Aravind Eye Hospital, Madurai, India: In Service for Sight, The

V. Kasturi  Rangan

Case | HBS Case Collection | April 1993 (Revised May 2009)

Aravind Eye Hospital, Madurai, India: In Service for Sight, The

Abstract

Starting as a modest 20-bed hospital, Aravind had grown into a 1,400-bed hospital complex by 1992. It had by then screened 3.65 million patients and performed 335,000 cataract surgeries, nearly 70% of them free of cost for the poorest of India's blind population. Aravind's founder, Dr. Venkataswamy, now 74 years old, had a goal to spread the Aravind model to every nook and corner of India, Asia, and Africa. The case sets the stage for developing such a plan of action.

Keywords: Developing Countries and Economies; Social Marketing; Service Delivery; Service Operations; Welfare or Wellbeing; Expansion; Health Industry; India;

Format: Print

20 pages

Educators Purchase

Citation:

Rangan, V. Kasturi. "Aravind Eye Hospital, Madurai, India: In Service for Sight, The." Harvard Business School Case 593-098, April 1993. (Revised May 2009.)

Last Mile Health is a non-profit organization that focuses on recruiting and training community health workers to reach remote rural communities with basic health services. Founded by Raj Panjabi, a Liberian who immigrated with his family to the United States during the Liberian Civil War, the case traces the founding and early years of Last Mile Health, before the organization is faced with a choice during the Ebola outbreak in 2014: should they pursue a significant amount of new funding to expand into other areas, or should they stay focused on training community health workers.

The case describes the 25-year transformation of Peabody Essex Museum, which was created in 1993 by the merger of two sub-scale predecessor cultural institutions, operating since 1799, in Salem, Massachusetts. Dan Monroe, its founding CEO, began a process of building the institution, which, when he arrived, had a budget of $3 million and an endowment of $23 million in 1993, as compared to a budget of $33 million and an endowment of $650 million in 2018. Monroe made changes in practically every aspect of the museum’s operations as PEM broke into the ranks of the top 15 museums in the U.S. All of this was happening at a time when museums in general had lost some 20% in visitation as a result of significant shifts in population demographics and what they understood by “cultural experience.” As Dan Monroe handed off the reins of an institution that had successfully run counter to trend to his successor in 2019, the trustees of the museum and its new CEO faced the challenge of how to keep the positive momentum going—and how potentially to reinvent PEM again for a rapidly changing world.

Faculty & Research

Aravind Eye Hospital, Madurai, India: In Service for Sight, The

Abstract

Citation:

About the Author

More from the Author