sean focused his studies on understanding the demise of the blood-brain-barrier in aging and Alzheimer’s disease. Months before departure to Stanford, Sean was awarded a highly prestigious
fellowship from the American Federation for Aging Research and the Glenn Foundation. After arrival, Sean published a solo-authored paper in Frontiers in Cellular Neuroscience; among the top 10 percentile of all Frontiers journal articles.

In 2019, Sean finished his post-doctoral studies at Stanford and founded Pluripotent Diagnostics Corp.
(formerly Pluripotent Diagnostics LLC) in an apartment in Mountain View, California. The approach at Pluripotent Diagnostics (PDx) was overarching and innovative. The mission at PDx is to provide early disease diagnostics for our patients prior to clinical onset for immediate therapeutic interventions.

In this time since 2019, PDx has several peer-review manuscripts in review, an international provisional patent on Methods to Detect Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis, full feature on CEO CFO Magazine, listed as “Top 10 Most Influential Leaders in Biotechnology for 2021″, partnerships with NVIDIA, Oracle and Amazon, press releases in NBC and CBS news, and sponsorship with California’s Molecular Medicine Research Institute. The sky’s the limit for PDx.

What Influenced Your Decision to Start this Venture?

Mental disorders impact our entire community and are historically ill tolerated or helped. Throughout my life, I have witnessed friends, family, and myself with mental disorders and diseases such as ALS and Alzheimer’s disease. One in three elderly dies with dementia allowing it to become a global burden and world war. This comes with the complete inability to cure or significantly prolong lifespan. This has for over the decade driven my passions for the sciences to directly impact our patients. Early diagnostics means early therapeutic intervention, before neurons die”, Dr. Sean shared.

The Foetal Stage Challenges

One of the biggest challenges was finding exceptional scientists to work on sweat equity for the PDx mission. Scientists, like most people, need to pay the bills and live with as little stress as possible.

Keeping up with the Rising Technologies

“For the first time in mankind, early disease detection will be globally available… The World War is dementia, and we are on an overarching mission to dedicate our life to take innovative approaches that are out of the box but focused”, Sean shared while talking about his future plans.

A Piece of Advice for Female Entrepreneurs

Female professionals are facing an obstacle that has always been there but only now being appreciated. Keep pushing and pushing, your dedication and brilliant minds will pay off and help us all push to a world of equality. Most people don’t it their first run, but as I like to say, in the future you can always remember “this is not my first rodeo” and kick some ass.

Walter Marin: Stimulating the future of solar energy with innovative solutions

Walter Marin, Founder & CEO of Plug The Sun, is a successful versatile leader with extensive global experiences across domains and solar management. He is spearheading the company’s rapid growth with his vision to create a transformation in the world of the emerging solar home system and micro/minigrid, making a difference in the lives of people globally. Besides a vast experience of about almost four decades , Walter is passionate about the culture and the knowledge to share for the best of the humanity.

A Pioneering Brand in Solar Arena

Plug the Sun design, develop, and manufacture the most innovative solar off-grid solutions. It is the next generation producer of Solar Home Systems, Hybrid and Mini-Grids solutions suitable for houses, businesses, and communities. The company was founded in 2016 and within 4 years, its footprint has reached South-East Asia, South America and Africa. Since its inception Plug The Sun’s mission has been to provide electricity for everyone on three axes:

To boost economic growth.
To reduce the carbon footprint by using solar energy.
To increase the energy capacity ensuring that digitalization and technological improvement can take place.

Until now, the off-grid industry was mainly focused on generating enough electricity to power a few basic appliances such as light bulbs, fans, and television sets. These first steps are a significant improvement, but their vision for energy access is significantly more comprehensive and robust. They believe that electrification efforts that focus only on basic solutions will not deliver transformative growth so they designed a series of off-grid solutions that go from 150 Wh to 20000 Wh and more.

Solidarity and democracy are the foundation of our
future. But without proper energy access, people cannot
hope for development and better personal prospects. We
think that energy is not a simple matter for technicians but also a matter of life

Mushrooming as a Differentiator

The energy revolution is dominated by renewable, built based on areas, and rely on a model where producers and consumers are the same entity. Through distributed networks of electricity, each area will have its own energy supply system sized to their needs. By making customers self-sufficient and interconnected, it’s easier to create a system that provides constant, clean, reliable energy.

“We can all be Green Energy Producers. When a building, a shop, or a neighbour, produce and store the energy they need, the power supply system will be changed. They will all become micro, clean energy power stations. Our main priority is to deliver electricity to those who don’t have reliable sources of power or are looking for a primary one. Our last generation solar home systems make it possible for houses and businesses to produce their electricity in a safe and environmentally friendly manner,” shared Walter Marin.

“Thanks to our proprietary technology, all the products feature high-density power electronics and smart energy management systems to achieve the best reliability and performance for our customer’s power needs. The RAY Family is our series of off-grid solar home systems. The home systems are uniquely designed in Italy and made from high-quality materials using the most innovative technologies,” he further added.

The RAY Family has nine devices that range from 150Wh to 16000Wh. All the devices are designed to use photovoltaic solar energy and battery storage to provide electricity without the grid. Solar energy is harvested through photovoltaic panels. These panels are positioned on a building and are connected to the device with a cable.

The Secret Ingredients

The Ray Family devices are individually sized to suit the consumer’s needs for households or businesses.

The Ray Family features:

Noise and emissions-free.
Setup for a Pay-As-You-Own model.
The devices are extremely durable and made of high-quality materials.
Plug-and-play or easy instalment.

Delivering zero-kerosene solution which protects the environment and zero-defect products which minimize the impact of electronic waste.

The off-grid industry in Africa has made great strides but this is only the beginning. As prices for solar panels and battery technologies fall, the compact design improves, and the pay-as-you-own model proves its effectiveness and becomes widely adopted, the goal now is to make it sustainable.

