Sharp Sight Eye Hospitals was established in year 2002 with an objective to provide quality eye care in areas which were deprived of standardised medical facilities.
In an interview with G20, Deepshikha Sharma, CEO of Sharp Sight Eye Hospitals, talks about providing comprehensive eye care facilities. Excerpts:
Q. Deepshikha, you from modest humble origins started your career with TATA as a sales executive. Then become an entrepreneur via starting a single hospital, expanding it into a chain of Sharp Sight Eye Hospitals. Do share your journey the stuff dreams are made of?
A. After completing my post graduation from Delhi University, I joined TATA in year 2001 as sales & admin executive. As a fresher I was curious and inquisitive towards gaining as much experience in work as I could from that first ever job opportunity. And probably that was the time I got to believe about my potential of what I can possibly contribute to an organization. In year 2003, an offer from Sharp Sight Eye Hospitals changed my world. It was that day, and today I sit here as the CEO overcoming numerous challenges at different point of times. I was continuously juggling between work and my personal life back then, but all that hard work has gone into my passion for achieving a strong foundation for my career. My family has been a great support forever, trusting over my decisions about sustaining the career I chose to be in. I am grateful for all that I have in my life.
Q. Why is it in your expert opinion good facilities & goof quality eye care is only provided in Tier 1 cities. And somehow has not percolated to Tier 2 & Tier 3 cities?
A. Most of the times, what we see is people from smaller cities or townships travel to the metropolitan hubs to undergo important and crucial surgeries, or in that case just for regular checkups sometimes. The inadequate health infrastructure in smaller cities could possibly be because of economic stagnation, shortages of physicians and other health care professionals, or just be because of the disproportionate number of poor underinsured residents, and high rates of chronic illnesses. These places desperately need better primary affordable healthcare facilities to depend upon. And we are on our way towards changing this scenario. We provide eye care solutions to every strata of society, giving high quality eye care services at affordable prices. We were the first to offer comprehensive eye care at just Rs. 99/-, which is a major differentiator in the Ophthalmology space. We are thriving to reach the position where none should be deprived of treatment or surgery due to paucity of funds in spite of being a private organization, as we strongly believe giving back to the society is what we are about. We have recently ventured into Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities and have begun work for new settlements in Asansol, Srinagar, Jhansi, Jammu, Agartala, & Ranchi. Hoping to strengthen our foothold in underserviced areas over the next 3 years to mitigate the prevalent much needed unmet demands of comprehensive reasonable eye care services valuing health is foremost.
Q. You are an Indian brand that has gone global. How many hospitals do you have across India & abroad? IT is truly a moment of pride indeed for India?
A. Sharp Sight Eye Hospitals is a leading eye care provider in North India with nine centres spread beyond cities.
Q. Coming from humble origins how have you managed the aspect of funding & sustaining & drawing in a robust revenue stream in the hospitals?
A. Sharp Sight Eye Hospitals was established in year 2002 by two enterprising Ophthalmologists, Dr. Samir Sud and Dr. Kamal Kapur, with an objective to provide quality eye care in areas which were deprived of standardized medical facilities. After our first establishment in East Delhi, we took this structured formation of the company in 2012, till then it was a mid-sized private practice. If you ask me, we are strategic and that’s the only secret weapon for our reputation today. We have had this empire building brick by brick to create this flow of work that we put in the society. We attracted Private Equity investment for our ambitious expansion plans and will be over 35 centers in Tier 2 & 3 cities in the next 3 years’ time. Our work strength is 400 and will be over 1000 by next 1 year. We have our strong Digital presence with over 1 lakh followers on Facebook and have a rating of 4.8 on Google ranking. We can confidently claim that our business predictability is over 95% which I am sure would be amongst the top in the industry due to our continuously improving analytics.
Q. What advice can you impart for the young go-getter, vibrant, ambitious persons who want to make it. But realize the challenges that are there in the covid world we reside in?
A. I see every adversity as an opportunity. When one achieves that, there’s no looking back after that I believe. Always take chances and keep strong faith in your dreams and yourself. I have discovered the importance of embracing situations as they come, good or bad, fail or pass, by the end it leaves you with a lesson learnt. From that point, you will have the power within you to re-evaluate what’s best for you and believe me or not, sky high is the limit for this young generation for the current evolutionary times we are living in.