From a university in South Africa to the shelves of Walgreens in the United States, the South African tech company HearX has risen to be a global industry leader in hearing health and announced a $100M capital raise earlier this year. In this episode, Rowena Luk sits down with CEO Nic Klopper and CSO Seline van der Wat to unpack how HearX (now LXE Hearing) is shaking up a 100-year-old industry to lower costs and improve access to care around the world. Tune in for a story of grit, timing, and bold bets that paid off.
In This Episode
(2m48s) How HearX evolved from a research project at the University of Pretoria to a high-growth startup
(4m34s) Crisis of faith: can we do more than just send children into a broken healthcare system?
(8m13s) Landing the partnership with Bose, the global industry leader in consumer audio
(11m20s) Breakthrough: expanding our reach from South Africa to the world
(16m08s) “We went up against the industry giants, larger bank accounts, big law firms… and we won.”
(19m32s) The year we almost didn’t make it
(22m47s) Rapid-fire questions and advice for founders
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Show Notes
Nic Klopper is CEO at LXE Hearing (previously HearX & Lexie Hearing). His experience ranges from being an avid start-up investor to founding 7 successful businesses and exiting 3 of them to date. As the co-founder and CEO of HearX Group and Lexie Hearing, Nic has been the driving force behind a transformative shift in the hearing health industry. He has guided the company from early-stage healthtech startup to a multimillion-dollar enterprise with products now available in 38 countries.
Seline van der Wat is the Chief Strategy Officer at LXE Hearing (previously hearX & Lexie Hearing). Under her leadership, the company was recognized as one of TIME Magazine’s Most Influential Companies in the World list in 2023, for hearX’s groundbreaking work in hearing health accessibility. Seline has transformed companies into first-to-market and best-in-market giants through her strategic and organizational development expertise.
Vula Mobile, founded by Dr. William Mapham, was an early collaborator with HearX. In 2018 with support from the Google Impact Challenge, Vula Mobile and HearX partnered to screen children in Gauteng for vision and hearing. This led to the epiphany at HearX that they needed to do more than just screen for hearing loss; they needed to play a direct role in increasing access to hearing aids.
Seline’s shoutout goes to Ilara Health and its CEO Emilian Poppa for Ilara’s work to improve financing and access to diagnostics at scale for clinics across Kenya.
Seline’s second shoutout goes to Jonathan Berkowitz at MotionsAds, which provides additional income to drivers in the gig economy (like Uber Eats) through advertising.
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