Walter Marin and the team are thinking long term. To avoid future impediments to the growth of the solar industry, they are creating capital-efficient solutions for customers who need more than just subsistence levels of energy. Increasing the level of electrification in rural Africa is an important step towards building an inclusive future, but it won’t guarantee the sustainability of the energy sector.

Instead, they aim to start the adoption of off-grid solar home systems with the economic prospects located in urban and peri-urban areas, which will then allow them to subsidize part of the costs of expansion to rural communities. This approach is a more commercially sustainable approach and will help them reach equal distribution inclusion in the long term. By targeting SMEs and farmers at scale, they are helping them to grow their businesses and improve their living conditions, as well as creating a ripple effect at the community level.

Creating and maintaining the sustainability of these solutions in Africa is key to meeting long-term economic growth. They envision energy investment as the first step towards urban and rural resilience.

Primary Challenges & Support System

Find the right people at the right time was one of the major hurdles in the way of Walter Marin. His university and PhD studies and his father taught him to work hard and humbly.

Favourite Book-“The Bible”

Expansion Binge

To help to achieve the sustainable development goals set by the UN in particular decent energy access for all by 2030. The team is working with strong partnership especially in Myanmar, the Philippines, South America and Africa to achieve the SGD 7 target to have energy access for all.

The global energy revolution offers an unprecedented opportunity to transform the energy sector in all aspects. They see an opportunity to harness the power of natural resources to leapfrog the fossil-intensive energy regime for the unfulfilled electricity market. They are extending their footprint in the sub-Saharan Africa region so it can bypass the conventional path of energy development and maximize directly the use of solar power through distributed networks of solar home systems and water pumps, which are efficient and environmentally friendly. They are testing new sustainable models and work closely with local stakeholders to extend a green and prosperous future to millions of people.

Feather in the Cap

Plug The Sun is honoured with Hong Kong’s Most Outstanding Innovator in CleanTech.

CEO’s Periscope

“The innovation lies in the ability of our system to deliver high-density power electronic circuit and smart battery management which could keep healthy and prolong the life of the battery; together with pay as you go and FinTech solution, it provides a package to the end-user to improve and change his life.”

“The core of our strategy is to create long-term growth and improve economic livelihoods by generating energy to power appliances that increase productivity and improve the quality of life tools such as laptops, water pumps, and water purifiers. We want to see in Africa a thriving private-sector where everyone is financially included and globally connected.”

“Our priority is to provide decentralized, reliable and affordable energy solutions but this is just the enabler for other services and opportunities that can create sustainable growth and urban and rural resilience. To this end, we work with private investors, real estate developers, financial institutions, governments and no profit to provide unique solutions.”

Anil Goyal: An Employee turned entrepreneur, Leading the ultimate financial business partner, Capsavvy

Founder & MD of CapSavvy Consultants Pvt Ltd., Anil Goyal is the living example of classic entrepreneurial spirit that pivoted an employee to become an entrepreneur. It was back in 2019 when he started the journey towards greater heights of achievements after working for 25 years for different companies.

Mr Anil is a certified Business Strategist and a rank holder Chartered Accountant and has expertise across
diverse industries and sectors towards ROI focused services to businesses. His areas of specialization include Debt fundraising from banks and institutions, Equity fundraising from PE Funds, Strategies for ROI improvement, Insolvency and Bank Settlement matters, Project Development advisory, Start-ups advisory, Education advisory and many more.

Anil had been associated as Director/ CEO with Mexus Education, Meril Life Sciences, Mangalore SEZ, SAIL SEZ, IL&FS and advisor to many large corporates, small & medium enterprises, state governments and central government on matters related to financing and implementation of greenfield and expansion projects, city developments, joint ventures projects etc.

Anil has successfully competed for fundraising for more than 180 corporates and greenfield projects with an aggregate Project Cost of USD 5 Billion (INR 35000 crore) involving funding to the tune of USD 2 Billion (INR 13000 Crore) through various Banks, Institutions and Private Equity Funds.

Anil has participated as a speaker across various business platforms such as CII, Assocham, CRISIL and ILFS. His articles have been published across various leading newspapers viz Hindustan Times, Business Line, Indian Express, Deccan Herald etc. Anil had been a panellist in a live TV Show.

CapSavvy & Service Portfolio

CapSavvy, an award-winning ISO 9001:2015 company, is an expert financial and business advisor that focuses on providing multifaceted advisory to cater for the growing demands of modern businesses to compete globally and thrive in a fast-paced & challenging economy. CapSavvy’s range of services are designed to upgrade businesses and fast forward their growth through a bouquet of services such as-

Business Strategy

Start-up Advisory and Funding
Financial Restructuring
Equity Fundraising
Debt Syndication
CFO Services
SEZ Services

Backed by an experienced advisory panel of chartered accountants, bankers, technocrats and management professionals, CapSavvy becomes a partner for the growth and progress of the business in today’s fast moving digital world and lets the promoters focus on their core business activities.

The Turning Point in the Journey

After passing the Chartered Accountancy final exam with national rank in 1995, through campus placement, Anil could get an opportunity to work with IDBI in the credit division, where his role was to evaluate project funding cases and keeping track of their business progress through various check-points. Working with IDBI and especially under Mr Debasish Mallick gave a rock-solid platform for Anil’s career growth.

Post IDBI, Anil had worked at leadership positions with SKIL Group, IL&FS, Mangalore SEZ, Mexus Education and Meril Life Sciences. While managing Mexus Education as Managing Director & CEO for more than 10 years and leading a cross-functional team of more than 1500 people, Anil gained the rich qualities of an Entrepreneur while dealing with various organisational challenges.

Having born in the Agarwal family and with the deep understanding gained during leadership positions at various organisations, Anil decided to become an entrepreneur with the support of his family.

Clientele & Corporate Ethos

CapSavvy has been providing business and financial advisory to various type of organisations from SMEs and large corporations and covering new-age sectors such as E-commerce and start-up to well-established sectors such as Real-estate and infrastructure. Currently, CapSavvy is serving clients in E-commerce, Home Appliances, Health Products, Sports Equipments, Aircraft Maintenance, Shipyard, Real Estate, Food sector, Plastic Industry, Logistic and so on.

