Indus Health Plus on a Noble Mission to Provide Preventive Healthcare Services

A pioneer in preventive healthcare, Indus Health Plus is on a mission to create mass awareness about the benefits of timely health checkup. It aims to make preventive healthcare services affordable to common man in India. Headquartered in Pune, the philosophy of Indus Health Plus is a belief that timely checkup not only saves individuals from premature death or disability but effectively saves their families from mental, physical and financial distress.

Indus Health Plus is the brainchild of Mr. Amol Naikawadi, Joint Managing Director, who envisioned the future of India’s health infrastructure with reduced overheads and decreased cases of non-communicable diseases. Indus currently runs 100 centers in 65 cities across the country. Indus popularized the use of CT scanning technology across a wider demography. This technology is the key to 70% of the health checkups, which detects the presence of lifestyle diseases like cardiovascular diseases in a non-invasive manner.

There is a touching story of loss behind the inception of Indus Health Plus which started its journey from a small room in Pune. Here does the story go in Mr Naikawadi’s words: 

Getting into preventive health checkup as a business was fairly coincidental, not a planned move. When I lost my father-in-law due to late detection of cancer at an advanced stage, it struck me hard that we could not save him despite all possible resources including health insurance, best treatment and money. This hard-hearted reality made me rue the fact that if the disease were detected earlier, he could have been saved. It impelled me to hit a road less traveled, a mission to spread the message that early detection through regular preventive health checkups is the key to lasting health and happiness.

Born and brought up in a small town, Mr Naikawadi was always keen to pave his own path ahead and confident that the right opportunity would come his way in due course of time. With a degree in Chartered Accountancy, he plunged into the world of business. An avid reader of management books and inspirational biographies, he had several feathers in his cap, including such prestigious honors as the Asia Pacific Entrepreneurship Award 2009, the Super Achievers Award from the Indira Group of Institutes in 2011, the Golden Peacock Business Excellence Award 2013, and the Service Provider Company of the Year Award in 2013. Mr Amol Naikawadi is a member of the FICCI Healthcare Services Committee.

The way Indus Health Plus has carved its niche in 65 cities across Maharashtra, Gujarat and South India from a small room in Pune has made many curious about the USP of its products. Mr Naikawadi says,

“We provide users with ‘Health Friend’ cards to take care of their hospitalization and medical expenses. A 2005 report by the National Commission on Microeconomics and Health states that prevention of diseases, particularly non-communicable diseases (due to lifestyle disorders), which incur high treatment costs, is the most cost-effective strategy  in a country like India with huge population and limited resources. We at Indus Health Plus are creating a successful framework for India’s health infrastructure to effectively tackle the burden of non-communicable diseases in the economically weaker sections. We provide preventive health checkup packages at much lower rates than many hospitals in India. We have also implemented the ‘Live Doctor Chat’ service to facilitate availability of doctors’ consultation.”   

Being pioneer in preventive healthcare which was almost unheard of, Indus Health Plus made inroads into the market through a number of challenges. The first challenge was to come up with an integrated model combining the strengths of hospitals, diagnostic centres and labs with a holistic approach to deliver comprehensive preventive health checkup services to masses at affordable prices. Apart from regular challenges of resource allocation faced by every new enterprise, it was challenging to sensitise people about the nature of non-communicable diseases and make them aware of their own lifestyle disorders. 

“We started from the grassroots level to overcome challenges just as charity begins at home. We began convincing our family members, relatives, friends and their acquaintances about benefits of preventive healthcare by arranging interactive sessions with doctors. The biggest challenge for Indus Health Plus, which still exists, is low-income groups’ sheer skepticism towards the importance of preventive healthcare. They believe that as they are healthy outside, they are healthy inside too. However, we continue our awareness programs to educate masses on how preventive healthcare can reduce suffering that might arise from minor health issues which many people tend to ignore,” says Mr. Naikawadi. 

Indus Health Plus knows no stop in its journey towards the goals. It’s all because of Mr Naikawadi’s vision behind the mission. It aims to achieve pan-India presence by concentrating on multiple location availability of its services. Evidently, Indus Health Plus is on an expansion spree across Mangalore, Trivandrum and Kochi in South India. The vision is to make Indus Health Plus synonymous with preventive healthcare all over the country. It is also looking to consolidate its presence in north eastern regions. While talking about the vision and mission of Indus Health Plus, Mr. Naikawadi says, 

We are driven by a macro ambition of facilitating preventive healthcare to more than five lakh people in the next 3 to 5 years. We are always trying to adopt new technologies for raising the bar of preventive health checkup quality. Our mission is not just limited to tier I and II cities but we are looking to conduct preventive healthcare awareness programs in smaller towns as well. Making our foray into international markets is one of our goals in times to come. Recently we bagged ASSOCHAM CSR Award in SME and other categories.

On a closing note, Mr. Amol Naikawadi says that Indus Health Plus was started to reduce mortality and health risks by propagating inherent benefits of preventive diagnostics. So they have no direct competitors because of such a noble purpose.