Five women entrepreneurs with breakthrough ideas in healthcare

If there is one sector which sees consistent growth every year, its healthcare. The figures state that the pharma industry was worth $100 billion in 2015, and estimates suggest that it will grow to $280 billion by 2020. Women too want a share in this pie, and there are plenty who are already in the business, at the helm of new technologies as well as health services. Here are five such ingenious women and their stories.

Anu Acharya, founder & CEO, Ocimum Bio Solutions and MapMyGenome.
Awarded Young Global leader in 2011 by the World Economic Forum, her vision led her to start MapMyGenome, a genomics startup that offers DNA testing service as well as personal genetic services.

A game changer in genomics, Anuradha Acharya

Ocimum Bio Solutions was the brainchild of three founders, the idea being to offer world class bioinformatics shrinkwrapped software.  Ocimum went on to acquire 3 international companies and specialized in creating Research as a Service model.  Genomics research was a service offered at Ocimum for many years and by 2010, we knew this technology could be a game changer in healthcare. After the initial gorundwork our plans got bigger and more ambitious, so we set up a new company, Mapmygenome,which started commercial operations in 2013. With the help of genomics research offer the consumer personalized healthcare solution that can help you know yourself and build healthy habits to bridge the gap between healthcare and personal health.

Dr. Shikha Suman, Founder & CEO, Medimojo.
A PHD from IIT Kanpur, her brainchild Medimojo was launched as a healthcare digitisation service, and one year later the Company is going strong.

After completing my education I wanted to do something in healthcare and realised that digitisation is the way forward since technology is evolving fast in our country.  Medimojo was launched to gain  first-mover advantage in this sector. The idea was to provide a patient-centric healthcare platform where individuals can store and track their families’ health online. So with our facility, one can store healthcare records in the digital format and get analytics on that.  Our goal is to bring a big change in the healthcare industry and work towards establishing an efficient population health management system.

Dr Bhavi Mody, CEO, Edupsyche.
Hers is a journey from clinical practitioner to healthcare entrepreneur, establishing an institute that provides mental health services as well as training for professionals. 

Making Mental Health their priority: Dr Bhavi Mody with her husband

I was in clinical practice and started work in the mental health space with my husband who is trained psychiatrist. We began by engaging with children with ADD and HD through our Vridhi Research Foundation, and slowly realised the need to have an outreach program at a larger level to address mental health issues. Edupsyche is an institute that bridges the gap between Mental Health professionals and those seeking Mental Health Services with facilities like Online Treatment and Teachers training modules. Integrating technology further with our establishment we introduces Edukonnect, a mobile application that aims to provide parents with mental health information to support Academic, Behavioural, Career and Developmental needs of children. Taking this a step further, we launched Mentagram – Mann ki Baat ab App ke Saath, a first of its kind mobile application for connecting Mental Health Professionals with Clients across the Country. Our mission here is to make Mental Health available, accessible and affordable to all.

Dr. Ruchi Dass, MD, Healthcursor.
A former Public Health Consultant, she used her expertise to start Healthcursor, a global strategy consulting firm, using Information Technology to provide research, advisory services and implementation support to public health efforts in emerging markets.

Talking Global healthcare initiatives: Ruchi Dass

I worked for 3 years as a Public Health consultant in countries  like Afghanistan, Burkina Faso, Bangladesh and Egypt.  During this time, I realised that there are several issues related to reach, accessibility, data capture, data synthesis, population surveillance etc. because of which it is nearly impossible to make any public health effort create optimum impact.  I studied Health Informatics to put forth a design of “technology enabled healthcare” and helped in making healthcare more affordable, timely, accessible and better. In India, what we called healthcare was not anything better than a mere doctor patient interaction. That reinforced my decision to make India my base and venture out on my own to fix these gaps. The sole reason to start on my own was the belief that there is a lot that can be done to make healthcare better by deploying technology and by putting my consulting experience to practice. I wanted to innovate and bring in new methods of healthcare delivery, building efficiency and access.

Madhu Khandelwal, founder & CTO, Mera Medicare
An episode of Satyamev Jayate got her thinking about affordable healthcare and thus was born the idea of Mera Medicare,  an e-commerce portal for selling medicines at discounted prices.

Championing the cause of Generic medicines: Madhu Khandelwal

Business and entrepreneurship always fascinated me and I always dreamed of creating something new and path breaking. An episode of television show Satyamev Jayate brought to light the fact that even though Generic medicines cost almost 40-60% less and have the same composition, doctors don't prescribe them to patients.  This gave birth to the idea of Mera Medicare, a portal where we  encourage people to consider purchasing Generic medicines so that they realise this option also exists. The aim it to reduce Medicare costs as well as bringing much needed awareness, transparency and efficiency to Healthcare.