We Want Diagnostics Science to Reach Everyones Doorstep in India: Ameera Shah

In the fast changing ecosystem, almost everything is becoming costlier and beyond the reach of those in the average income bracket group. Be it quality food or quality health to live with, life for the common man is becoming tough by the day. Virtually no aspect of our life is untouched by the inflationary economic conditions. Living a healthy and disease-free life has become a luxury for most. The rat race for earning more and more has taken its toll on health and a joyful living. The need for an immediate situation has become imperative. More often than not, people forget to assess the requirement of their body. The symptoms of impending disease go unnoticed until it becomes too late. All the earnings are exhausted in meeting the material necessities of life ignoring the necessities of a healthy living. With each passing day, the gradual decrease in the efficiency of body leaves most of us with lesser zest for working. Little or no time is virtually invested in keeping our body in good shape. The silver lining is that awareness towards health in at least metros is increasing. More and more people are now flocking to diagnostic centres for regular health check-ups. People are becoming conscious of keeping good health. Professionals working for the corporate are regularly subjected to health check-ups resulting in lot of preventing measures for any impending disease. However, this trend is yet to reach in Tier-II, Tier-III cities, small towns and rural areas where awareness towards health is minimal. Various government bodies and NGOs are engaged in improving the awareness level of people living in smaller townships. Some of private companies especially who are engaged in the health business are striving to increase the health awareness among the common man not only in metro cities but in the TierII, Tier-III and smaller towns. Metropolis Healthcare Ltd, a multinational chain of diagnostic centers, is one such business house which is relentlessly engaged in bringing health awareness amongst the common man. Metropolis aims to reach every corner of the country with its message of keeping good health by affording them to regular health check-ups. With this aim, Metropolis, started with just one diagnostic center in Mumbai, has today a chain of 60 state-of-the-art laboratories across the globe. Metropolis today caters to more than 10,000 small labs, nursing homes and hospitals, over 20,000 consultants and processes more than 10 million tests annually. Metropolis Healthcare Ltd. was founded by Dr. Sushil Shah in 1981. The Board of Directors includes Dr. Sushil Shah, Dr. G. S. K Velu, Ganesan and Niten Malhan. With the vision to become global network of highly automated and sophisticated diagnostic laboratories, synonymous with cutting-edge technology, accuracy, efficiency, unparalleled customer service

and above all a stringent ethical code, the Metropolis team has come a long way. Metropolis Healthcare is India's only multinational chain of diagnostic centers across India, Sri Lanka, Nigeria, South Africa, Bangladesh, Nepal and Mauritius. It provides around 4500 specialized tests under a single roof ranging from oncology to genetics, molecular biology and immunoassays using best-of-breed and latest diagnostic equipment. Metropolis Healthcare Ltd has also been recently voted as the sole recipient of the Frost & Sullivan - 2010 India Excellence in Healthcare Awards - diagnostic services company of the year. At Metropolis, we support the global endeavor to fight disease by incorporating cutting-edge technology and practices that work hand-in-hand with our awareness drives and health check up camps, says Ameera Shah Patel who is the CEO and Executive Director of Metropolis Healthcare Ltd. Metropolis has a variety of services related to every aspect of health check ups. Our services include clinical laboratory medicine, radiology & imaging services, hospital laboratory management, central laboratory services for clinical trials, site management services, home health services, preventive health check ups and remote pathology testing services, adds Ameera. Ameera, who has been the instrumental in the company's exponential growth, has the business management degree in 'Finance and Management Information Systems' from the University of Texas at Austin. She started her career at Talent Hill and Alticast. Later, she joined Goldman Sachs, one of the top investment banking companies in the world. Ameera joined the Metropolis in 2001 and set up a strong purchase and IT department. She has played the key role in augmentation of allied services like Site Management Services and Central Laboratory Services for Clinical Trials, Hospital Management Services and Home Health Services. Ameera Patel is the winner of the McKinsey Case awards and also received the 'Young Achiever of the Year Award 2006', a recognition given to non-medico professionals under 40 who have contributed to the development and success of healthcare services. One of the important achievement after her appointment as CEO was the investment of $85 Million in Metropolis by Warburg Pincus which is a leading global private equity firm Ameera in a brief interaction with SME WORLD discussed about her strategy of growth and the achievements. You successfully established the marketing team at Metropolis and the company has come very long way. How has been your experience so far and how have you been motivating your team for such aggressive growth? It has been very fantastic experience during last nine to ten years. We had only one laboratory in 2001 but since then we had grown very rapidly during the 2003-2007. Not only establishing the sales and marketing team which was only one part of it, but we also collaborated with various partners to expand our network. We also started many new services that we were offering before. My overall experience has been very impressive. Our objective is to create an institution

