Dr V Mohan’s eye for quality par excellence

Dr V Mohan, Diabetes Specialities Centre’. The Madras Diabetes Research Foundation

Dr Mohan, your centres are known to be driven by specialised research and innovation in diabetes care. Tell us what sets you apart and what lessons young entrepreneurs can learn for Dr Mohan Diabetes centres as a brand?

While the primary aim of our institution is to provide world class healthcare at affordable cost to the community, this is the work done by our clinical unit, which is known as ‘Dr Mohan’s Diabetes Specialities Centre’. The Madras Diabetes Research Foundation, our sister concern, undertakes research on diabetes on a wide range of subjects ranging from clinical diabetology, epidemiology, complications of diabetes, genomics (genetics), prevention of diabetes, discovery and innovation in producing newer treatments, and healthier food products for diabetes. From the beginning, research has been a passion for us because I firmly believe that today’s research can translate to tomorrow’s practice. We also believe in giving back to the society and hence, we do a significant amount of charity, which is mostly done in collaboration with the Sri Sathya Sai Seva Organisation. We have also conducted thousands of free diabetes camps to help the poor and needy. Finally, our Education Academy conducts various courses for physicians, ophthalmologists, dieticians, educators, lab technicians etc. and this has helped in capacity building to tackle the diabetes epidemic in India.

What are the core values that initiate your company’s growth?

We strongly believe that quality should be the most important driver of our growth. We therefore, spend a considerable amount of time and money trying to establish high quality systems and try to ensure that this quality is maintained as we grow. We also try to be as ethical as possible and keep the patient at the centre of whatever we are doing. Finally, we teach all our staff the basic principles taught by Bhagawan Sri Sathya Sai Baba namely ‘Love All, Serve All’, ‘Help Ever, Hurt Never’. All these help to create a culture of love and compassion within the organisation which we would like to retain as we grow.

Company fact file

1. Number of years in India: 27 years
2. Number of employees: Over 1500
3. Number of hospitals: 41 branches
4. USP Pioneer, innovation and high quality, diabetes care

Tell us about the company’s major achievements-measurable results in the last 3-5 years?

Our achievements can be classified under different heads.  In healthcare, we have now become the largest diabetes healthcare provider in the world. Currently, we have 41 branches and over 420,000 patients are registered across these branches. The entire patient medical records are electronic which helps to collect data on the diabetes care outcomes and streamline processes. In our research, we have been trying to do cutting edge research on diabetes. We have recently developed a department of Precision Diabetes. We are thus, able to accurately identify the exact type of diabetes that every patient has. The treatment is then tailor made according to the type of diabetes the patient has. We have also trained a large number of healthcare professionals – over 15,000 doctors and over 7500 diabetes educators. Finally, we have also been able to provide free or subsidised treatment to a large number of poor and needy patients with diabetes.

Tell us about your expansion plans and their value addition to the rural healthcare sector?

Last year, we received our first round of private equity funding.  At that time, we had around 20 branches of our centre. Today, we have 41 branches and we are poised to reach 100 branches in the next few years. We have our presence in all the five Southern states of India and also in Orissa, Uttar Pradesh and Delhi. We are shortly expanding to the Eastern part of the country and have plans to establish centres in West Bengal and later in the North Eastern states of the country. We are also now establishing our presence in the tier II and tier III towns. We have a unique Chunampet Rural Diabetes project at Chunampet in Kancheepuram district which has been running successfully for the last 10 years. We want to expand on that model to reach more rural areas in India.

What are the strategies adopted by the company to achieve these goals?

We have been slowly expanding the bandwidth of our organisation by developing teams to look after each of the activities of the organisation. We have also invested heavily in IT. We are now developing a new app which will help to connect with patients better. Extensive training and inculcating the principles and ethics of the organisation across the whole organisation is one of our most important strategies.