Participants:
# Arun Chandavarkar, Chief Marketing Office, BioSciences, Biocon
# John Kuruvilla, Chief Revenue Officer, Air Deccan
# Prof. S Sadagopan, Director, IIITB
# Srini Rajam, ITTIAM Systems
# Ashok Soota, Mindtree Consulting
# Dr Devi Shetty, Narayana Hrudayalaya
# Bob Hoekstra, Philips Software
# Swami Krishnan, Sasken

The round table explored the following points:

# Is India going to emerge as an example of innovation?
# Do we see the emergence of a new breed of companies, institutions and individuals who are leading innovation?
# Is there an ecosystem developed in India that will create a network of ideas, which will lead to innovation?
# Where do we see bottleneck and challenges in unleashing the spirit of innovation?
# Will India be able to harness the power of innovation to differentiate itself with other competitive forces in the global economy?

While we are talking about innovation in India, here is a neat summary of best practices in India. But coming back to the discussion, it was a neat experience hearing from seasoned professionals who are all with highly innovative companies. A catchy line from Ashok Soota's presentation: "India invented zero, but we didn't patent it. Never mind that. The current IT/software/outsoursing industry boom is our way of collecting royalty!"

The person who really blew me away is Dr Devi Shetty. What a man! What incredible work! The way he unfolded his/Narayan Hrudyalya's current work and future vision just swept everyone off their feet. His work is at the now-proverbial 'bottom of the pyramid'. His premise is that a lot of research is happening to come up with better, newer medical technologies, techniques and drugs. But what about the affordability? All these newer technologies and medicines are only more expensive than the previous generation and hence within the reach of the rich only. Dr Shetty's goal is to reach out to the masses. Some examples of his work:
# Any baby less than a month old and in need of ANY kind of operation is operated upon for free. The logic? This: New-born babies do not belong to the parents, they belong to the society. Hence, its a responsibility of the society to take care of the new-born baby.
# He talked about Yeshasvini, a health insurance plan at only 5 Rs (11 cents) a month. That insures the farmer against any kind of operation. And at that low cost, the plan was in the money to the tune of a qaurter million dollar last year!
# Telemedicine
# BioCare Clinic in villages in tie-up with Biocon. Trying to incentivize doctors to stay in rural areas.
# Digital X-rays. I forgot the exact type/name of the X-rays he talked about, but apparently it costs 37 lacs (3.7 million) rupees to do that currently by traditional methods. His plan is to reduce the cost to 10,000 Rs by making it a digital plate process, and hence you could take n number of X-rays at zero marginal cost. Moreoever, you dont need a radiologist to do this. Any trained ward-boy can do it.
# Finally, he showed a slide of a Sewer Cleaner in Bangalore.

Whenever sewers get choked, these sewer cleaners go inside the sewer to clean it up. In Kannada, they workers are called Poura Karmika. The average life expectancy of a Sewage Cleaner? 35 years. Why? Two reasons: a) Beacuse of the hepatitis (jaundice) disease he contracts from the repeated exposure to sewage, b) Because of alcohol: he has to get drunk before he gets into the sewer. There are 35000 of such sewer cleaners! And Dr Shetty goal is to make healthcare accessible to this man.

(Update - Sep 19, 2005: Times of India, Bangalore carried a story on the same topic on Sep 02, 2005: What a Shame for IT City! You can read the text version here and graphics version here. Also I've uploaded pic and article.)

Dr Shetty summed up his work's philospophy "If a solution is not affordable, its not a solution". You have made me look at life in a totally different light, Dr Shetty. And for that, I bow to you.