Striking a Balance Between Profit and Philanthropy
Tuesday, April 21, 2009
Bangalore: In December 2005, when Anant Kumar set up a hospital offering maternity and childcare services in Hyderabad targeting low-income customers by pricing services at about a quarter of what other hospitals charged, it was an instant success. Set up as a pilot 25-bed facility by a trust run by India’s largest condom maker, Hindustan Latex Ltd, the facility addressed a need that is felt all over India: affordable mother and child healthcare.
But when Kumar decided to expand the business—branded LifeSpring—into a chain by replicating the model at Moula Ali, a locality in the Andhra Pradesh capital, and went out in search of capital to back his idea, he kept running into a wall.
He was confident about the LifeSpring business model and scalability of such hospitals and made numerous rounds at banks, financial institutions and venture capital, or VC, firms.
