India successfully test launched a ballistic missile last week that could strike Beijing on a moment’s notice. Yet, 120,000 women here die annually giving birth.

How does a country with the technology to produce nuclear weapons and launch ballistic missiles also have  the highest maternal mortality rate in the world? It’s 10 times higher than China’s.

LifeSpring Hospitals Ltd. aims to make a dent in India’s abysmal maternal and infant mortality rates by providing high quality care at affordable rates to lower middle-class women. The chain of maternity and children’s hospitals officially launched last year and has the ambitious goal of operating more than 30 hospitals in three years.

(I’m volunteering at LifeSpring’s corporate office in Hyderabad for two months before heading to grad school.)

LifeSpring charges about $40 for a normal delivery and a two-night stay in its general ward. A private room costs $120. LifeSpring promises its families, who earn about $2 to $4 a day, they won’t be inundated with unexpected costs. The prices are posted on the waiting room wall.

LifeSpring isn’t a charity. This is a for-profit business that believes making money is the only way to guarantee a sustainable future.

Anant Kumar, the company’s founding CEO, told me he wanted to run a company with a social mission, but didn’t want to be constrained by unreliable charitable donations or inflexible grant funding. Too many good projects start and then die, he said, when a grant isn’t renewed. Or directors become so focused on meeting grant conditions that they forget the project’s mission and needs of the population.

LifeSpring is an interesting company for many reasons, starting with its initial financing. Hindustan Latex, LLC, a government business that makes condoms, and Acumen Fund,a nonprofit venture philanthropy firm, provided start-up funding.

Like Google and Ebay, New York-based Acumen takes a different approach to philanthropy. The fund invests in for-profit social enterprises around the world.

From Acumen’s Web site: “We believe that pioneering entrepreneurs will ultimately find the solutions to poverty. The entrepreneurs Acumen Fund supports are focused on offering critical services – water, health, housing, and energy – at affordable prices to people earning less than four dollars a day. … The key is patient capital.”

Read more about Acumen here.

Increasing rates of childbirths in hospitals is a key strategy to lowering India’s maternal and infant mortality rates. India provides free health care at its government hospitals, but they are dreadfully overburdened, outdated and inconvenient for many people.

This is the niche LifeSpring aims to fill. The small hospitals are a hybrid between an outpatient clinic and small inpatient unit with 20 to 25 beds. To keep costs down, the hospitals outsource pharmacy and other services, refer out complicated cases, and offer few frills. But the hospitals are committed to meeting strict international quality guidelines.

The hospital’s quality policy states: “We at LifeSpring Hospitals: Realize that our customers have expectations from us; Believe in exceeding those expectations; and Doing it better every day.”

When I told Kumar about the 46 million Americans who lack health insurance and struggle to afford the rising costs of health care, he jokingly said he sensed market potential.

The following is a guest post by Jason Ye, a MD/MBA student at Columbia University and an InSITE fellow alongside yours truly. Jason visited India during his spring break on a project organized by Columbia’s International Development Club and worked on pro bono consulting project with LifeSpring Hospitals. Go here for a post on this venture to provide affordable medical care to women and children. While Jason’s work must remain confidential, he was able to reflect on his experience during his work with this great organization.

I had always wanted to visit India, but never thought that I would go for at least another 15 years. When I fortuitously stumbled upon the opportunity to work with LifeSpring, a maternity hospital in Hyderabad, I jumped on the opportunity. It would seem that the entire trip accidentally fell into place. I was able to speak to the client for the first time only a week before I left, just barely got an appointment to get travel vaccinations, got my tourist visa the day before I traveled and bought my plane ticket on the morning my plane left. When I finally arrived in Hyderabad, I still had no idea what to expect. But my experience in India far exceeded any expectation that I could have had.

The first thing that I noticed was the famous Indian hospitality, which was so sincere and gracious that it sometimes made you feel uncomfortable. But besides kind, my hosts at LifeSpring Hospital, a niche provider of low cost, high quality obstetric care, were some of the most passionate and resourceful individuals I have met. Driven by their mission to bring quality health care to patients regardless of their income levels, they are testing the lower limits of low cost health care. A normal delivery costs only $38 USD and a caesarian section costs only $150 USD, a stark contrast to about $6,000 USD and $13,000 USD respectively at a US hospital. Despite the discrepancy in prices, the Indian doctors were as good as any American one; I verified this personally after scrubbing into a caesarian section. Although the facilities cannot compare to a US hospital or the elite private Indian hospitals, it was still much better and safer than the government hospitals.

After days of observations, research and interviews, I arrived at a set of recommendations which I hope will help LifeSpring continue its noble mission. But to some extent, I was the one who benefited most from this pro bono consulting project. LifeSpring’s vision of helping those who are most in need has reaffirmed the reason why I wanted to be a doctor. Its clever business model has taught me that success in entrepreneurship is not determined by capital, but by passion.

Of this I am certain: I will return to India and I will return to LifeSpring.