Interview with Dr. Ashwin Naik, co-founder Vaatsalya

Your organization has done great work in building health services in rural and semi urban Karnataka. Please share with us the challenges you faced in setting up your enterprise.

When we established the first Vaatsalya Hospital in Hubli in 2005, our idea was to provide access to affordable healthcare services in semi-urban and rural areas. The idea was borne out of our personal experiences that most healthcare faclities are in Urban areas, and in small towns and villages where most of us grew up or live in, there is huge demand for quality services which is not met. Naturally, being the first company in India to address this market, we faced a lot of challenges and surprises.

When we started the company, the initial challenge was to identify likeminded doctors to work with, build our first model unit and to identify sources of funding before everything else. We were lucky that our first set of investors where professionals of Indian Origin who are settled abroad in the US, Europe and other parts of the world. These initial backers had the foresight to relate to the vision of Vaatsalya and also the desire to seed such an effort in India. Based on this initial funding, we were able to set up our first hospital and then work with some great doctors who are associated with us even today, with whom we evolved our business model.

Once the first unit was up and running and we started seeing the acceptance of our model in the community, we put together a plan to expand our reach and established two more units in quick succession with support from Aavishkaar, which is a Social Venture Capital Fund.
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