The Monumental Step
“A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step”.
My take on this famous proverb is that it describes two types of people. Those who dwell on “thousand miles” and get so intimidated that they don’t begin the journey and those who focus on a “single step” and make a start.
In 2013, Jagdeep Gambhir, a 25-year-old engineer decided to quit his lucrative job at Goldman Sachs and follow his passion of setting up a social enterprise to provide quality healthcare to those without access. Born into a family of doctors, Jagdeep had traveled extensively across rural India and had seen from close quarters, the pitiable conditions people lived in. He wanted to put his education, privilege, and resources to good use. By no means was it going to be easy, but he was ready to take the bull by the horn.
But the deeper he dug, the more Jagdeep realized that this was not merely a problem. It was a systemic failure of a colossal magnitude.
More than 1Bn people in India lack access to quality healthcare. 70% of them live in the 600,000 villages spread across the Indian subcontinent. These villages are poor and remote with barely any medical facilities. For most of them, the nearest doctor is more than 50 kms away. As a result, the majority of people living in these villages end up seeking expensive medical help from local untrained healthcare providers who often misdiagnose and mistreat the condition. Moreover, rural communities are tightly bound by deep-rooted social and cultural norms that are hard to break which makes any new solution extremely challenging to implement, irrespective of its potential to solve the problem.
“Where do I even begin?” He thought to himself.
What followed was a deluge of endless questions- which services to provide, what delivery model to adopt, how to tie in the resources, how to change age-old mindsets.
The task ahead was so complex and overwhelming that instead of leading Jagdeep to the drawing board, it ironically led him to a state of inertia. And after 2 years, Jagdeep’s dream was still only that. A dream.
Soon after, Jagdeep happened to meet a friend who asked him to prepare a funding proposal as he was looking to invest in a novel healthcare start-up. This conversation suddenly gave a fresh lease of life to an idea that otherwise seemed to be dying a slow death. With renewed enthusiasm and a clear objective, Jagdeep started putting together the building blocks of his healthcare platform.
He finally took that first step.
While studying the problem, Jagdeep had zeroed in on what he considered to be the root cause of the healthcare access gap in rural India- a severe shortage of doctors. There was a 65% shortage of doctors in rural India as doctors from cities did not want to move to the villages.
Meanwhile, the digital revolution in India had made the country the second-largest internet user market in the world with more internet users in rural areas than in urban!
So Jagdeep thought- “If the barrier was physical, why not solve it virtually? Why not harness digital connectivity to make healthcare accessible to people in the remotest parts of the country?”
He decided to launch a telemedicine-based e-clinic model where doctors in cities could be connected online with patients in villages for a virtual consultation.
What couldn’t be connected physically, could now be connected virtually!
And with that, he launched his first e-clinic in the village of Jaisamand in Rajasthan.
(Source: Karmahealthcare.in)
While the funding from his friend did not materialize, Jagdeep credits that chance meeting as being the pivotal moment that ultimately led to the birth of Karma Primary Healthcare.
Since then, Karma has come a long way. They have built a robust and comprehensive primary care system including a full spectrum technology suite to transform primary healthcare delivery in rural India. Today, they are present in 24 centers and are active in more than 270 villages across 4 Indian states. In the last 6 years of their work, Karma has touched almost a million lives.
(Source: Karmahealthcare.in)
As humans we are wired to think, to ideate, to create. But it is that monumental first step that separates the doer from the dreamer.
Imagine a world where all of us had the gumption to take that first step. We could create a world of 8 billion dreams and infinite possibilities.
So yes, dream on, but take that first step. After all, Aristotle rightly said- “Well begun, is half done”.
Or was it Mary Poppins? 😊
In conversation with Jagdeep Gambhir, Founder of Karma Primary Healthcare, an impact-driven, award-winning healthcare start-up, working towards its mission to provide equitable access to quality primary healthcare. Over 6 years, Karma has built a comprehensive primary healthcare delivery solution including a full spectrum technology suite to transform healthcare delivery.
