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Piramal e‐Swasthya

Attempting Big Changes for Small Places ‐ in India and Beyond

Case Analysis Report by

Group 1

Raghavendra      15010XX

Mukhesh             15010XX

Sandeep              15010XX

Aman                    15010XX

Raju K                    1501033

Introduction

Anand Piramal, a native of Mumbai, belonged to a respected business family originally from Rajastham state in northern India. After studying in University of Pennsylvania, returned to India were he founded a rural healthcare start-up, Piramal e-Swasthya (PeS), which aspired to “democratize healthcare” in India. “If Henry Ford could take carriages off Americas’s roads and build cars for the masses in the United State then why can’t India deliver health care to the 70% of its citizens who lack access to it?” – This is the question he asked and started the Pes.

The Organization value

PeS motto is to provide services to all villagers whenever needed, as fast as possible with low cost of fees. Their values are social service, helping the needy.

Organization inputs are came from the investment of $500,000 initially. Piramal teamed with a handful of specialists, including an Indian-born, U.S.-based business school professor, to design and implement a new service delivery model. The solution trained local women to become village health providers, using communication technologies to coordinate with a call centre in Mumbai where paramedics entered information into a software program to generate diagnoses and suggest treatments. PeS recruited women from the villages and given training to them by paying Rs. 1500 as salary.

Parimal and team studied the complete environment in which India and Rajsthan health condition is. Piramal and his team possessed native knowledge of the country and of the health sector, performed market research, and attuned themselves to local contexts and stakeholders. In March 2008 they began pilots in 40 sites, with the hope of scaling 100,000 villages.

With this data he has connected with local doctors who are there in the villages to send the patients of PeS to them if they are need. Parimal and team has taken a intial surveys regarding the services in which they came to know that the villagers are satisfied with the services and 15% to 20% people are repeated patients.

PeS team bought the initial material required for training and the equipment that the sahayakis (trained agent) used for check-up. This equipment is given to the sahayakis, with small amount of deposit. The program charged a nominal fee for services plus the price of medicines from the patients. As a result, village patients would get quality healthcare at an affordable price. Organization’s conversion process with all these materials was established.

PeS targets the Organization’s outputs which are best services in low cost, services when needed, faster access to the database and experienced doctors. With the small profit they got PeS is giving the salary to the Sahayakis.

The villagers are the customers to the PeS. PeS has tie-ups with other companies for medicinal needs. PeS team created a good supply chain for distribution of medicines and equipment. PeS created a backend infrastructure in Mumbai. By this the PeS is ready to scale to 10,000 villages.

Situation and Barriers

This venture met with unexpected difficulties. They had lost 26 of the 40 villages from the original pilot, while adding only 60 more. They could not continue to spend $500,000 per year on money-losing project, no matter how noble the purpose is. The venture is slowly going towards extinct.

The venture faced different type of issues. First, we need to consider the cultural system in India. The Indian culture is complicated with castes, religions, regions, languages and etc... Women are not encouraged to go out of the kitchen. This is highly followed in Rajasthan, where Piramal started his venture. Due to this reason so many women are not allowed to become Sahayikas, who are the local point of contact for the treatment. A good number of women came out of the circle and trained to be sahayikas. Piramal offered Rs. 1500 to the sahayikas, for which few women allowed to work as sahayikas.

The Piramal e-Swasthya (PeS) team experimented with incentives to generate demand, but patronage attitudes – on top of social constraints – created barriers. Many sahayikas knew that the Piramal family was affluent and assumed they could afford the expense. While Piramal name encouraged the trust in service, it also created expectations of charity. Furthermore, since caring for one or even three patients a day was not full-time work, some women got involved in other activities, creating the perception that the PSS nurses, like the providers at public clinics, were not available.