The highlight of this past month has without doubt been an event that is a landmark in our organization’s history. Our director Sunita was invited to Mumbai to meet President Obama during his state visit to India. The invitation came from the US consul general’s office via email and when Sunita saw the email she initially dismissed it as a hoax or virus message! But then better sense prevailed and she took a second opinion from our HR head, who examined it and reassured her that it was genuine!
The invitation is noteworthy for several reasons. One because she was invited as part of a small and select group of entrepreneurs from innovative companies to meet the President, which is itself a creditable thing, given the number of entrepreneurial ventures coming out of India today. And given the many concerns that the US has had about outsourcing its healthcare and the skepticism and doubt with which international teleradiology was once received, it is a huge compliment to be given this recognition and appreciation by the most powerful man in the US and for that matter in the world. So it has been a cause for significant celebration within our organization. It is seen as a culmination of all the hard work and focus on quality that has epitomized TRS over the years.
The event itself which took place on November 6 in the Jacaranda room at the Hotel Trident in Mumbai (selected due it having been one of the targets of the horrific terrorist attack in November 2008) lived up to all expectations. To quote from the message Sunita sent to all of us in TRS after the event:
“It was a closed door session with no media and was held in the Jacaranda room of the Trident hotel right before his speech at the Indo US CII business summit. Also present were the US ambassador to India and the US Commerce Secretary in addition to the 8 CEO’s of Indian American companies (including Anand Mahindra and Ajay Piramal) and the 20 plus innovative entrepreneurs of India who had been invited. So only 35 people in the room!!
The discussion centered around how India and US collaborations have been working thus far, the roadblocks, and how partnerships have been good for both countries eg A solar company in India getting solar
power to Indian villages using solar cells manufactured in Atlanta with technology from Georgia tech University etc. The President listened to the examples and said “Cross pollination between both countries can increase jobs for both countries”.
After the panel discussion he chatted with the innovative Indian entrepreneurs (which included me) and asked what we did etc. When I told him that we were covering the nightshift for a 100 American hospitals from Bangalore and using technology to improve health care delivery around the globe-he said-“that is truly incredible, keep up the great work”.
It was an amazing experience to be up close to the US President for 45 minutes. It was a real honour not just for me but for all of you who have helped build a high quality, innovative health care company that we can be proud of. Today I felt there was hope for people like us in India….and that good work eventually gets recognised. To be told to keep up the great work and to have one’s hand shaken by the most powerful man on earth…..it was an incredible afternoon indeed!!”
After such an experience, everything else pales into insignificance and it is hard to return to terra firma. But the inspiration derived is intense and drives one forward to greater effort. As an organization we are fortunate to have been thus recognized and will savor this memory for a long long time to come.
I recently participated in a meeting at the Indian School of Business in Hyderabad. Organized by ACCESS, a , the meeting was held to launch a new entity, called CHMI, which is in turn setting up a website to bring together NGO’s in the healthcare center on a unified platform that is meant to allow them to function at a higher level and achieve more than if they operated on an individual basis.