For about a decade now, the big three medtech companies—Wipro GE Healthcare, Philips Healthcare and Siemens Healthineers—have desperately tried their luck in rural India. And had little success.
They’ve made repeated attempts to sell everything from ECGs to X-rays and infant warmers to the rural population.
So, when S Ganeshprasad, the then-director at GE, spotted Aravamudan Krishna Kumar, the then-managing director at Philips, at a radiology conference in 2015, he was curious about Philips’ latest attempt.
After pleasantries, Kumar told him, “Ganesh, our rural experiment failed. It’s so difficult, you know, to maintain.