Despite massive growth in healthcare sector in India, huge gaps still exist in the supply of quality health care to the population at the bottom of the economic pyramid. The size of this population is approximately 4 billion globally. 4B Healthcare gets its name from this particular focus of its services to 4 Billion people, starting from the 750 million in India.
To accomplish its mission, 4B Healthcare uses following strategies:

  • Evidence based and protocol driven clinical practice
  • Optimizing input costs in establishing hospital infrastructure
  • Deploying carefully evaluated technology for its evidence based benefits
  • Developing a peripheral network of clinics and pharmacies to meet primary healthcare needs
  • Developing risk pooling mechanisms so that no one is excluded from accessing healthcare

To achieve this, 4B Healthcare is set up as a social enterprise where social impact and social benefit is the bottom line. Financial sustainability is considered critical in sustaining the social goal over a long period of time.
Financing of this enterprise is done by a group of socially conscious investors for whom social returns are more important than very high market returns. They express their commitment to the social goal by forgoing the market return they could have got if it was a purely commercial enterprise. Social return is monitored via specific social performance management programs.

Image by David Lapetina