Lessons on Healthcare Marketing

Dr. Balasubramanian is the M.D. of Sankar Eye Hospital, Bangalore. He is an MBA from IIM Ahmedabad and has 43 years of corporate experience.

Dr. Bala Subramanian talked in depth about healthcare marketing and the challenges such as synchronizing demand with supply and delivering consistent service quality. He explained all the Ps of Service Marketing namely Price, Product, Place, Promotion, People, Physical Evidence and Process with respect to day to day operations and marketing activities of Sankar Netralaya. He elucidated how marketing of services is drastically different from marketing tangible products. In Mr. Subramanian’s words “In healthcare marketing how to make the organization consumer focussed is the key to success”. Every communication, every process and every transaction, right from the time the consumer enters the hospital premises in his vehicle to the time he is billed and discharged, must be carefully planned and designed keeping customer at the centre stage.

He illustrated the five dimensions of Service Quality namely Reliability, Assurance, Tangibles, Empathy and Responsiveness citing the example of Sankar Netralaya. He emphasised that Service Quality, which has three aspects namely Interaction, Physical Evidence and Outcome, does not give customer satisfaction in isolation; it is just one part of customer satisfaction - the other two being situational and personal factors. These lead to certain expectations by the customers. Sankar Netralaya follows a Gap model where the focus is to bridge the provider gaps between the expected service and the perceived service received by the customer. He reiterated “How successful an organization is in bridging this gap between promise and delivery is the measure of its competitive advantage”

He explained that the reason of existence of Sankar Netralaya is to serve the community but since it understands that in order to survive it’s important to raise revenue and be self sustainable hence its business model is a mix of Corporate and Community Service. The hospitals need support in the form of donations only for trainings and equipments, in all other respects they are totally self sustainable.

He signed off with the message that though there was strong scepticism that a charitable hospital can never attract corporate clients and hence its business model will not be successful, but by carefully embedding customer focus in every activity for the chosen target market they were able to dispel the myth and carve a niche for themselves.

It was a great learning experience and gave a bird’s eye view on service marketing and specifically healthcare marketing.

Mr. Rajdeep Sardesai adresses students on 'Media & Governance'

The students of Institute of Management, Nirma University witnessed an exciting insight into 'Media and Governance' from Mr. Rajdeep Sardesai, Editor-in-Chief, IBN18 Network. Mr. Sardesai focused on the changing media forms, the ethical issues and the government’s role associated with it. "The primary job that journalism was expected to do was of a watchdog which has now turned into story telling". He also suggested as to how ‘journalism’ transformed into ‘media’ over the last decade. "More than 300 news channel are coming up with few of them waiting for licenses and media is becoming larger than life. In short, it can be called McDonaldization of media. Media is becoming clogged", said Mr. Sardesai.

Mr. Sardesai commented on the 3 C's on which the media is based on, namely crime, cricket and cinema. But the main concern echoed by him was the missing nature of the 2 C's which are conscience and creditability. He also spoke about the business models of media which according to him are still in nascent stage in India. He also pointed out that with Facebook and Twitter becoming so powerful, it is also, now a responsibility of the people to help create governance through media. The session concluded with a question answer round where Mr. Sardesai answered some queries of the young students. In all, the session was an exciting and informative way to catch a glimpse of the functioning of media in India.

xQuiZit conducts Cognizance to test the mettle of Nirmayans

After the long Diwali vacations, the Niramayans got a chance to exercise their grey cells through ‘Cognizance’ conducted by 'xQuiZit' on the 19th November. The theme this time was 'Commonly used Internet sites & Softwares' which tested the participants' observatory skills and acumen. The response to the quiz was fantastic whereby 22 teams participated and competed intensely. The winners of the quiz were:

1^st prize: Sonam Tilva and Vandan Kamdar (MBA FB&E), '11 batch

2^nd prize: Alok Jaiswal and Ashish Agarwal (MBA FT), '12 batch

The scores and the competition amongst the participating teams was a yardstick of their sharp memory and knowledge, in which most fared pretty well.

(Content Courtesy: Rahul Garg)

IMNU bags Best B-School Leadership Award at the 18th Dewang Mehta Business School Awards

Institute of Management, Nirma University has been honoured with the Best B-School Leadership Award. The award was conferred in the 18th Dewang Mehta Business School Awards held on November 24, 2010 at Hotel Tajlands End, Mumbai. The Institute received the award in recognition of talent and leadership among the Top Business Schools across the country.

The Institute has also been ranked as the 14th Best B-School of the country by a survey conducted by MaRS Monitoring & Research Systems and was published by a leading magazine in October 2010 issue.

The Dewang Mehta Business School Award recognises talent and leadership amongst business schools across India. The Awards are supported by Ms Shaila Mehta-Director, Onward Foundation for Dewang Mehta Awards. The Patron is Mr Harish Mehta, Chairman & Managing Director Onward Technologies Ltd. The Chairman of the Jury was Dr Prasad Medury, Partner, Amrop International.

Set up in the memory of the late Dewang Mehta, the award is in recognition of leadership, development, innovation and industry interface of the business school.

Pragaman'10- The Entrepreneurship Conclave

Pragaman’10- the Annual Entrepreneurship Conclave of Institute of Management, Nirma University was inaugurated on 24th November, 2010. This Conclave was organized by students of MBA (Family Business and Entrepreneurship) Programme of the Institute specially designed for young minds with entrepreneurial zeal. The theme for the conclave was ‘Initiators and Inheritors: Perspectives and Priorities’. It focussed on the challenges facing the initiators and inheritors of businesses.

The Chief Guest Mr. Chintan Parikh founder and CEO of the Ashima group and current President of the GCCI addressed the audience highlighting the difference between Managers and Entrepreneurs. The enlightening speech by Mr. Parikh was followed by an eloquent and informative talk by Mr. Sujeet Bhatt, the Technical Director of NexTenders. He shared with the students the learnings from his journey of entrepreneurship and highlighted the issues he faced while setting up his new business venture. He emphasised on the troubles businesses face during inception and provided guidelines to tide over the difficult phase.

Day 1 of Pragaman also saw the inauguration of “Swayam Business Clinic” which is a part of Swayam- the Entrepreneurship Club. Swayam Business Clinic is a platform for students to offer management consultancy services at no cost to business units and targeted specifically toward micro and small businesses. This will not only help the students apply theoretical knowledge to real business situations but also assist them to develop and fine tune their business skills under close supervision of experienced faculty members.

The second day of the Entrepreneurship Conclave 2010 started with a motivating talk from Mr. Amitabh Shah, the founder of Yuva unstoppable, India movement. Having given up a career in banking with J.P. Morgan, after pursuing MBA at Yale school of business,to begin Yuva Unstoppable he is proud of his venture. He provided guidance and motivation to students to build sustainable businesses and give back to society.

Mr. Manan Pancholi, Chairman of Webvertx who labels himself as a college dropout and a self made entrepreneur delivered the next session. He addressed the importance of planning and provided framework for effective planning.

A father and son duo, Mr. Anand and Anay Mashruwala of the now 99 year old enterprise, Venus Engineering Works addressed the students with their own experiences from a long history of managing inherited family business. Mr. Anay Mashruwala an alumnus of the Institute of Management, Nirma University, addressed the challenges of living in a shadow being a successor and the difficulty associated with proving oneself, he also explained the advantage of vision clarity associated with inheriting as knowledge is easily available in such case.