The Risk Taker

He founded Hosmac Consultancy at a time when healthcare project consultancy was not lucrative enough. Today, Hosmac has become the largest hospital consultancy firm in India

Dr Vivek Desai (42) Managing Director, Hosmac Consultancy India Private Limited, Mumbai

Born in 1966 at Kota in Rajasthan, Dr Vivek Desai acquired his MBBS from Rabindranath Tagore Medical College, Udaipur, DHA from TISS, DBM from NMIMS, Mumbai and MPhil from BITS, Pilani.

Why an entrepreneur?

He did not set out to be an entrepreneur. The responsibility of looking after the financial needs of a family on the teenaged Dr Desai, after the sudden demise of his father, made him business-savvy. But he was a risk taker. "I took a liking to business and investments as that was important to sustain home and education expenses. That lead to a mindset that it would perhaps be better to deviate from routine medical profession but grow in an allied field which will need a medical background," he says.

Before being an entrepreneur

He started his career as a doctor. In 1992, he did a four-month of Residency in Bombay Hospital, Mumbai in cardiology. Later, he worked as an ICU registrar at Shushrusha Hospital, Mumbai for nine months. It was at PD Hinduja Hospital that he wore the mantle of a hospital administrator as Administrative Medical Officer. As he did not want to tread on the conventional path, in 1994 he joined Hospic, a fledgling consultancy company in Mumbai. After a year when he decided to leave Hospic, "due to some difference of opinion in working methodology," he was jobless for some time. It was Dr CAK Yesudian, HOD from TISS's Health Services Studies (HSS) cell, who encouraged Dr Desai to continue in consulting business. He also bailed out the unemployed Dr Desai by appointing him as a part-time faculty in the HSS department as course co-ordinator for the evening programme of diploma in hospital administration.

The first move

In 1996 when new hospital projects were not that abundant and thus hospital consultancy was not that lucrative a business, this risk taker decided to start his business in hospital consultancy. He formed Hosmac as a private limited company instead of a proprietary firm. It was a ‘one-man show’ then. He began working from his small one-bedroom house in Mumbai with a sum of Rs 15,000. At that time, he used to get work related to feasibility reports and market research. The first report that he prepared was for Dhirubhai Ambani Hospital at Patalganga.

The year 1998 was a turning point in his life as he was asked to design Asian Heart Institute, Mumbai. "It was a challenge as we had never designed even a small nursing home and were asked to design a 4 lakh square feet tertiary care hospital. Failure would have sealed our fate," says he. Slowly, he started bagging consultancy projects like Dr LH Hiranandani Hospital and Godrej Memorial Hospital. He never looked back since then.

Over the years

From a one-man company, today Hosmac has proliferated to have a team of 120 people with offices located in Mumbai, Gurgaon, Bangalore, Kolkata, Guwahati, Patna and Dubai. Hosmac expects to post topline of Rs 20 crore this year, but Dr Desai is hopeful current projects and the new ones in the offing will take the topline to Rs 100 crore by 2010. In the ninth year of operations, he felt the growth was stagnating and he needed to push Hosmac to newer challenges. "I decided to look for some private equity and finally got funding owned by erstwhile owners of Gujarat Ambuja Cements," he informs.

Fears and apprehensions

His major fear was that hospital consultancy was an unknown service and he was too young to be called an expert providing consulting inputs.

Overcoming roadblocks

The major roadblock faced by him was operating in a stagnant healthcare industry for the first five years when most of the business was from charitable trust organisations who were difficult customers in terms of paying fee. "Since I aimed at growing fast, the only option was to keep diversifying which helped us by generating funds for growth through different types of services and also kept us ahead of the competition," says he.

The inability to get high-profile architect to work as a full time professional in his firm still poses to be a hurdle. For this, he is exploring the option of tying up with some international firms.

Mistakes made and lessons learnt

"Initially, we made the mistake of relying more on quantitative growth of head count, whereas we should have concentrated on qualitative talent. Lack of concerted marketing and brand positioning were another areas of neglect," he admits. He is correcting this by appointing a PR agency for better branding and positioning.

"Data security was not very good and hence some templates were duplicated by others. Slack follow up on receivables and hence had to battle large outstanding for which we had to leverage our assets to have better credit facilities with banks. Loose documentation in terms of signing proper contracts with clients whereby we had to deliver more than what we had envisaged. We now have a legal advisory which looks into all critical contracts," he informs.

Awards won

Udyog Rattan awarded by the Institute of Economic Studies in 2008.

Tips for entrepreneurship

"One should have clarity of thought process. The path can then be broken into smaller laps to be covered gradually. Be patient, know more about the financial downside rather than upside, learn to delegate early enough in the growth cycle, have good personal relationships with peers and clients, try to think ahead of the competition, spread your risks wherever you can and have good financial advisory," he suggests.

An entrepreneur that he admires in healthcare

Dr Prathap C Reddy of Apollo.

The road ahead

Wishing to explore the global market further, he has set up Hosmac Middle East FZ LLC in Dubai Healthcare City last year and is already doing work in Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Saudi Arabia and Africa. Hosmac Projects, set up for undertaking turnkey projects, is already constructing a quarantine hospital for the Mumbai Airport apart from designing and executing specialty departments.

At a personal level, his ambition is to set up an educational centre of excellence for healthcare management and research. Towards this end, he has already set up an NGO, Hosmac Foundation which is currently running a PGDHM programme in collaboration with PESIT College in Bangalore. "More such collaborations are on the anvil at regional levels," says Dr Desai.