He entered the profession at the time when it was regarded as an ancient art, little better than faith healing, practiced mainly by amateurs and retirees. Dr Batra, armed with little more than a first class professional degree and a fierce determination started Dr. Batra's Positive Health Clinic in the
year 1982. Today Dr. Batra's has grown into a corporate chain of over 54 homeopathic clinics across 20 cities in India and abroad. The company has over 250 doctors including 40 MDs and specialists.
Dr. Batra speaks to DARE about his journey, values, plans and more.
Genesis of Dr. Batra's Positive Health Clinic
I belong to a family of doctors and homeopaths. When I became a doctor, I was offered a job of an academician. After this, I moved on to training under a doctor for some time.
Back in the 1970s, homeopathy had to still gain social acceptance. It was difficult to establish oneself under those circumstances, but I convinced a polyclinic to give me some space to practice. I practiced there for about two years, until the owner asked me to find some other place as he wanted to utilize that space for something else. I had no option but to setup something of my own.
Thankfully, some of my patients helped me locate potential properties that I can go for. I invested in a garage like property, 300 square feet in an area at Chowpatty. When I was setting up this Positive Health Clinic in 1982, I was in need of Rs 1,25,000 to buy a computer. At that point in time, no bank or institution was willing to fund, as it was widely believed that homeopathy cannot generate substantial revenue. The earning from my clinic, per month, was Rs 25,000 while the breakeven point was at Rs 67,000 per month. I had to borrow money at the interest rate of 3 percent per month (i.e. 26 percent per annum) to set up this small clinic.
We ventured into specialty practice around 1996. Because we were looking at only specialty patients, the number of patient visits came down to 3-4 per week, from what used to be 135 per day. Within one year, I made sure that this number increased. However, there were still patients who were in the waiting list for months together. It is at this point that I tried out the approach of multicity practice. This proved to be a huge success, and I was traveling from city to city. The next steps that I took were that of planning out expansion into more cities, and at the same time make this approach work independent of me. By 2001, I had achieved this and got out of practice and concentrate on building the organization. Today we have grown into a corporate chain of over 54 homeopathic clinics across 20 cities in India and abroad. The company has over 250 doctors including 40 MDs and specialists.
How do you ensure that all the doctors you employ follow the same value system?
There are two things to this. Firstly, we do not have any franchisees or partners. Secondly, I do not let any agents pick the doctors for my chain of clinics; I handpick them. Just to give you a figure, out of 100 candidates, only 3 doctors bag the job. Besides other things, I pick people who are psychologically strong too — the ones who are good with people. I interact with these doctors on a regular basis, and personally train them. I make sure that the values, the passion, and the drive is not diluted.
How do you go on about your expansion plan?
We have processes set in the organization which helps us in making these decisions. Typically, we would expand more in a year where we have had good business and fewer expansions in a year when we did bad. We do not rely on market research for this purpose. We have a very simple formula. For example, we come to know that X number of patients come from a particular area. The moment this crosses a threshold, we open a clinic in that area. That said, yes, a part of these plans also comes from the heart. It has always been an emotional decision to open
new clinics.
How do you deal with competition?
Well, to retain and expand business, one has to focus on patient satisfaction. One has to evolve with time. For example, we see doctors starting their own clinics based on or around our concept. But what gives us the edge is that we keep innovating from time to time and by the time these doctors catch on with these, we have moved on to more advanced levels.
Also, we have never been in the numbers game on number of clinics. Like I have mentioned before, we set our own standards and expand at our own pace. This lets us maintain high quality and low charge.
Any insight on opportunities and trends in the near future?
In India, the opportunities that lie ahead are huge. For the last 5 years, homeopathy has grown 25 percent as opposed to the pharmaceutical industry which is growing at 10 percent. India has the largest number of homeopaths in the world—3 Lac homeopathic doctors, and almost 10,000 to 15,000 passing more doctors passing out every year. The future is going to see a lot more acceptance for homeopathy and other alternative therapies.
Offshoot business opportunities in the ecosystem?
We are already trying to tap some such opportunities. For instance, all over the world, people are looking for non-chemical products. I think natural and chemical free products are going to be a good opportunity area to tap into.
Homeopathy, of course, is our core business. But we do not want to restrict our revenues to only homeopathy. For instance, we have plastic surgeons who are doing hair transplants—within four hours of walking into our clinic, a person can walkout with all the hair on his head, that stays forever. There are different stages of hair loss and for every stage there is a different treatment for the problem. We are trying to cover all the areas, rather than only treating hair loss at the early stage, which can be done through homeopathy.
I believe that these kind of day surgeries are about to see a boom in India; whether its Botox, liposuction, hair transplant, etc. We will see a lot of opportunities surfacing in this whole ‘feel good, look good’ industry.
What is the one thing aspiring entrepreneurs should avoid when starting up?
Dishonesty. I have always had zero tolerance for dishonesty. Someone who is not honest and truthful to himself cannot be honest and truthful to others; and therefore never be able to set up a value-based organization. Honesty and transparency are very strong values in a corporate company. These are very difficult to stand by in today’s world. If you are able to succeed in maintaining these values, you come out strong—because your fundamentals are right.
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