Her startup began with a house fire, took her to the high-profile television pitch show Shark Tank, and turned her from an aspiring physician to an inventor and entrepreneur.
Now Akshita Iyer is living on Chattanooga’s Southside and raising a second round of venture capital to build out the next phase of Ome, her company that turns ordinary stoves into internet-connected smart devices.
“It’s all about the home being a safe place,” Iyer says, pointing to the proliferation of smart devices that govern everything from doorbells and thermostats to lights and locks. “Why not appliances?”
In 2016, Iyer was living in North Carolina, where she and her husband had met as students at Duke University. During a visit, Iyer’s mother accidentally started a house fire when she forgot to turn off a stove burner. That mishap ignited Iyer’s desire to make kitchens safer and more efficient using technology.
“Step one was to solve our own problem,” Iyer says. “We thought it was cool, and we thought we could build something, even if we were the only ones who ever used it.”