The Hindu Business Line : Starkey to raise awareness on hearing impairment

New Delhi, Sept. 25 Starkey Laboratories, the US-based hearing aid company, which has made an investment of $2 million in its India operations, is focussed on raising awareness on hearing impairment. According to Mr Rohit Misra, Managing Director, Starkey Laboratories, India, there is no concrete survey conducted in the past 10 years to judge the prevalence of hearing impairment.

“If you look at the data for the developed countries, the prevalence is at 10 per cent for the US, and at 12 per cent for the UK. Even if we take the 10 per cent figure, it still means a 100 million people in India,” he said.

Training programmes

The biggest investment for Starkey, said Mr Misra would be in training and awareness programmes. “For a billion plus people we have only 12,000, to 13,000 audiologists, and most of them are unfortunately restricted to the metros and a few large cities,” he said. Starkey, which established a production facility in Noida this year, makes both custom and standard devices which range from Rs 2,000 and go up to Rs 1.5 lakh and above.

“Hearing is one of the most complicated disorders, and affects most number people, and is the most prevalent after arthritis,” said Dr Girija Sundar, Director of Business Development, Starkey Laboratories, India.

Custom products

Now with the baby-boomers demanding a better quality of life, and with the market doing well, Dr Sundar says customers are less shy about seeking out better products. The company is already designing custom, ‘completely-in-the canal’ hearing aids for select 15-20 clients. It is also giving out 2,000 hearing aids to children across India.

The largest hearing aid maker in the US, however, is behind other older players such as Siemens hearing instruments, Widex, and GN Resound in India.

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