Dr. Mukesh Batra, the founder of Dr. Batra’s chain of homeopathy clinics, traces his journey as well as his company’s in his part memoir-part guidebook.
According to its publishers HarperCollins India, “The Nation’s Homeopath: How Dr. Batra’s Became the World’s Largest Chain of Homeopathy Clinics” is an unusual tale of entrepreneurship, risk appetite, resilience, and self-belief.
From humble beginnings with a clinic in Chowpatty, Bombay in 1982, Dr. Mukesh Batra, son of a homeopath and his allopathic doctor wife, now manages over 200 clinics in seven countries and in 150 cities of India.
When loans were not readily available in the early 80s, Dr. Mukesh Batra borrowed money at a staggering interest rate of 36 percent per annum. And since then, he has been leading an exciting life.
Dr. Mukesh Batra is a Padma Shri recipient and has treated celebrities, including presidents, prime ministers, actors, sportsmen, artists, among others, as well as the common man for decades. In this journey, he has also challenged death multiple times, has known love and heartache, and has experienced failures too in some business ventures.
Well, he says, “The Nation’s Homeopath” is the story of “my personal experiences as a medical professional and an entrepreneur. The reader will get a ringside seat of the mistakes I’ve made and how I converted challenges into opportunities and failures into success.”
In the book, he also mentions how Dr. Batra’s focused on 4Cs – communication, continuity, cost-cutting, and compassion – to deal with the challenges posed by Covid. He says if cancer is the big C, so is Covid.
“And we focused on 4Cs to deal with this C. Communication was one. We kept talking to employees and patients. Continuity was another – as much as possible we saw to it that there was no break in treatments. The third ‘C’ was cost-cutting. Compassion was the last ‘C’,” he says.
Sachin Sharma, the senior commissioning editor at HarperCollins India, describes the book as a “thoroughly gripping read, that is honest, witty and a guide for the budding entrepreneur”.
Spelling out some challenges during the pandemic, Dr. Mukesh Batra writes, “The supply chain and market disruption during Covid, together with a reduction in the sales team and health advisers, meant that unsold goods over a few months were lying in the market. This meant going to each of the 200 distributors and agreeing to change unsold stock with fast-moving products. This led to further financial losses which were not anticipated.”
But through all the problems, he said he continued to innovate.
“We launched new products, some of them necessitated by a coronavirus, like alcohol-based hand sanitizers… This not only increased our product portfolio and excited the marketplace, but also added to our turnover and profitability.”
He also says Dr. Batra’s state-of-the-art clinical management system (CMS) also helped the company to treat patients during the Covid pandemic, as its doctors could use the systems and databases while working from home.