Pioneer in Health for Under-Resourced Areas

MY IMPACT

Shuchin Bajaj, MD, is the Founder of Ujala Cygnus Hospitals, a network of 20 hospitals across 16 cities in under-resourced cities of Northern India. The Ujala Cygnus Hospital network offers an unparalleled spectrum of preventive and diagnostic treatment options across specialties and has served more than 1 million patients.

MY JOURNEY

Driven by the mission of ‘equitable health care access’, Shuchin stepped out of the safety of a promising career as a doctor, soon after completing his MD in internal medicine. He embarked on his entrepreneurial venture of trying to provide the highest quality of healthcare to all communities, regardless of their financial, social or geographical status. He was urged on by personal stories of friends and family who bore the brunt of living in healthcare-dark zones of India.

Shuchin grew up in an under-resourced area himself and struggled to find a way out of poverty. His parents were refugees, and he grew up living in a hut made of plastic sheets. He had very limited access to healthcare as a child. Despite the challenges, his parents encouraged him to focus on education; his mother was a schoolteacher, who understood the value of education. After years of persistence, Shuchin went to medical school and studied gastroenterology. After graduating, Shuchin decided to dedicate his life towards providing high-quality, low-cost healthcare to communities in India who lacked access.

The Ujala Cygnus Hospitals provide healthcare access at about 20% the cost of a typical large city hospital, and depending on the circumstances, will sometimes provide free medicines for those unable to afford them. Before the Ujala Cygnus Hospital Network emerged, 200 million people in Northern India lacked access to adequate health facilities. In addition, more than 60 million fell under the poverty line each year in India due to healthcare emergencies. Determined to improve these statistics, Shuchin and his team traveled from village to village engaging in health outreach activities, including thousands of preventative screenings per day.

Shuchin’s advice to the next generation of social impact entrepreneurs is to not be discouraged because he has lived experience that everything turns out well in the end. He also encourages the next generation of social impact pioneers to spend more time with their families, and to protect time away from work. He shared that Pranshu Singhal, the Founder of Karo Sambhav, as well as Aniket Doegar, the Founder of Haqdarshak Empowerment Solutions Private Limited, are especially inspiring to him. Pranshu’s company focuses on improving systems of the circular economy in India; he gradually built solutions for plastics packaging waste, batteries waste, glass waste, and tire waste, among other projects. Meanwhile, Aniket’s company helps to provide easy access to welfare via a mobile technology platform which assists citizens and businesses to discover, apply for, and benefit from government services.