The man and vision behind Aravind Eye Hospital

G Sankaranarayanan - Chennai

For Dr Govindappa Venkataswamy, the 83 year old chairman of Aravind Eye Hospital, based at Madurai, the inspiration comes from temples, quite naturally.

Dr Govindappa Venkataswamy

At Aravind Eye Hospital, the work place is sacred, where people offer selfless service with love and compassion. “Poor people go to the temple without hesitation or anyone’s recommendation,” Dr Venkataswamy points out, insisting that hospitals should have such spiritual, soothing and friendly atmosphere.

After his retirement as a government eye surgeon, Dr V, as he is fondly called, built a ten-bed hospital in Madurai in 1976. Today, it has over 3000 beds and till 2002, had given vision to around 1.3 crore people and performed 16 lakh surgeries.

Close to about 70 percent of its customers pay almost nothing. What the rest pay is not meant to cross-subsidise. Also this Rs 50-crore venture, operating from five cities (Madurai, Theni, Tirunelveli, Coimbatore, and Pondicherry) in Tamil Nadu, doesn’t depend on charity or government aid.

Aravind Hospitals is the single largest eye cataract surgery provider under one roof in the world. The success is so impressive that Aravind has become a case study that every graduating student at Harvard Business School is familiar with.

The dedication of the staff is the hallmark of Aravind culture. “Even when there is an unexpected increase in the number of cases on a particular day, we attend to them on the same day,” Dr V says. On an average a doctor performs 20-30 operations a day.

The paramedical staff is handpicked and well trained. They work in a systematic environment, enjoy community support (during their outreach programmes) and take pride in what they are doing, giving vision.

According to Dr V, he didn’t have any ‘growth plans’ when he started the hospital and things happened with the help of ‘divine grace’. However, from the beginning, he had a vision, “to provide sight to as many people as possible and to mass-market cataract surgery, the way hamburgers and pizzas are marketed by McDonalds and Pizza Hut.”

“There are 12 million blind people in India and a million of them are children. Through proper medical assistance, three-fourths of the blindness can be cured. If we are to provide sight to them, we have to mass market the medical products at a highly affordable cost,” he says.

His first job is to create awareness about cataract surgery among the villagers and then ‘sell’ the surgery and other services. Dr V says, “Now, people call Aravind a market driving entity, as opposed to the one being driven by market.”

“We had not known those management strategies. We are transparent, do not exaggerate anything to our patients and are truthful and sympathetic to them. We have nothing more than a helping attitude.” The acclaimed management guru, Professor C K Prahalad says that Aravind is a perfect example of how an organisation can be successful in doing business with the poor.

However, Dr V is not comfortable with the very notion of ‘poor’. “The moment you say someone is poor, you assume that you are one step above him,” he says.

Dr V starts his work with prayer at the hospital. “To prepare myself to be a better instrument for the divine, to whom I surrender myself.” Dr V says that in his school days Swami Vivekananda inspired him a lot and when he was pursuing higher studies Gandhian thoughts influenced him.

In 1950, he first got acquainted with Aurobindo Ashram, Pondicherry. “I can’t say in words the reasons that attract me to Aurobindo except that it is a deeper attachment.” When he built the Aravind Hospital in Madurai, he couldn’t offer any collateral security to get a bank loan. There were very few donors. And hence right from the beginning he had to concentrate on effective ways of cutting down costs and growing.

Aravind has built its own instrument maintenance division. It offers training for its paramedical and housekeeping staff so as to improve productivity. As much as 70 per cent of the operation theatre activities are performed by the paramedical staff, which enables the doctors to perform a higher number of operations. It even uses bamboo sticks in stretchers instead of steel rods.

Its manufacturing division, AuroLab, produces intraocular lenses(IOLs), which were earlier imported, at one eighth of the international prices. The company enjoys 10 percent share in global market of IOL. AuroLab also produces suture needles, pharmaceuticals and spectacles for its indigenous requirements.

At Aravind, cost effectiveness is the way of life and selfless service is the engine of growth. The energetic Dr V is ever enthusiastic. “I want to build temple-like eye hospitals in each district,” he says and asks “our ancestors built so many temples amidst so many constraints. Tell me who can match us?”