CapSavvy’s approach is modern and unique while serving the clients. They work with their client through
the “Business Partner Approach”. Under this unique approach, the CapSavvy team gets into the shoes of
their client and understands their business needs through their eye, so as to ensure personalised and effective advice.

Hurdles on the Way

During the initial period of CapSavvy, a major challenge was to look for the right candidates, who are like-minded and believe in CapSavvy vision and objectives. Being a new entrant in the already crowded advisory space, it was difficult for CapSavvy to hire good candidates. However, because of the past reputation of its founders, CapSavvy could get associated with a good mix of teams.

Another challenge at CapSavvy during the initial phase was to tie up with the right ERP agency to manage clients’ projects and internal service team. After a lot of research, CapSavvy tied up with Zoho Suite, which is currently the best among all available options in ERP.

“The one-stop financial and business advisor for
managing the challenges of the modern
fast-changing business world.”

The Success Mantra

Anil reflects on his past journey and his achievements and says that his success journey is a mix of the outcome of two factors, One, it is because of the professional traits that he followed while working in leadership positions and secondly, because of continuous guidance and support from his mentors, his superiors, friends and family members. Anil’s mantras of success are:

Always be punctual
Always be eager to learn
Share your knowledge with others
Be polite in your talks/ discussions
Listen very carefully and understand another person’s viewpoint
Always deliver more than what is expected from you

Creating a More Balanced and Equal Industry

Anil shares a few common suggestions and strategies that can be adopted by companies to stay connected and afloat and create a balanced and equal industrial economy:

The focus of core competency and quality enhancement
Outsourcing non-core products/ work to vendors
Maintaining a healthy relationship with stakeholders
Managing employees & related optimization

A Day in Visionary’s Life

Anil’s average day comprises an early start, with mostly a planned routine in the middle for a jam-packed day. After morning walk and routine exercise early morning, Anil does his prayer and meditation for about 1 hour, which is followed by breakfast with family members. Average daily tasks include; a) Managing team for client servicing/ mandate execution, b) Client meetings, c) Meeting with associates/ service providers, d) Meetings with Banks, Investors and Funds, f) Webinars/ Newspapers for knowledge gain g) Media Interactions and h) Networking Meetings.

Favourite Book – “The Secret”

Road Head

CapSavvy foresees to become the best financial and business advisor in managing challenges of the modern
business world and to achieve this, CapSavvy dedicatedly provides genuine & customized services that lead to high ROI.

Feathers in the Cap

CapSavvy has received many awards and accolades in a short span since its inception. A few of the prominent awards and milestones include;

Shri Debasish Mallick, former Dy Managing Director of EXIM Bank joined CapSavvy Board as non-executive Vice-Chairman.
CapSavvy featured on Cover Story of Silicon India and being awarded as Best Financial Services Startup in Mumbai.
CapSavvy brand nominated as Best Service Brand for quality excellence jointly by CNBC Awaz, Benchmark Trust and BSE
CapSavvy is an internationally acclaimed Quality Management Certified Company with ISO 9001:2015 Certification.
DIPP, MoCI, Govt of India has recognised the initiatives of CapSavvy and issued Certificate of Recognition.
CapSavvy gained recognition from Central Vigilance Commission, GoI for its efforts in following good governance & ethical practices.

A Piece of Advice be for Female Entrepreneurs

Although they are traditionally underrepresented in the business world, women have always been entrepreneurs. Women have been driven to start and maintain businesses of their own throughout history. Women are now starting businesses at a rate 1.5 times higher than the average.

Women entrepreneurs often underestimate their own potential and fail to dream big enough. It is important
to tap into the inner reason behind your business and really think about the legacy you want to leave behind.

Kevin Steer: A Though Leader Fueling the growth of Businesses through AI

Kevin Steer, CEO & Co-Founder of 121Advisor, is a dynamic leader who hails more than 40 years of experience in the entire spectrum of Banking & Finance. He started his career for Schlumberger Asia in 1979 as a Field Engineer and Manager. Later, he joined Artificial Intelligence Ltd, UK in 1988 as a Research Engineer. He played a major role as a Consultant with Strand Software Inc, US, Oregon Advanced Computing Institute in the US and was appointed as a consultant to Boeing Aerospace Inc, US (1989 – 1990).

In 1990, he moved to Malaysia working as a Consultant to Computer Systems Advisers Bhd on a client-server banking systems for a local bank. In 2010 he co-founded One Two One Advisor Sdn Bhd, providing FinTech & InsurTech solutions to the Banking, Insurance & Takaful sectors.

In academics, Kevin did graduation from Cambridge University (UK) in 1978 and holds a Bachelor of Arts Engineering degree, a Master of Arts (Electrical Sciences) degree from Cambridge University UK, and a Master of Science (Computing) degree from Imperial College, London, United Kingdom.

A Glimpse of 121Advisor

Catering to both the FinTech & InsurTech sectors, One Two One Advisor was formed in 2010.

121Advisor’s product is called ‘Customer First Connected Enterprise Digital Framework’ that integrates all of the above solutions. 121Advisor motto is “We Don’t Follow Trends, We Pioneer Them”.

Over the past 10 years, the company has implemented many disruptive online solutions including Referral Management with Marketing Automation (for Banks), Mobile Point of Sales, Online Direct Selling, Online Claims, Agency Distribution, Online Customer Service Portals & Corporate Websites. With the growth of AI & chatbots; 121Advisor implemented disruptive solutions including multilingual Chatbots & Robo Advisors along with AI-based Predictive Analytics / Machine Learning for predicting New Products, Lapsation, Fraudulent Claims & future predictions for Investment Funds.

The Inspiration behind the Initiation

Having worked in the insurance & takaful sector for a number of years, 121Advisor’s mission was to provide disruptive InsurTech & FinTech solutions for insurers, takaful operators & banks.

