Doing well and doing good

Just few days ago I came back from my trip to Bangalore where I visited Artemisia Drive meeting. Except of the fact that I loved the city I really enjoyed the conference also. The best part was in meeting social entrepreneurs from India and listening to their stories. Having really business-oriented parents and working in AIESEC for 5 years I was all the time questioning myself what is more suitable and important for me ‘do good’ or ‘do well’. From one side my father who is trying to involve me in family business and just cannot understand the existence of non-profits. He still thinks that there’s a guy ‘on top of AIESEC’ who is cheating poor stupid students and makes money on us. From other side understanding that I won’t be able to enjoy my work if it’s only profit-oriented. I guess this is dilemma of lots of AIESECers: what to choose – make money or positive impact. The good news is that’s not a dilemma anymore: below are stories of 3 social business ventures I had chance to meet during the conference. They are all really different, on different stages of development, with different focuses. One common thing is that all of them
managed to do well (some of them incredibly well) and do good.

Narayana Hrudayalaya Hospital “The Henry Ford of Heart Surgery”

Dr. Shetty, who entered the limelight in the early 1990s as Mother Teresa's cardiac surgeon, offers cutting-edge medical care in India at a fraction of what it costs elsewhere in the world. His flagship heart hospital charges $2,000, on average, for open-heart surgery, compared with hospitals in the U.S. that are paid between $20,000 and $100,000, depending on the complexity of the surgery.

The approach has transformed health care in India through a simple premise that works in other industries: economies of scale. By driving huge volumes, even of procedures as sophisticated, delicate and dangerous as heart surgery, Dr. Shetty has managed to drive down the cost of health care in his nation of one billion. At the Narayana Hrudayalaya Hospital in Bangalore, Dr. Devi Shetty and his fellow cardiologists perform about 600 operations a week. They're making heart surgery affordable to some of the poorest people in India

Of course there are people on the Bottom Of economic Pyramid who cannot afford to pay at all for medical treatment. For them Narayana offers totally free of charge treatment! Dr.Shetty says that he borrowed idea for his business from McDonalds whose processes are highly standardized.

After visiting Narayana which is incredibly big (actually its not 1 hospital, its ‘Health City’ with lots of hospitals) one very distinct thought crossed my mind: everything on earth can be made affordable and accessible to the poorest! Heart surgery is one of the most expensive medical services. But by innovative approach to running processes it became affordable for everyone. Why the same approach cannot be applied to other things like food, shelter etc???

‘BookBole’ or how sharing can knock out inaccessibility!

The idea is simple and brilliant. Why not to create a social network for print and visually impaired people? 400 million print and visually impaired across the world lack of enough, relevant accessible content. Not just having more accessible stuff BUT having the stuff YOU need and want. Challenges faced by the print and visually impaired in getting content that is accessible to them. One of the main means of accessible content is digital format because as soon as you can have it on your computer machine can voice it up for you. It’s unbelievable but only 5 % of world content is in accessible format for print and visually impaired people! BookBole offers to connect print and visually impaired people around the world on the platform where they would be able to share accessible content of all sorts i.e. books, journals, class-notes, articles, blogs, audio etc and to connect with each and make friends, and to converse and collaborate around accessible content. 400 million people is huge market which is almost ignored. So isn’t it brilliant market opportunity? And is it a brilliant way to improve people’s lives?

Embrace, $25 premature infant incubator for the developing world

Embrace aims to reduce the mortality rate and improve the health of low-birth-weight and premature babies in resource-limited settings through a low-cost infant incubator. Every year, 20 million low-birth-weight babies are born; 3.5 million of them die, and those that survive often grow up to have low IQ, early onset of diabetes, and heart disease. A large number of these problems could be avoided by providing thermal regulation to these babies, which is the primary function of an incubator. The problem is that traditional incubators are often available only in major urban hospitals and clinics; even when hospitals do have these devices, they are largely in disrepair. Furthermore, a large portion of the population of developing countries lives in rural areas, where incubators are simply not available, given their high price point and the fact that they require electricity. Embrace is a sustainable non-profit organization that produces a $25 incubator designed to work in a primary healthcare center or at home. The product is an extremely cost-effective incubator device that requires no electricity and provides heat to an infant at a constant temperature, the key factor needed for survival. It has no moving parts, and is designed to work in rural healthcare centers and households.

Embrace team is bunch of people in mid 20 who came up with idea of baby incubator during of the classes at university. And they thought that it’s not that bad idea and maybe they should market it. And they did. Those people aren’t more smart or experienced then lots of AIESEC people I’ve met. They just spent a bit time to think what is really burning need in their country and how they can tackle it with very targeted and specific solution. Well if they could anybody also can!

If anybody got interested in social entrepreneurship field – approach me will be happy to share recourses and have some nice discussions.