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

The story of babajobs - Episode II

Interview with TED Fellow Sean Blagsvedt, founder & CEO babajobs.com - Episode II

We continue our interview with Sean on babajobs, his business model, partners and more…

I get your point. How do you plan to expand your partner network? Have you thought about partnering with existing networks like Bangalore One for getting mentors?

We are definitely looking at partners. We are talking to a lot of telcos, handset providers and also MFIs (Micro Financing Institutions). Telcos and handset providers are different kind of partners, whereas we look at MFIs for giving us the mentors and also spread the word in the job seeker world. A lot of job seekers come through them. And a person who has taken a MFI loan automatically becomes a job seeker with trustworthy credentials.

We have already partnered with IDEA and Reliance and partnerships with other companies are in the anvil. We are looking at them to provide job alerts as a value added service.

Handset makers can play a different role as partners. They can provide an application that will run in their handset and enable the mobile owners to search for better paying jobs more easily. You know, Nokia offers an application to farmers that will alert the farmers on the price for the produce in the nearby markets. Such applications make a handset more attractive . Also Handset makers are looking at this segment now, because the existing segment will saturate sometime soon and they need to have a new pipeline.

I see that you are trying to work with every link in your distribution chain. Does make sense. What are your key learning in this venture? How did you learn and how have you changed?

Two things: First and foremost - Look at the market. Keep focusing on the market. Sell what they want and not what you think they want. The example here - We initially overestimated the impact of social networking on getting a job. So we created babalife and babajobs. We analyzed and found that most of the jobs were negotiated based on the price rather than on the social network. We took a sample of 130 jobs and found that they have got 20.1% better pay and without any social network background. So we are kind of retiring babalife. We are pulling resources from babalife and putting more resources on to babajobs.

The second key learning is - Our good intention cannot screw up the system. Initially we did not show the current salary of the job seeker in the search results. We thought that the employer will shortlist on lowest salary only and not consider other factors. But what we found was that employers called up job seekers and offered them less salary than what the job seekers were getting already. It defeated the purpose of our venture. So we decided to show the salary.

Yes. At the end, it is a matter of price. Your team must be putting in a lot of hard work. You deserve those laurels that I see on lot of articles in every media. How are you managing to find the talent and how do you retain them?

Thank you. Actually it is not that difficult here to get good talent. Our mission motivates people. We have applicants from babajobs and the vacancies get filled easily. The prime reason is that there is a mission and accomplishing that makes them stay with us.

In these days of recession every company is seeing a downward trend in attrition, for other reasons. In your case it is different and is more sustainable too. Good luck. What’s your plan for the coming years?

Lot of partnerships. And we are looking at going international too.

Ok Sean, something out of Babajobs. What’s your favorite pastime? How are you unwinding yourself?

Yes, I have a lot of them. I work with Industrial bodies like NASSCOM. Then work on community building, connect with Americans in India. I am a very people oriented person and I keep interacting with people on different levels and on different subjects. Yes, I have pet animals too.

If given a chance to restart your life from the beginning, what will you do differently?

I think staying abroad / staying away from hometown makes one more sensitive to humanity. I would have chosen to stay abroad early in my career. It would have enabled me to start this venture even earlier.

What does being a TED fellow mean to you?

TED inspired me because of their excellent track record of amazing speakers who are there for a purpose and are extremely good at their purpose. So it means a lot to interact with those super individuals obviously to improve myself and to get motivated.

Thanks Sean for your time and interest. I will keep you posted with links of other interviews too. Good luck.

Pleasure is mine. I look forward to knowing about the other TED fellows.

Sean can be followed in twitter – http://twitter.com/babajob

His blog is - http://seanblagsvedt.blogspot.com/

The story of babajobs - Episode I

Interview with TED Fellow, Sean Blagsvedt, founder & CEO babajobs.com - Episode I

Do you remember how you hired your household help, cook, driver or a baby sitter? For most of us the experience could be almost the same. We ask our neighbors to suggest one; we put in a word to the apartment watchman; we inform our friends in the city and seek their advice. We could have also contacted an agency which provides such services.

Well, could you ever really say, that you are a competitive employer or that you truly verified their credentials and their salary claims? Do you even know the actual going price for the job that you are offering, in your locality?