As a CEO & ‘techie’, Kevin has always been looking for new disruptive solutions to continue evolving the business. What was interesting was that he worked for an Artificial Intelligence Company in 1986, and that piqued his interest in AI. When 121Advisor started seeing the evolution of Chatbots, Robo Advisors, Predictive Analytics, Behavioural Intelligence & Robotic Process Automation.

121Advisor started researching on AI solutions and the team implemented 24×7 multi-lingual Chatbots, Robo
Advisors for lifestyle financial planning, as well as implementing Predictive Analytics solutions for predicting new products to buy, lapsation of policies, fraudulent claims & future grow/decline of investment funds; which are integrated with RPA solutions to trigger workflows to notify the relevant people.

By 2014 the company was profitable and 121Advisor used the profits for R&D on developing new disruptive solutions. Here is a graph that shows the company’s growth over the past decade.

Clientele and Challenges on the Way

The clientele includes Manulife, MCIS (part of Sanlam Group), Etiqa, Gibraltar BSN (part of PrAmerica), FWD Takaful, Zurich Takaful, AmMetlife, AmMetlife Takaful, as well as Banks – BSN Bank (Bank Simpanan Nasional), & MBSB Bank.

In 2010, the words ‘FinTech’ & ‘InsurTech’ were not available, so it took a while to convince customers of 121Advisor’s digital skills & capabilities. In 2011 the team started implementing various solutions, and by 2014 we started growing customers, providing solutions both for banks, insurers & takaful companies.

“Millennials are the least insured generation since WWII … insurance companies are ripe for disruption.”
Mark Dowds, Trov

The Roller Coaster Ride toward Success

We grew the business and now have 18 plus clients, with 12 product solutions. The company has been disruptive and offered various product solutions to customers, they have continually developed new disruptive solutions including predictive analytics, plus multi-lingual Chatbots & Robo advisors.

“A well-executed user experience builds trust.”
Tom Creighton, Wealthsimple

A Day in Kevin’s Life & Favourite Book

He gets up at 5 am, and goes to the office at about 7.30 am, as a ‘techie’ he reviews emails and advises his team on their solutions, he also designs data models for customers to implement. He goes to sleep at about 10 pm.

“Valuation Seventh Edition – Measuring & Managing Value of Companies” by Wiley is Kevin’s favourite
book.

Road Ahead

In future, u12know will include health and wellness calculators to advise people on their health and what they need to work on to get healthy; this will also include a “Total Health Score”, based on the health calculators to indicate whether they are very healthy, healthy, unhealthy or at risk.

121Advsior will also be including another solution u1Notice, which is a mobile app integrated with WhatsApp for Business that enables customers to receive reminders & renew their policies online.

For their knowledge portal (u12know), Kavin Steer will be expanding to Indonesia, the Philippines, Myanmar, and Vietnam. Then later expanding to Europe & the US.

Feathers in the Cap

121Advisor has been honoured as Top 10 Insurtech Consulting/Services Companies in APAC, 2018 by CIO Outlook
It was recognized by IndustryWired as Top 20 Companies with Most Disruptive Solutions in 2020

Christopher M. Carter: Building Meaningful Business Relationships

With almost 30 years of experience in the SAP industry, Christopher M. Carter founded Approyo to provide full SAP service technology with extensive capabilities in hosting and managing services, upgrades, and migration of its clients, running any SAP-supported core functionality. With more than a thousand SAP environments under management around the planet, Approyo supports businesses from production to landscapes to migrations onto SAP S/4 HANA.

As an SAP partner, Approyo offers its solutions as a service to its clients and partners across the planet. While many Managed Service Providers are likely to provide several forms of ERP systems to expand their services portfolio, Approyo only deals with systems related to SAP directly. While the organization offers integrative services with several other ERP providers like Microsoft Azure, AWS, etc., Approyo’s primary focus is still on SAP.

The Steadfast Leader

Chris attended The Georgia Institute of Technology during his college days, where he found his love for technology. After graduating, he shortly started working with SAP and later worked in a California-based start-up, where he was responsible for running day-to-day sales and marketing activities. He then served in multiple executive positions in the SAP ecosystem. At this point of time, he founded his own business, which was sold at a later stage. After selling his company, Chris retired for a few years until one of his old friends called him to inform him about the latest release of SAP HANA. Soon after that day, he was convinced to dive back in and flew to Germany to start working and learning about SAP HANA. Later in December 2013, he founded Approyo to provide global leadership for SAP directives.

Greatest Accomplishment

As the organization’s leader, Chris is proud of the team he has been able to develop at Approyo. Chris and his team have brought in some of the best talents on the planet by expanding the firm’s reach into Brazil, the UK, Spain, and India. Presently with offices being developed in several other parts of the world, Approyo no longer must worry about resources, as it ensures the company has the right resources for its clients anywhere at any time.

Chris says, “It’s a game changer for us, and it’s a great accomplishment for our team these men and women are our incredible staff members, and we’re blessed to have them here.“

Tackling Challenges

Chris is 100% up for tackling challenges. He considers himself fortunate to be controlled and prepared to lead Approyo to new challenges and heights. He says, “I have an incredible staff around me who supported my decisions and helped me make those decisions so we could accomplish greatness for our customers. It’s all about them and my staff we want to support our customers in their needs that’s why we did some of the most unprecedented support activities during the pandemic to help them, and we will continue to support them on a global stage.“

Chris feels his biggest failure was the fact that he had to put one of his companies into a bankruptcy situation; although it came out of the situation fine, it was a very sad, challenging, and heartbreaking time for him. However, he came out of the situation with a lot of knowledge and understanding of several things and what he could do differently.

Leadership Principles

Chris’s primary leadership principles;

As the organization’s leader, Chris trusts his team to make the necessary decisions to support customers and keep them on a proper lifestyle, as they don’t want interruptions.
He believes in training his staff and increasing their skill sets as he wants them to become the next managers or executives of Approyo.
Lastly, he wants Approyo’s customers to sleep well at night. Chris wants them to have the ability to lead the lifestyle or workstyle they deserve, and they should not have to worry about the landscapes of their systems, people, and applications.

