BUILDING TRUST

Dr. Devi Shetty set up Narayana Health to make healthcare more affordable. With steady growth over the years, he is now setting sights on expanding abroad

- BY NEETU CHANDRA SHARMA

In 1989, WHEN Dr. Devi Shetty left England and returned to India, the cardiac surgeon had no plans of building a hospital empire. He was content working at established institutions. But he was troubled by one question: why was quality healthcare a privilege tied to wealth?

During Shetty’s early medical training, he had assumed that as a country grew richer, healthcare would naturally become more accessible. That was not the case. “I saw the richest country in the world, the United States, struggling to provide healthcare to its citizens. That meant that India’s becoming rich would not necessarily translate into affordable healthcare for everyone.”

That realisation turned into Shetty’s life’s mission. He wanted to build a system where healthcare was not a luxury but a right. “My only objective was to bring down the cost of heart care for the common man in the country,” says 71-year-old Shetty.

Shetty’s father-in-law, construction magnate Charmakki Narayana Shetty, offered to fund his first hospital. What started as a single hospital in Kolkata soon expanded to Bengaluru and beyond. But Shetty, Founder & Chairman of Narayana Health, never imagined that his venture would scale to its current level. “We thought we would build one or two hospitals and see how it goes,” he says. “Many factors came into play, and a lot of good people joined the mission. We reached this level mainly because the country was growing. When the sea level rises, big ships go up, and so do the small boats.”

Today, Narayana Health operates a network of 42 healthcare facilities in India, with 5,098 operational beds. And it is now looking to expand abroad.

A MODEST START