Nobody knows moms like we do!

My vision to establish Cloudnine stemmed from me being a global paediatrician and neonatologist. My international experiences in few of the best hospitals in the UK, Australia and then Johns Hopkins, Baltimore, USA transformed the way I looked at maternity and newborn care.

I used to see a lot of maternal and neonatal deaths in India during my pediatric training – but I hardly saw any deaths during my tenure abroad. I used to attend our mega national conferences of neonatologists and pediatricians in India without fail. I always wondered why we cannot replicate such care in India? Everyone had the answer – You cannot compare those countries and India. There is no way we can achieve that in India with our resources and limitations. I wanted to change that, having achieved a clarity of self, what I could implement in India.

Cloudnine is celebrating its 15th year this year, I say with pride and satisfaction that we have reimagined birthing in India by treating pregnancy as wellness and not illness by combining clinical excellence with customer delight experiences. We have spread the magic of Cloudnine pan India to 17 centres currently and by the end of next year we will be 25 centres in major metros.

In the process, we have created an ecosystem of numerous scientific processes and healthcare leaders both in doctors, nurses, and administrators.

We are the largest maternal and neonatal chain of hospitals in India with near zero percent maternal mortality and 99.34 percent survival for babies despite having delivered more than 1,00,000 babies. We are the only hospital chain in India to be part of Vermont Oxford Network for quality control care of neonatal outcomes and also on par with our western counterparts.

From a family-run setup we have transitioned to a professionally run company with marquee PE investors, including Matrix, Sequoia and True North. In the process, we have created 5 enterpreneurs, returned good returns to the angel investors and private equity players, created more than 10 healthcare leaders, 15 nursing leaders, a dozen medical leaders (would/could be medical directors), numerous lactation consultants, numerous NICU nursing leaders, saved more than 1200 babies who otherwise would have been part of the statistics in India, helped improve maternal and neonatal care in India, and helped create more mother and baby brand hospitals.

After having achieved the pinnacle, our vision for the future has been redefined.

• We would like to extend our expertise in maternal and neonatal care to the rest of the country – especially the public sector and the parts of the country where the MMR (Maternal Mortality Rate), Infant Mortality Rate (IMR), and Neonatal Mortality Rate (NMR) is unacceptably high using technology and AI (Artificial Intelligence).
• We have already commenced AI in maternal and neonatal care by piloting to identify the high risk mothers and high risk babies – so that they are transferred to the tertiary centres well in time.
• We have empowered and employed tele-NICU across all our Cloudnine Centres – making them command centres so that we can provide NICU care for any part of India through technology and expertise available 24/7.
• We have developed robust research team and research capacity – by creating Institutional Ethics Committee under the aegis of ICMR and as per GoI regulations – that we have started quality research projects in maternal and neonatal care with our collaborations in multiple countries/universities.
• Newborn screening saves lives – Being one of the first hospitals in India to do mandatory newborn screening for various disorders, we would like to ensure this happens across all over India soon.
• Health education – One of the most important aspects what we have seen is – there are many myths, leading to lot of issues that affect the health of people, we would like to actively provide health education to bust the myths and in the process remove the quackery that exists in many parts of the country.

Healthcare delivery is complex and the cost of healthcare delivery is going up every year due to various technological advances and also the longevity. We would like to ensure a good Public Private Partnership (PPP) to ensure Cloudnine standard of care is available to all the women and children in the country and to provide these to all the Indians irrespective of their cast, creed or religion or background or the location to make India a better country.