Implementing New Ideas

Approyo is implementing its AI-based monitoring and support tool on every client the firm acquires. This tool provides the opportunity to proactively understand what’s going on with the system and how it will run in the coming weeks. This also provides valuable information on how security is being enacted in case of any vulnerabilities. It is a true AI tool that helps the company by providing everything it needs to be proactive and hyper-aggressive in supporting its clients.

Picture of the Future

Chris says, “Our future, I feel, is quite bright. We have plans with our AI-based tools to support and provide the managed services and details companies need to run their SAP and other landscapes with our managed service provider organization. We also feel that our best-in-breed SAP migration and support will continue to revolutionize the ecosystem.“

By combining Approyo’s tools, people and processes, Chris feels that the company is second to none in this ecosystem, and it’ll continue to strive to provide for our clients on an ongoing day-in and day-out solution basis.

Natasha Makhijani : Pioneering innovative new approaches to executive search

Natasha Makhijani is not your average headhunter. As CEO of Oliver Sanderson Group, Makhijani is pioneering innovative new approaches to executive search while breaking down barriers as a purpose-driven Asian woman business leader.

After graduating with a Bachelor’s degree from City, University of London and a Master’s from DePaul University in Chicago, Makhijani began her recruitment career on the Graduate Scheme at Hays in 2000.

“Among a team of 200 I was the only female, so I had to learn to hold my own in a very traditional maledominated culture,” she recalled. “I learned about everything from blue and white collar in the logistics and supply chain space, all the way up to operations directors, logistics directors, and supply chain directors.”

Fast-tracked into management roles, she achieved four promotions in four years and took a team from billing £10,000 to £80,000 a month. In her words, Makhijani grew “from a baby recruiter to a senior manager.”

“I absolutely loved Hays. It was a really great training ground, and for me it was the foundation for my recruitment journey. I was a top biller, and I had found my niche.”

From Hays she moved to Michael Page, and quickly gained recognition as a “super biller”. Working on a hybrid desk across permanent and interim leadership roles, Makhijani was given responsibility for growing Michael Page’s Public Sector division from its offices in London. She was the company’s number one biller in HR across the UK, and her success was rewarded with a place on the high-flier’s trajectory. But Makhijani always felt that there was another path for her career and having set up executive desks at both Hays and Michael Page, she set her sights on establishing a business of her own.

Natasha said: “I come from a very entrepreneurial community, and I always felt that there was something more out there. People questioned whether it was the right thing to do, but I took the risk. I knew it was the right thing to do, and I have never looked back.”

Oliver Sanderson was born in 2011, and what began as one lady and a laptop has grown into an international business at the cutting edge of executive search. “I left a great job, sold my car to consolidate my savings, and set up an office in the dining room,” she recalled. Within a couple of years she had built an international executive search firm with a dedicated research team. “Things have snowballed – we’ve made exceptional progress.”

Oliver Sanderson has built up a strong track record in recent years, having placed CEOs and senior leaders at FTSE 100, FTSE 350, and Fortune 500 companies. Specialising in both permanent and interim executive placements across a wide range of sectors, Oliver Sanderson provides clients with an end-to-end executive search process, harnessing the experience and creativity of its research team to solve complex recruitment challenges.

Oliver Sanderson’s Permanent Practice offers end-to-end executive search and consultancy. With a team of experienced consultants and researchers, the firm breaks the mould by providing a genuinely consultative and bespoke partnering model, helping clients achieve their ambitions by attracting, developing, and retaining high calibre business leaders.

A typical executive search process begins with abriefing, and Makhijani’s team prides itself oharnessing its experience and market insight to fully understand the unique challenges and business needs of its clients. Following the briefing, Oliver Sanderson’s research team typically carries out a multi-faceted search of the marketplace using a range of innovative resources. In addition to the traditional methods of targeted mapping, profiling, and headhunting, Oliver Sanderson draws from its pioneering mobile apps.

New technology has been central to Oliver Sanderson’s rapid growth, and Makhijani is a pioneer of digital innovations in executive search and recruitment. She co-founded Snapp CV & Snapp Resume, the world’s first mobile job board with voice technology capability and Amazon Alexa connectivity. The app currently has a database of over 25 million candidates in the UK and the USA, with over 250,000 positions listed on its mobile job board, and its directors are looking for Serious A funding as they look to expand further into the USA and India.

After the success of the Snapp suite, which includes Snapp Resume US & Global, Snapp CV UK, and Snapp INView video interviewing software, Makhijani recently launched a dedicated Oliver Sanderson Executive app. Designed and created by her in-house tech team, the app provides digital solutions at every stage of the appointment process, featuring introductory candidate and client profile videos, fingerprint and password-protected online NDA signatures, digital candidate packs, integrated job applications, and video interviews.

With digital platforms increasingly prominent in the executive search and recruitment industry, Oliver Sanderson is leading the way with its Executive app and integration with Snapp CV, harnessing the power of modern technology to discover and connect with the next generation of business leaders.

A series of world events has brought diversity and inclusion to the forefront of the corporate agenda, and
Makhijani has drawn from her unique experiences as an Asian woman CEO to build an inclusive culture at Oliver Sanderson. “Being a BAME woman CEO in the recruitment industry has not been easy, but I’ve always seen it as a strength. I have always been unique, slightly different. Most importantly, I have had to be extremely assertive to get where I am today.”

Makhijani is passionate about tackling diversity and inclusion challenges with her clients, and is currently
establishing a charity with a team of industry leaders to address a range of issues related to race equality, disability, and gender.

