{"type":"rich","version":"1.0","provider_name":"Transistor","provider_url":"https://transistor.fm","author_name":"First Principles","title":"Part 1: Viren Shetty of Narayana Health on becoming ‘worse’ to become better and other ways to fix healthcare in India","html":"","width":"100%","height":180,"duration":4120,"description":"Welcome to the first 2024 episode of First Principles! Though we’re only 15 months old, we’re also technically into our third calendar year, after our first episode in August 2022. A happy new year to you. Here’s to many more years of wonderful conversations, learning and growing.Our guest today is Viren Shetty, the executive vice chairman of Narayana Health—the publicly listed healthcare group that operates over two dozen hospitals across India. Refreshingly, Viren thinks about healthcare…as an assembly line. And there are many, many steps in this line. Many of these are very small...they seem unimportant. Even forgettable. Like scheduling an annual healthcare checkup. Or filling out a feedback form at your clinic. Or just waiting in line for your doctor's appointment. When I asked Viren how healthcare can be fixed in India, he pointed to this assembly line. Basically, what if you tweak every small step of this line a little bit? Small, unnoticeable changes at every step? He’s confident that the result will be a smooth, well-oiled machine that takes care of your health end-to-end. This is what, Viren says, Narayana Health is trying to do. It reminded me of Apple. Take existing technologies and make improvements while putting the user at the centre of the experience. Narayana Health is a name you might have heard, especially if you’re from Bangalore. It was founded in 2000 by Dr. Devi Shetty. It went public in 2016 and is valued at over US$1 billion.But what we know as Narayana Health today began as Narayana Hrudayalaya, a super speciality hospital with a laser-sharp focus on cardiac health. Twenty years on, however, it's changed a lot.In addition to its numerous hospitals across India, it's also venturing into health insurance policies, partnering with clinics and pharmacies, and building an ambitious bundled subscription plan for its customers. This episode is a first in more ways than one. It’s not just our first episode of 2024. It’s also the first episode...","thumbnail_url":"https://img.transistorcdn.com/aqHQlbGOocCP_nDcJquj_-u1p5E-6NRk2SdAwiXdEVs/rs:fill:0:0:1/w:400/h:400/q:60/mb:500000/aHR0cHM6Ly9pbWct/dXBsb2FkLXByb2R1/Y3Rpb24udHJhbnNp/c3Rvci5mbS8zMGQw/NzNkOTYwNWUzMjMy/NmUwZjgyMGRiZDZk/MDBhNC5qcGc.webp","thumbnail_width":300,"thumbnail_height":300}