On this Mother’s Day, Dhana Laxmi, who is eight-months pregnant, was deciding where to have her baby as she walked through the bright pink waiting room filled with laughing women, sharing stories and advice about child birth at the LifeSpring Hospital in Andhra Pradesh, India.

In celebration of Mother’s Day, LifeSpring, a growing chain of low-cost maternity hospitals, held a health camp for pregnant women. The doctors provided free antenatal care check-ups, along with iron and calcium tablets, and the hospital administrators gave the pregnant women, their husbands, and mothers (who are often the primary decision-maker) tours of the hospital, speaking of the benefits of institutional delivery to women still making up their minds.

Dhana Laxmi was typical of LifeSpring customers. She delivered her first baby at her mother’s house in the village. She  has a grade 10 education and works with her husband selling fruits at a road stand.

Traditionally, women desiring institutional delivery had to decide between a free but low-resourced government hospital, or a private hospital that was only affordable through selling assets or borrowing money. LifeSpring offers maternity services at one-half to one-third of market rates for private hospitals.  A joint venture between Acumen Fund and HLL Lifecare Limited, LifeSpring’s mission is to provide high quality, low cost core maternity health care services to low-income women in India.  A normal delivery (including 2-day stay and all medicine charges) costs 4000 rupees, or about US $80.

While not profit-maximizing, LifeSpring focuses on sustainability as the route to achieving scalable social impact. Last month, LifeSpring CEO Anant Kumar described model at the World Healthcare Congress in Washington, D.C.  Speaking on a panel called “Innovations in Health Care Delivery,” Mr. Kumar highlighted LifeSpring’s focus on social impact, sustainability, and scalability.

Several other innovations in the area of maternal healthcare were featured at this year’s World Healthcare Congress. One of the most promising and exciting of these was MobiSante, a low-cost, smartphone-based ultrasound scanner.  The entire unit is the size of a microphone and iPhone.  Headed by Sailesh Chutani (CEO) and David M. Zar (CTO), MobiSante is currently undergoing FDA approval for usage in the U.S.

Another featured innovation was Next-Gen Phototherapy developed by a joint MIT/RISD product design and development course team, in conjunction with Cambridge-based Design that Matters.  The new product treats infants suffering from jaundice in the developing world.

This Mother’s Day, it’s exciting to reflect on the many promising innovations in the field of maternal and neonatal health worldwide.  So often, we hear so much about what’s wrong – that’s it’s good to take a step back and reflect on what’s right.

If you can’t get enough, Maternova is a great website for innovations in maternal and neonatal health.

Photo by John Tucker.

The New York based Acumen Fund is a non-profit venture fund that invests in businesses that have a social and economic impact. It will invest in companies providing affordable, critical goods and services in sectors such as health, water, housing and energy. The geographies it focuses on are South Asia and East Africa, besides the US. Since it set up shop in India a couple of years ago, the fund has made equity investments in Kochi based ayurvedic chain, Ayur Vaid Hopsitals, Hyderabad-based LifeSpring Hospitals, Mumbai-based ambulance start-up service ‘Dial 1298 For Ambulance’, and Drishtee, a rural communications company. Acumen does not believe in a profit maximisation model and would invest only in businesses that benefit people socially.

They generally don’t invest at the idea stage, and also try and stay away from pure technology plays. They want to diversify into agriculture and nutrition in India and are scouting for investments in these sectors. They typically invest between $500K-$2 million in companies. Being a non-profit venture fund, it is often dificult to find companies catering to low income markets and matching the requirements of the fund, Varun Sahni, India portflio Director, Acumen Fund India, said in an interview to VC Circle. Prior to Acumen, Sahni has worked with both for-profit and not-for-profit organisations focusing on enterprise creation across India. He has also been an angel investor in a number of companies in the hospitality aervices, food and beverage sectors. Excerpts: The New York based Acumen Fund is a non-profit venture fund that invests in businesses that have a social and economic impact. It will invest in companies providing affordable, critical goods and services in sectors such as health, water, housing and energy. The geographies it focuses on are South Asia and East Africa, besides the US. Since it set up shop in India a couple of years ago, the fund has made equity investments in Kochi based ayurvedic chain, Ayur Vaid Hopsitals, Hyderabad-based LifeSpring Hospitals, Mumbai-based ambulance start-up service ‘Dial 1298 For Ambulance’, and Drishtee, a rural communications company. Acumen does not believe in a profit maximisation model and would invest only in businesses that benefit people socially.

They generally don’t invest at the idea stage, and also try and stay away from pure technology plays. They want to diversify into agriculture and nutrition in India and are scouting for investments in these sectors. They typically invest between $500K-$2 million in companies. Being a non-profit venture fund, it is often dificult to find companies catering to low income markets and matching the requirements of the fund, Varun Sahni, India portflio Director, Acumen Fund India, said in an interview to VC Circle. Prior to Acumen, Sahni has worked with both for-profit and not-for-profit organisations focusing on enterprise creation across India. He has also been an angel investor in a number of companies in the hospitality aervices, food and beverage sectors.

Click here to read more

In the middle of June, Acumen investee LifeSpring opened its second low-cost maternity hospital in a peri-urban area near Hyderabad. They plan to have six hospitals opened by the end of 2008, and by the time this post goes live, they will have launched their third hospital in Nellore, a small town in southern Andhra Pradesh.

As LifeSpring and other Acumen Fund investees slowly and steadily gain scale, we have started asking broader questions about healthcare for the low-income market. Mainly, we want to understand the major gaps and bottlenecks to providing healthcare to the low-income market in India and how these issues can be overcome. The India office is presently working on a status report of the healthcare sector in which we are trying to understand the challenges of the industry for our target market. What follows is a brief summary of our understanding thus far. Your feedback through questions, comments, nudges, pointers and criticism are appreciated.

Simply put, healthcare for the poor seems to have three central challenges: affordability, availability and quality. Effective, viable solutions will need to address all three issues.

A scalable and sustainable micro health insurance model will probably rank as the highest value intervention to address the issue of affordability, especially in a country like India where, according to India’s National Health Accounts, an estimated 72 percent of healthcare expenditures are out-of-pocket. The idea of pooling risk to prevent unexpected health shocks from forcing a family further into poverty is intuitive and micro health insurance has been in India for some years now.

Click here to read more