In addition to the launch of her new charity, Makhijani has an ambitious vision for the next five years.
Planning an expansion in Oliver Sanderson’s Europe and U. S. operations, she is open to new investment opportunities to support these ambitions. The launch of the company’s new JustInterims division is central to her plans. (Justinterims.com)

Recognising the need for strategic interim leaders to help steer businesses through periods of change, the team identified the value of a dedicated executive interims division. JustInterims at Oliver Sanderson now specialises in finding high calibre business leaders for interim appointments, particularly in interim Board Practice, Business Change, Organisation Development, and HR Transformation projects.

“The only certainty in business is change,” Makhijani observed. As her firm continues to expand and evolve, Oliver Sanderson is poised to remain at the forefront of an evolving industry.

About Oliver Sanderson:

Oliver Sanderson is an executive search firm with a difference, combining experience and expertise with innovation and fresh thinking.

The firm specialises in finding talent at board and senior leadership level for FTSE 100, FTSE 350, Fortune 500, and PE-backed businesses. Placing permanent and interim positions across a wide range of sectors, Oliver Sanderson has built up a strong track record of c-suite appointments.

With its suite of digital apps and its powerful diversity and inclusion work, Oliver Sanderson is leading the way in discovering the next generation of business leaders.

MediSpend: Enabling Life Sciences Companies to Manage High-Risk Business Functions for Compliance

MediSpend has introduced the industry’s first global SaaS solution purpose-built to manage the end-to-end process of healthcare professional (HCP) engagement through transparency reporting, which includes software that facilitates external grant requests for the life sciences industry. Presently, more than 100 pharmaceutical, biotech, medical device and dental companies in 96 countries around the world rely on MediSpend to manage high-risk business functions for compliance.

JOURNEY SINCE THE INCEPTION

When the company was founded, it was in reaction to new laws that required life sciences companies to do a type of regulatory reporting they hadn’t done before. The Physician Payments Sunshine Act (PPSA) is a law that was passed under the Affordable Care Act in 2011, and it requires that certain manufacturers of drugs and devices and certain group purchasing organizations report payments and transfers of value to HCPs to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) once a year. Today, more than 40 countries around the world have similar transparency reporting requirements.

MediSpend sought to provide a platform to support this new business need that allowed companies with high business and compliance risks to manage those risks in an automated, integrated way. The platform allows them to take manual, disparate processes and data and bring it together in a way that provides a level of integrity and compliance oversight that’s important for life science businesses.

INNOVATIVE SOLUTIONS

As compliance requirements around the globe continue to expand, so has MediSpend’s Global Compliance Suite of solutions. The MediSpend Global Compliance Suite consists of a modular suite of SaaS-based solutions: Engagement Manager, Transparency Solution, Grants Manager, Study Manager and Insights, which showcases their analytical capabilities via embedded dashboard reporting and self-service analytics. Although these offerings can be utilized separately, together they represent a unified, end-to-end solution specifically designed to enable life sciences companies to manage high-risk business functions for compliance.

Engagement Manager is a global compliance solution with embedded compliance controls designed to identify and mitigate risk associated with HCP engagements. Engagement Manager will help your organization manage the end-to-end engagement lifecycle on a SaaS-based platform.
Transparency Solution collects, remediates, validates, analyzes and reports transfers of value to comply with state, federal and global transparency laws and codes.
Grants Manager manages internal and external funding and product requests through a secure portal ensuring seamless communication, the ability to track and report out on the workflow and a more effective and efficient process.
Study Manager is a compliance solution designed for non-pharmaceutical company researchers to request, track and manage investigator-initiated clinical studies-trials (IIS/IIT).
Insights delivers meaningful dashboards and powerful ad-hoc reporting capabilities to track and analyze the spend lifecycle, perform competitive analysis and monitor your compliance program in real-time. Life science companies are now provided with the analytics they need to predict issues before they occur.

MediSpend enables life sciences companies to manage
high-risk business functions for compliance

THE GUIDING FORCE

Craig Hauben is the CEO of MediSpend and he holds over 25 years of experience in healthcare industry operations and sales management. Craig leverages his expertise in operations and sales to help MediSpend maximize its brand to expand its offerings and remain a leading global compliance technology company for the life sciences industry.

Craig’s vision has been critical. In a very short period, he has been able to survey the market, diagnose product strengths and create a long-term roadmap for a product suite that is unique in the industry. The entire team is energized around this vision and the journey they are on.

Craig has also brought strong judgment and decisiveness to the organization. The COVID-19 pandemic has tested MediSpend like it has tested many companies. Craig took quick action to ensure the long-term strength of the company. While their business is returning to ‘normal’, they are stronger today than they were pre-COVID.

A GLIMPSE OF CURRENT SCENARIO

During this unpredictable year, life sciences companies have demanded reliability from the solutions they utilize. MediSpend aims to make compliance simple and reliable; giving life sciences companies one less thing to stress about.

Life sciences companies require innovative, intuitive and easy-to-use software solutions to meet their
needs. They require that any software solution, and especially SaaS-based ones, are developed to meet the vast majority of their functional needs out of the box before they will be willing to use it. They prefer more configurations and less customization. Furthermore, they also want to make sure that third-party SaaS solutions meet stringent data privacy and security protocols, and that the organization that is providing the solution has the subject matter expertise needed to support their complex needs.

Therefore, MediSpend had to first establish trust and credibility with executives at life sciences companies, while also demonstrating innovative technology that was purpose-built to meet their needs now and can scale to meet future needs. MediSpend accomplished this and is now proud to be considered the compliance system of record for more than 100 life sciences companies around the world.

THE SECRET BEHIND THE SUCCESS

Craig Hauben shared, “Our strategy here starts with keeping our focus on making our clients successful, not what our competition is saying and doing. By focusing on what our clients need and want, we stay in tune with the broader needs of the market and can stay ahead of our competition. We lead with our team of industry experts. They advise companies who are preparing to launch their first product all the way to complex, global organizations that are industry leaders.”

The MediSpend Global Compliance Suite was purpose-built with the end-user in mind. It delivers a simplified user interface and has often been cited as more intuitive than competitive offerings. Modern technology developments and intuitive user interface aids in quick user adoption and continuous engagement with the platform.

