04 March 2025
Meet Nitya Dintakurti, School alum featured on BBC's Dragon's Den
Nitya Dintakurti is an alumna of the School of Biomedical Engineering & Imaging Sciences, and the founder and CEO of Unpause, a venture she built during her time at King's College London. We spoke to her about innovating in menopause care, her journey from academia to entrepreneurship, and her experience pitching her product on Dragon’s Den.
Hi Nitya, thank you for taking the time out to speak with us! Could you give our readers some background on your work and career so far?
Sure! I'm originally from Bangalore, India, and moved to the UK to study biomedical engineering at King's in 2018. I graduated with a BEng in 2021 and was initially enrolled to continue with an MEng, but I decided to drop out and start building Unpause right after finishing my undergraduate degree. It'll be four years since I graduated this June, and that's how long I've been working on Unpause. The idea first started forming during my second year when I met Professor Prashant Jha and joined his studio to explore entrepreneurship. My third-year thesis was focused on menopause, and that’s what led me to start working on Coolzen.
You've built Coolzen for people going through menopause, and your company, Unpause, is focused on creating technologies that alleviate its symptoms. What was the inspiration behind this?
While working through the steps of Prashant's 5D process, I started to grow keen on innovating in women's health, which is a massive space. We looked at the complete lifecycle of women's health, starting at PCOS/PCOD, infertility, pregnancy, all the way up to menopause. I had the opportunity to speak with clinicians and gynaecologists from across the world about these issues and noticed that menopause was usually a passing thought in the conversations. As we started to dig deeper into this, I experienced something of a twist of fate when my Mum went through surgical menopause at the same time. This was during Covid, and we were quarantining together at home, so I got to witness the condition first-hand. That's when it really came together - I realised menopause is currently a "big black box", and there is little to no information and support for something women will spend almost a third of their lives experiencing. It's only fair that they have some clarity on what they're going through and the tools to manage it better!
Could you tell us about how Coolzen works?
Let's imagine today is a hot day - you are outside, sweating, and instinctively want to splash cold water on your face to cool down. That’s because certain areas of our body - like the hands, face, and neck - are particularly sensitive to temperature changes, and cooling them can help regulate our overall body temperature. A hot flash during menopause is essentially a misfire in the body's built-in thermostat. When estrogen levels in the female body start dropping, it starts to have these misfires where it thinks it’s overheating and starts sweating and flushing to cool down, even though the environment doesn’t call for it.
Coolzen is a wearable device that detects when this misfire is happening - as soon as the body starts falsely heating up, the device becomes really cold, tricking the sensory neurons into stopping the hot flash before it goes through the full episode. It’s like pressing a reset button on the body’s temperature regulation and helping it readjust to the actual temperature outside.
And what was it like pitching the product on Dragon's Den?
It was definitely a first for me! I've never been on TV before and the whole process, from production, behind-the-scenes moments, and legalities, was fascinating. More than anything, it was an incredible confidence booster. When you watch the Dragons on TV, they seem larger than life, but standing in front of them and having a real conversation made me realise that we’re all just people. The televised segment is only about 20 minutes, but in reality, we spent hours in discussion. It was nerve-wracking at first but now it's an experience I will never forget, and I’m grateful for the opportunity regardless of the outcome.
Finally, you are a woman in STEMM building a company in the FemTech space. What's that journey been like, and what advice do you have for young female entrepreneurs who are thinking of creating a venture?
I’ve been asked this question a lot, and my biggest takeaway is not to overthink the challenges of being a female founder. It’s already hard enough being a founder—why add extra weight by constantly reminding yourself that you’re one of the few women in the space? I think not recognising that bias helped me just focus on building my company.
That said, entrepreneurship, especially in healthcare and STEMM, is a long game. Unlike an app that could go viral overnight, products in this space take years to develop, test, and bring to market. You need to be committed for the long haul. Before starting Unpause, I gave myself a three-year deadline—if we couldn’t build a product in that time, I would pivot. But we had a working prototype in 1.5 years, which kept me motivated to continue.
For young women considering this path, I’d say take the leap when you have the least to lose. At 21, I didn’t have major financial responsibilities, so I could afford to take risks. As you get older, obligations increase, and it gets harder to make that jump. If you have the drive and passion, go for it, learn as much as you can, and don’t be afraid to fail—just make sure you have clear goals and timelines for yourself.
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Head of Affordable Medical Technologies