Daughter's ailment inspired Clarke to turn entrepreneur

New Delhi, Aug 1: After retiring from cricket, former Australia captain Michael Clarke is now-a-days busy making people aware about asthma. His involvement in this area is linked to an incident from his personal life. Clark's daughter Kelsey-Lee had an asthma attack once when she was three-years-old. Since then Clark became serious about the disease and invested in a company that makes asthma identification tools.

Speaking to IANS on the sidelines of the MedParliament on Tuesday, the 38-year-old shared his journey and insights in healthcare entrepreneurship and the incident which led him to work on asthma awareness

"I was always interested in doing business. In the last 4-5 years of my career, when I was Australia captain, I had started to focus on different types of business. One day, my three-year-old daughter had an asthma attack and she started having breathing problems. At that point of time, I didn't know she was suffering from asthma as nor me neither my wife had asthma."

"I became anxious seeing the condition of my daughter. I then took her in my car and went to the hospital and there we found out she had asthma. I did not know much about this disease. But, I wanted to help my daughter.

"On one day, I met Vaani who was part of a start-up firm named Respiri. She came up with a device named Wheezo, which is effective in cure of asthma," he added.

The former Australia skipper further said he then began to study more about the device. "Once I got to know more about it, I was impressed by it and that's why I invested in the start-up."

"The medical sector was not something which I had thought about investing but because of my daughter's condition, I was attracted towards this sector and I wanted to help more and more people."

He also went to add that nearly 460 people die every year in Australia because of Asthma.