Focused on what clients need, the MediSpend team developed their Legislative Watch, which provides free summaries of global reporting requirements.

MediSpend’s Client Services team provides full-service access and solutions to address client needs during the reporting session and throughout the year. Through monthly meetings with clients, the MediSpend Client Services team consistently receives high ratings from their clients.

NOTABLE FEEDBACK FROM CLIENTS

MediSpend’s clients report a 97% overall satisfaction rate and 94% product satisfaction rate. 90% of MediSpend’s 100+ clients are willing to be client references.

THE FUTURE AHEAD

“We continue to focus on using technology to simplify our client’s lives and enable our client’s greater ability to manage high-risk business functions for compliance. In the near future, we will bring new capabilities to the market that broaden our platform and provide greater integration. An example of this is the latest launch of our Grants Management Solution. More new launches are being planned,” said Hauben.

ScaleX, Inc : Expediting The Sales Process Through Innovative Solutions

Founded in 2017, ScaleX is a leading firm that resolves the sales pipelines issues by leveraging artificial intelligence and sales automation. It offers an entire suite of services to fill your pipeline each month, guaranteed. With swift growth in mind for businesses, the venture helps sales professionals increase revenue by focusing on the only two things that matter in sales – increasing frequency and competency.

Chad Burmeister, Founder & CEO started this firm when he saw that the sales software as a service market was getting over-crowded by new entrants. But to be successful, experience in sales and marketing operations and deep domain expertise in tools and technology were required. In early March of 2020, when the world had to deal with the Coronavirus for the first time, work from home became the only way to sell, and ScaleX.ai became more important to B2B companies than ever before.

Chad Burmeister is not only the CEO of ScaleX, but he’s also ScaleX’s biggest client! He has a successful career in building high-velocity sales teams at companies including Cisco-WebEx, Riverbed Technology, ON24, ConnectAndSell, and RingCentral. He was the Founding Chapter President of the AA-ISP Silicon Valley Chapter which was voted two years in a row as “Chapter of the Year”, Director of AA-ISP Frontline Friday, and Colorado Chapter President to help advance the profession of inside sales to the next level of professionalism and performance. Chad is currently on the team who launched the Denver Enterprise Sales Forum. Chad has
been voted Top 25 Most Influential Inside Sales Professional by the AA-ISP 10 years in a row (2010 – 2019) and continues to be at the forefront of inside sales and high-velocity selling strategy & execution.

ScaleX has used it’s own solutions to more than 2X sales each year for the past 3 years. Chad is committed to the inside sales profession – and has earned the title of Top 25 Inside Sales Leader for the past 10 years by the American Association of Inside Sales Professionals. Chad also recently launched SalesClass.ai, the first and only “Netflix for sales” platform that delivers relevant sales training content through live and on-demand training.

Message from the CEO
“Make sure to check out SalesClass.ai.
When you sign up for a subscription,
your first month is just $1!
We hope to see you there.”

Advanced Solutions

ScaleX offers three core solutions – ScaleX Social, ScaleX Pipeline as a Service and ScaleX Introductions. ScaleX Social enables sales and business professionals to connect with hundreds (or even thousands) of their best prospects on LinkedIn, passively. ScaleX Pipeline as a Service delivers data + digital outreach + dials and regularly delivers 3 years of outbound in 3 months for clients. ScaleX Introductions leverages powerful artificial intelligence to determine the best influencers to reach out in order to ask for their help in making introductions to a target list of prospects. A recent client landed a meeting with the CMO of Microsoft as a result of this solution.

Awards & Recognitions

Not only has Chad has earned the coveted Top 25 Inside Sales Leader for 10 years in a row, his company ScaleX.ai was voted Top 10 AI for Sales Solution in 2019, was ranked a Vendor Neutral Top 100 technology company and ranked in the top 5% of growth companies in SaaS for 2019 by Nathan Latka.

Point Of View on Current Market

Although 2020 has had a lot of very deep seeded challenges, out of every challenge comes opportunity. We’ve seen that as people move from working at an office to work from home, the skills and technologies that have been mainstream for inside sales professionals are now getting adopted by remote field sellers everywhere. Technology like Zoom Video is obvious, but also Social Selling Technology like ScaleX and other AI-related prospecting technology is now becoming mainstream too.

Hurdles on the Way

The biggest challenge at ScaleX was in March 2019 when company revenues went from $100,000/month to $30,000/month. When a company doesn’t have investors, that’s a big dip. The positive outcome from that experience – they learned to double down on “ScaleX powered by ScaleX” where they use their own technology to drive pipeline more than they did previously.

Contributing Factors behind Success

“You are the five people you hang out with” is a phrase I’ve heard Jourdan DuFort on our sales team use before. In 2019, Gerhard Gschwandtner challenged a group of 25-30 leaders to find mentors. So I did. Robert White is an expert in organizational design and mindset, Townsend Wardlaw, CRO is a mindset expert and incredible CRO. Rich Blakeman is the former SVP from Miller Heiman, the biggest sales training organization in the world. All of these individuals and more are now part of my daily interactions. These strategic thinkers help us drive the company strategy and pivot as required.

Creativity And Innovation in The Workspace

“Recently, the sales pipeline was down. Rather than call a meeting and punch people in the mouth, I held a meeting with a blank screen and asked the team to strategize on a way forward. The solutions were amazing – far better than if I would have beat the team-up that day”, Chad Burmeister shared.

Customer Relationship

“Client Success is the lifeblood of ScaleX. Many of the processes and technologies that we role out are true “magic”. They can enable a sales team to 10X the number of sales touches, at higher quality, and drive 3-5X in the pipeline. Getting the rocket off the launch pad is important since launches can be delayed at times. So we recently deployed Monday.com for client onboarding. So now we provide the best technology, the best dashboards (from ClicData) and the best onboarding experience in the industry”, stated Chad.