If you’re an employer from a software company searching for employees, then there are comfortable answers to these questions. But what about the informal sector of domestic help and services? Well there is babajobs.com.

Babajobs is a job board for all prospective informal sector employees looking for jobs and employers who are seeking such services. The man behind this fantastic idea is Sean Blagsvedt.

When I got to know that I have to interview him, I was pretty curious to find out how this model works. I was curious, how and why Sean, an American by birth, got to start this venture in India.

Sean has an illustrious career and an infectious spirit. He is someone who has applied a proven solution to an ignored segment and is truly making a change.

He says technology's primary principle should be to elevate the standards, the standards of living. With over 3,00,000 jobs advertised and over 50000 seekers registered, all with in 1 year in business, he can say with pride, he is on track to accomplish the mission.

Sean was recently selected as a TED follow, and very agreeably, joined the list of great visionaries and thought leaders of our age. It was interesting to listen to him speak about this venture. Following are the excerpts from the interview. I intend publishing them in 2 episodes:

Babajobs had its origins with your idea of linkedin for informal sector of employees. Who heard about this first and what was the reaction? How did you assemble the team?

Babajobs started with an idea when I was working with Microsoft. As part of the team that I worked for, we were looking at how Technology can be utilized in an effective fashion for social issues. Thats when we came across a paper based on the research of 3500 families in Rajasthan. The paper analyses how families get in and out of poverty. The drive to get a family out of poverty came with a Job. Usually the poor people get their jobs by some reference. It is an informal social networking. I looked at a possible solution for this through technology. The solution meant digitizing of all jobs, digitizing the job seekers information and this solution will make finding a job much easier. And then I kept looking for the like minded people who will be able to validate the idea, contribute on execution and so on.

How long did it take for you to bring the idea into fruition?

Almost 3 years.

Why in India?

Because I was already living in India and I liked living here. The market was existing already - the target segment - people not extensively educated and looking for a better paying job in the vicinity is definitely big here. There was a need and I thought I had a possible solution. And India was the hub where developing a software solution is much easier. In the United States which is the other place I could have done this, this kind of site would be used by the immigrants. However the numbers is nowhere near India.

It is good to know that you like being here. How are you managing this language diversity? Particularly your target segment is full of people from different linguistic background.

We are having multilingual postings already. We support Tamil, Telugu, Kannada and Hindi. But when we see people who are using mobile, looking at SMS and so on the need to give in other languages is usually minimal. Those who anyway come to a mentor for looking at vacancies anyway will get the details translated to them by the mentor. So again the need is minimal. What is a definite plus is to have a voice over portal and not simply a call center that we currently have. We are working on that portal and will soon be ready.

Whenever we look at hiring someone who is going to be at home, may be in our absence too, security is a big concern. How are you able to gain the confidence of employers?

We offer different services for this. These offers are of course based on the employer's requirement. For those job seekers who come to us, either to our office or to our mentors, we look at a set of documents, scan them, take a photo and update the profile. We encourage putting up lot of references. These references will in fact enable them to get better pay. Apart from the references, for specific jobs like taking care of children, if the employers ask, we also do additional verification. However for jobs, for example the jobs in retail industry during this festival period, employers dont look at verification with so much importance.

We will continue with Sean in the next episode...

Whats up?

I have a purpose today and thats why I entered this blog. This is truly a wonderful opportunity that I got and I want it share it. I am part of the 15 member team formed by the well-known Kiruba Shankar. We are doing an amazing project. We are interviewing TED fellows and publishing them in our blogs, and in general the web. Each one has taken about 5 fellows each and are researching about them, framing our own questions and at the end we put it up here.

I am done with 2 interviews and I cant tell you how much I am excited about them. All the 5 fellows are exceptional. The first 2 I have taken are working in the Pyramid's bottom. Visions followed by appropriate actions result in nothing but wonders. I will present my interviews one by one and I hope you will be inspired as I am. I hope that I have transpired their thought process.

Any feedback and suggestions are welcome.

Parvathy

Fresh and Refreshed

Ok I have joined Shankar in this blog as a co-author today. 2 reasons why I decided to join him - 1. His blog lost life just before he got his wife, that is me :-) I think he did not want to impress me any more. 2. I wanted a podium. We thought atleast one of us would probably update and keep this alive.

Well I reasoned it out for myself! From now on, it is the treads of 2 minds united in letter and spirit.