for which we need to have the right people on board with like minded. You have to give them objectives and then give them the independence to do the experiment. There may be some steps wrong but there will be more right steps and this is the way through which an organization can grow. What abilities you have been seeking while recruiting marketing professionals for Metropolis team? Marketing is more about the branding, pricing and promotion. We have been many below the line activities for trying top creates experimental and experienced marketing with our customers and clients. The sales people of course go out to meet the doctors, labs and hospitals who have been doing well in their areas. We look for both kinds of people, one, who take the initiatives their selves. They are such peoples who have burning desire to achieve something more than what they have achieved in past. If your sales peoples are such pro-active then you have a marketing team of good quality. What has been your experience abroad? We currently have the diagnostic centers in Sri Lanka, UAE and in South Africa. We basically identified the markets in Africa, Middle East and South Asia. We are also focusing on the emerging markets where pathological services are expected to grow. We have created partnerships in these three nations and with them we are growing in a consolidated manner. The overall experience has been good because we have got very good partners. To grow in any country you need to have the local partners who have the understanding of the local markets and it makes the business easier. What difference you have noticed in terms of trend of need and service for diagnostics of the people in India now and ten years ago? If you look on the scenario that was ten years in India, people used to go to diagnostic centers in morning or in lunch time which used to be closed but they had to stay there to open. In the evening they had to collect the report from the center. It was the time when the service was not very important factor. But now the situation is that the people need not to come out from their home for diagnostics. We send our men to collect samples of blood from their homes. Then after checking we send the report in their house, or e-mail them or sometime fax them. The major change that have taken place from the customers points of view is that all the tests that are required are available in India in contrast that they had to send internationally. Second change that has taken place is the level of service has become very-very high. The diagnostic cost and affordability factor for the common man is rising. Will there be any change in days to come? No it is not true. I think the charges for diagnostic services have risen as the inflation stood during the last few years. In fact you can find that diagnostic charge is going down every year

and reason behind is that the diagnostic is the game of volume. So what happened, if someone has bulk of services, the cost per test actually comes down. Usually we start a new technology; prices are high because there are only few samples coming. Then we start educating people and doctors that why this test is needed. Then doctors prescribe and the samples volume rise gradually. Then the prices come down for the patient. Today the diagnostics services are cure-centric not prevention centric. Do you see any change in the trend? See, we have all offering diagnostics for prevention as well as for the illness. The problem which has to change from the customer's points of view is their mindset. Indian peoples have mindset that they don't want to pay for anything in advance. That is why the health insurance services are taking time to pick up. There is also mindset of ignorance. People think that if they would not know about the disease that they are suffering from then it would be better for them. They find easier to avoid the problem rather than checking the problem and healing that. They don't want to change their life-style that could happen if they know about the disease that they are suffering from. So the Indian mindset is needed to change and we need to create the awareness among them. Has Metropolis been conducting awareness campaigns? Is there any CSR activity of Metropolis? Of course, we have been conducting many awareness campaigns on knowing your body and how we can help you to improve your life style. We have been doing different free and subsidize health camps for the people so that they come know about their body. We have been organizing healthy heart campaign where people can check to know about their heart, physical consultation, etc. Similarly we do for diabetes, anemia, etc. We also provide almost free of discounted test for poor patients that can be preventive or it can be illness based. We have been educating people through booklets and published materials. We have partnered for many CSR projects to make sure the health of the poor peoples have been taking care of. What is the scope of R&D in your business? I think the scope of research and development in our business especially in coming years in very high because most of the chemicals and reagents that we are using now in our laboratories are very important and of the international standards. But we are penetrating in smaller town and rural areas, the cost of diagnostic may have to change and for which we may have to do more research and development for Indian customers for developing our own chemicals rather than importing. This is the only way to make any service to make mass available in India. What are your plans and strategy for next level of growth on Metropolis? We are fortunate that we have been able to create a fine print across the country. We have secured our presence not only in India but abroad as well. We are looking at the three models of growth. First of them is the organic model in which we are starting more and more number of

laboratories like this year we have start 7-8 labs of which some of them are green-field which means new labs. We are starting in the cities where we were not present earlier. In 2011, we plan to start 10 labs. The second model of growth is to do the partnerships with the labs that already are working and doing well. For that we are panning to do acquisitions of at least 5 labs every year. The third model that we are adopting is to look at the new markets like Iran, Oman, Kuwait, other parts of Africa besides South Africa, etc. Today Metropolis is dealing with 15,000 patients daily and showing their interest in our services. So, we are concentrating in providing other kinds of services like, dental care services, etc. The life of today's entrepreneur is very sedentary. What message you would like to convey for them? The amount the engagement of today's entrepreneurs in their business activities and travel, quality of the food they are eating, late night and all-time stress are too much. They really don't understand what these activities are impacting their life. We take our body granted. For example if anybody finds himself as young and good looking, then he think he is ok. The only advice which I would like to convey is that these entrepreneurs need to include some kind of exercise; they require attention about the things that they are putting into their body and most importantly know your body to check for something wrong to fix it in timely and efficient manner. Because if don't know, you can't do anything. Also the age has become important factor. There was a time when people at 45 of age had not any problem but that was because of their healthy life style. Now from the age of 20 years, we all are prone to suffer all types of diseases and by the age of 30-40 we see all types of consequences. So we need to start looking at our body at much earlier age.