Meet Mohit, Rezilient’s R&D Engineer

Rezilient is a membership-based concierge care practice with a mission to make accessing quality healthcare timely, convenient, seamless and tech-forward. Today we sit down with Mohit Lala, our R&D Engineer.

Mohit previously worked as an engineer for Strayos, a drone-based intelligent mining solution startup, before he joined the Rezilient team. He has diverse experiences in the fields of robotics, embedded systems, firmware and web development, having completed 70 plus robotics projects and over 5 years of experience building robotic and embedded systems.

What brought you to Rezilient?

I moved to the States for my Masters in Aug 2015 (if I remember correctly) and I jumped into the startup world right after school. The assumption when you join a startup is you not only get to do what you are good at but you also get exposed to other aspects of a company as you grow. This was a very lucrative idea for me, since creating and building something of my own has always been a dream.

I joined my first startup (previous company) solely based on how much I loved their idea and didn’t care about my actual role there. My time there made me realize that I not only needed a job profile I was interested in but also needed mentorship to help evolve my way of thinking.

I spoke to Jeff first, then Danish, Ilker and the rest of the team later. The essence of all my conversations with the team was that they had identified a very good and interesting problem. Everyone on the team had a very diverse experience that I could learn from and they offered me the hardware engineer profile I wanted. So I decided to hedge my bets, join Rezilient and 3–4 pivots later I am still here.

What made you choose robotics/engineering?

Cannot for the life of me remember when or how exactly I made this decision. I remember being interested in the sciences and I was good at math. I took electronics classes in high school because I enjoyed building hobby projects and there were only so many instances where my parents were going to let me open & mess up the one computer we had. After that, choosing electrical engineering as my major in undergrad just felt natural. The more courses I took the more projects I built and eventually embedded systems and robotics became the most interesting subject areas for me.

What are you most excited about for Rezilient?

The fact that we get to build a new type of care delivery system, I think is the most exciting thing for me. Building something real, deploying it out in the world, that affects and helps real people is very satisfying. And hopefully we make some money doing it, that’s exciting too. :P

The entire team has put in a lot of effort, been through a lot of sleepless nights worrying about whether we are making right decisions, choosing and building the right technology and placing it correctly in the world. So to be this close to setting up our first location is kind of a rush.

What’s the coolest piece of health tech out there?

I think wearable technology has made significant strides in the past few years. With the right technological advancements, wearable tech coupled with digital medical devices will not only be able monitor a person’s health but also improve access, speed and delivery of care.

What do you like to do when you’re not building robots?

I haven’t really kept up with any of my hobbies from back in school. When the world was healthy, I started boxing for a bit which I hope to get back into once the world opens back up. The sooner I do, it’ll probably be better for all the extra weight I have gained. The only other thing I have been doing recently is riding my motorcycle. Couldn’t be happier than when I am riding. It makes you forget about everything else, partly because all your energy is going into not dying. :P

‍