Franco Canseco is 13 years old, he is studying the second year of high school, he likes mathematics, physics, climbing, playing tennis and creating Dinosaur Parks in the video game Jurassic World Evolution. Franco is also a Mexican inventor who will bring the Neutónica band, a non-medical solution to help people sleep better, to the largest consumer technology fair on the planet, the CES 2022.
Franco will participate in the Eureka Park, the section dedicated to startups of the CES 2022, which will take place from January 5 to 8 of next year, in the city of Las Vegas, Nevada, in the United States. This inventor and entrepreneur will be one of the only Mexicans who will be present as exhibitors at this fair, which is considered the largest exhibition of consumer technologies in the world, in which companies such as Google, LG, Samsung, General Motors and many more.
In 2016, at the age of eight and after his problems falling asleep, Franco wanted to invent a device that would help him sleep more easily. The first Neutónica band that he created consisted solely of an elastic band that integrated headphones to reproduce music and relaxing sounds and that a year later, in 2017, he registered with the Mexican Institute of Industrial Property (IMPI).
“I spent the whole night thinking about various things and it gave me a lot of insomnia. It took me a long time to sleep and that’s where the idea came from, ”Franco said in an interview.
Franco Canseco will participate in CES 2022, in Las Vegas, Nevada. Photo: Courtesy
After winning several science and innovation awards such as the “Ideas made in Mexico” contest, organized by the Ministry of Communications and Transport (SCT) and the ESIALMAT Science Expo in Chile, in 2019, Franco began to have the support of doctors from different specialties, such as the neurosurgeon Eduardo de la Vega Violante, to optimize the prototype of the Neutonic band and expand the level of scientific evidence of its functionality from tests of neurophysiology.
The band Neutonic It includes a transmitter of artificial alpha waves with electromagnetic pulses of 8 to 9 Hertz, four tourmaline stones, a mask of total darkness and headphones that produce relaxing music created by Mexican musicians. With these four elements, the band promotes the ideal conditions for people with stress-induced insomnia to fall asleep within 8 to 16 minutes.
“The band allowed me to sleep less, relax more, sleep much better and have a better quality of sleep,” said the entrepreneur.
In 2019, Franco received an investment of 2.5 million pesos from the sharks of the popular television program Shark Tank. With this financing, Franco, his mother Erika Canseco and Dr. Violante created the Neutónica company, which has so far sold 5,000 bands in Mexico, the United States and Canada since February 2021, when the official sale of the product began.
“The best thing about this process has been helping many people sleep better, which is also reflected in their quality of life,” he said.
Franco and his company will search the CES 2022 meet more people and entrepreneurs who have also developed innovative products; in addition to trying to obtain a larger scale distribution and represent Mexico in one of the technology conventions that bring together more people from around the world.
rodrigo.riquelme@eleconomista.
