Motherly Care at Vaatsalya

This is the second TED fellow whose interview is here. This time we are talking to Dr.Ashwin Naik. The last time when I had a smile on my face when speaking about doctors is when I saw Munnabhai MBBS. When I researched about Dr.Ashwin Naik and his venture Vaatsalya I felt how unfair I was to the Doctor Community. Politicians, cricketers, Software professionals, or even film actors can’t bring about a change that a Doctor or Teacher can. Vaatsalya is Dr.Ashwin’s way to change the face of the semi-urban and rural India in terms of affordable healthcare. You will definitely feel a sense of responsibility towards changing this World for good, after you read his views.

It is an often overlooked fact that 80% of Healthcare centres are present primarily in urban areas while 70% of the population is in rural areas. How did you sense this need?

I grew up in small towns across India (Haryana, Maharashtra and Karnataka), My parents still live in a small town in North Karnataka. Having grown up in small town surroundings and then studied and worked in Metros in India and the US, the disparity in healthcare facilities in urban and rural areas was always at the back of my mind. Most of my medical college classmates have graduated with advanced specialist degrees and the opportunities to go back to their hometowns and establish their practice was limited. When I sensed that there is a gap that we can fill and also build a sustainable venture, we got to work on the business plan.

Your previous organization is trying to have genomic maps to the problems of cancer. In my humble opinion, it is much more an intellectual stimulation to work for such companies. How did you come to terms with putting aside an intellectual calling and coming into a social calling?

If you truly believe that what you do will change the world for the better, in a small way, its equally intellectually stimulating, be it genomic research to decode the human genome, or to identify cancer diagnostics or to save lives of sick babies in small town India. Of course, it took a lot of time for my family to digest the fact that, the fat paycheck is gone.

What did you perceive as risks when you started this venture? I am sure the risks would have taken a new form today. How did you tackle the old ones and what are the new ones?

The risks that we anticipated were funding, doctors to join us and financial viability of such a venture. Considering that we were the first private company in India to focus exclusively on non-metro, non-urban areas and to plan on building a network of hospitals, all these risks were daunting. Fortunately, we found early backers in Aavishkaar, an early stage venture fund out of Bombay, who took the risk with us and put in the seed capital. Subsequently we got additional funding from Seedfund and Oasis Fund. Initially, we tapped into networks from our medical college (both Veerendra Hiremanth, co founder and myself studied at Karnatak Medical College), so the medical degree came in handy to convince some doctors. Eventually, after some false starts, we were able to figure out a model, and how to scale it up.

As we grow, now our challenge is to ensure that the same level of care and standards is maintained through out the organisation. We are now planning to expand to neighboring states and that brings its own challenges, of standardising systems and processes.

It was highly unexpected that your target segment will ever use the internet and much more unlikely that a facebook / twitter is even known to them. But a strong participation is seen in your websites / online accounts. How did this idea come and how has it improved your productivity?

Our social media involvement is primarily directed towards attracting talent (medical and non-medical) to our company. It allows us to create a continuous connect with potential employees, doctors and other team members who get to know us better, understand our culture and hopefully will join us. It also helps us to create networks within our organisation as the average age of our team members is 24yrs, and they are our ambassadors to the world.

I am sure that tie-up with micro financing institutions and micro insurance institutions is definitely in the anvil. How is it coming along?

We are in the initial phases of planning various pilot projects for a long term solution. At this point, we are acting as service providers to beneficiaries of Micro Finance Institutions who are covered by micro health insurance.

Low cost is sometimes interpreted as low quality. How did you tackle this?

Its very important for hospitals to build the element of trust with the customer and her family. Low cost is not an USP in the healthcare field, its affordable cost while maintaining high quality of service.

We heard uproars from the medical community when 2 years of service in rural areas was made compulsory. How do you view this situation in the specific context of employee retention? How are you managing to find talent and retaining the same?

Even though 50% of our customer base comes from rural India, all our hospitals are located in district level towns. While it is still difficult to attract specialists to work at our hospitals, its not as bad as rural hospitals. We ensure that we provide the right working environment, the right incentive and the opportunity to play a leadership role for each of our team members at the hospital or corporate level. This helps us to attract and retain the right kind of people to us, who love challenges and will put their heart and soul into getting things done.

I am sure you will have plans to go public, when you have more number of hospitals, may be across all South India. When are you planning to reach that target?

We are taking it one step at a time. We have significant presence in Karnataka with 9 hospitals, 550+ beds and 500+ employees. Our immediate plans are to expand to Maharashtra and Andhra Pradesh.

As a person, you must have felt - yes, this is what I wanted to do - kind of feeling many times. What will be the moment that you would put down first in this category?

I feel it when I see the passion in the eyes of my team mates. Its very satisfying when you notice that the spark you have ignited is now spread across the organisation. And you realise it from unexpected corners, eg. I got a call recently from one of the nurses at our hospitals saying that we should provide small blankets to new born babies so that their mothers can keep them warm once they go back home. Being part of an organisation where every team member takes initiative and ownership to spread the spirit of Vaatsalya is immensely satisfying.

What TED means to you? What is that one idea that you will stand up for anytime? Why is that idea so important to you?

TED always meant "imagination and change" to me. The one idea that i will stand up for is that we have to leave the world a better place than how we found it. I have always believed that it is within our reach and imagination to change what can be improved. It is important for me because by choosing to change something for the better, our entire life become purpose driven. Purpose creates passion and passion can move mountains.

Follow Dr.Ashwin Naik in his Blogspot - http://ashwinnaik.com/blog/?p=22 and twitter http://twitter.com/ashwinnaik