Road Ahead

ScaleX will continue to innovate and bring to market technologies and solutions that are highly unique and different designed to outpace cheaper and less effective solutions. As we scale from $337k to $1.2M to $2M+ in 2020, we’re looking at M&A opportunities to bring the best-of-breed players under one brand.

Dr. Kushant Uppal: An inspiring entrepreneur

“Entrepreneur’s need to remember that they are the best marketer’s for their products and company” says Dr. Kushant Uppal, Founder, and Managing Director, Intelizon. He founded Intelizon in 2007 with the vision to create a world of smart energy which formed the basis for the name. INTELIZON means intelligent solar- ZON means sun in Dutch and INTELI is short for intelligent. “The idea of Intelizon was seeded in 2006 when I was in Silicon Valley and solar was catching attention. The opportunity to create solar lighting products for rural markets was a dream since it had a social, environmental and economic impact” speaks Dr. Kushant. Intelizon is a journey where they have created technologically the most advanced solar systems addressing the requirements at the bottom of the pyramid. The lithium-ion based solar street lights and the DC systems are state of the art, cost-effective and have been proven to work in tough conditions. The IOT based remote monitoring and control and the AI-based inbuilt camera systems are path-breaking with a global market.

“I was exposed to entrepreneurship at an early age as my father had his own business. I have a B-Tech from IITM and a PhD from University of Southern California and worked at the hub of entrepreneurship, Silicon Valley for a decade creating world leading products in the telecom sector. Having seen corporate success and with encouragement from my wife, the idea to work on a business with triple impact became the driving passion for my career” says Dr. Kushant. Intelizon has a team of professionals who are dedicated to the company’s vision and are passionate about their work. They work tirelessly to build trust and long-term relationships with their customers and suppliers alike. He believes the ethics they have built has set the platform for a long-lasting entity which will impact the world positively. The initial challenges were to understand the Indian ecosystem for building teams, projects and channels for the rural markets. As with any entrepreneur, you roll up the sleeves to understand the problems at its root and solve them one by one. “It took us a few years to get the market and product fit right. The markets were not ready for our products in the initial years. It took us the first 5 years to focus on the right market segment and have grown 4X in the past 5 years. Solar streetlights has become our bread and butter” says Dr. Kushant.

Unique Offerings

“We are pioneers in lithium ion based solar street lights. We are the only company in the world who has lights successfully operating in the field for more than 6 years. We also have home lighting systems based on lithium ion batteries. Our uniqueness lies in innovation- Theft proof designs for street lights, remote monitoring and control systems using Wi-Fi/GSM/Bluetooth and most recently inbuilt lights and cameras for wireless surveillance. We also provide best in class quality, reliability and customer service” speaks Dr. Kushant. Solar street lights is an unorganized sector and they are unique in terms of providing technology and building a brand. Their customer satisfaction metric is based on the strong and long lasting relationships built with their channel partners. They are seeking people and businesses who are as passionate in creating the world of smart energy and building not only a business but also impacting lives and helping the environment.

They have a team of self-driven and passionate people who are encouraged to come up with ideas and excel in execution. Their passion for innovation, quality and customer service drives excellence. This has led to an installed base of over 25000 solar street lights and 100000 solar home systems with a return rate of less than 1%. Intelizon has impacted more than 2 million people, reduced CO2 emissions by 30000metric tonnes and saved over 16million units of electricity to date.

A realistic Work life-Balance Dr. Kushant believes work-life balance is the key to success. This philosophy allows one to work efficiently at work while being an effective support at home. Family support is critical to maintaining sanity and balance in the life of an entrepreneur. “In my case, my wife has been the pillar of support since the ideation in 2006 till today. I have also received tremendous support from my father who is involved in the day to day finance management at Intelizon and gave me good advice on the Indian business environment in the early days. My wife, parents and kids inspire me the most” asserts Dr. Kushant. Kids in general have a positive mindset and are passionate about learning which forms the crux of an entrepreneur’s life. His wife multi-tasks and balances work, kids, parents, home, etc., which is a huge motivation and makes entrepreneurship feel simple.

Compact and cost-effective analysis of incremental signals

Incremental encoders have become indispensable in many applications due to their compactness and low price points. Beckhoff meets this important need with the comprehensive EL51xx EtherCAT Terminal series for analysis of 5 V incremental encoders via RS422 and TTL signals. With their extension by four highly compact and high-performance I/Os, analysis of incremental signals in the controller can now be implemented in an even more space-saving and cost-effective manner.

The four new EtherCAT Terminals acquire incremental signals with high frequencies up to 5 MHz and feature numerous parameterization options and integrated functions that enable optimum adaptation to control tasks.

Each EtherCAT Terminal offers an integrated sensor supply, parameterizable to 5, 12 or 24 V. Encoders with differential RS422, 5 V TTL or open collector interface can be connected. Based on internal pull-up resistors, no external wiring is required for open collector analysis. Additional 24 V digital inputs are used to save, lock and set the counter value. A wide range of integrated functions, such as rotary axis functionality, workpiece measurement and standstill monitoring, also enable data pre-processing directly in the terminal. Beyond that, the measurement of period, frequency and speed with a resolution of 10 ns is also available. In addition, a duty cycle measurement of the incoming signal is implemented. Due to the optional interpolating micro-increment functionality, the terminals can determine even more precise axis positions for dynamic axes. The synchronous reading of the position values with other process data in the EtherCAT system is realized via the high-precision EtherCAT distributed clocks. This enables simple and precise synchronization of controller tasks. The EL51xx series is extended by the following EtherCAT Terminals: EL5102: 2-channel incremental encoder interface, 5 V (RS422, TTL, open collector) EL5112: 2-channel incremental encoder interface, 5 V (2 x AB or 1 x ABC RS422, TTL, open collector) EL5122: 2-channel incremental encoder interface, 5 V single-ended (TTL, open collector) EL5131: 1-channel incremental encoder interface, 5 V with two parameterizable 24 V DC outputs