Cloudnine is a chain of multi-specialty hospital dedicated to maternal and new-born in India. Having a PAN-India presence, it is committed to reach every woman and child in the country. Cloudnine offers world-class medical expertise, has over over 20 ‘state-of-the-art facilities’ centres located at metropolitan and tier II cities accross, a space filled with love and laughter and staff dedicated to the holistic well-being of you and your baby.
In a conversation with Insight Success, Dr Kishore Kumar gives a detailed insight about his life, professional journey along with emphasizing about Cloudnine and its distinctive features and accomplishments.
Kindly brief us about yourself, your initial journey since the beginning of your career?
Dr. R. Kishore Kumar founded Cloudnine in 2007 to realize his vision of high quality maternal and newborn healthcare in India. He hardly saw any deaths during his 16 years’ tenure in the western world & also saw what the “intact” survival of a premature baby is – meant a lot to the parents. He pioneered this concept in India with Cloudnine – and as the Founding Chairman, has been instrumental in securing the pinnacle attained by Cloudnine today. He is an internationally acclaimed neonatologist having worked in four continents – covering India (Asia), UK, North America and Australia. He completed his MBBS; DCH and an MD from India – with a gold medal from Mysore University; then DCH; MRCP (Paed) & FRCPCH from UK as well as MRCPI (Paed) and FRCPI from Ireland; Fellowship in Advanced Neonatal Intensive Care (FNIC) from Monash University, Melbourne and an FRACP from Sydney, Australia. At the time of his qualification, he was one of the youngest and highest qualified neonatologists in the world. He was felicitated with the Fellowship of National Neonatology Forum (FNNF) of India last year for his achievements in Neonatology. Among his many awards and accreditations is the honour of being felicitated by former US President Bill Clinton.
What drives you every day to work? Or what is your motivation which pushes you to enhance your performance?
I wanted to become a Neonatologist soon after I graduated, which took me to the UK in 1989 as there was no official training in Neonatology at that time in India – which helped me ‘re-train’ in the UK – subsequently to various parts of the world. But it’s my passion to see the smiling babies and parents – which brought me back to India and establish Cloudnine, where we believe that Pregnancy is wellness & NOT an illness and a baby is life’s greatest gift. This gift deserves to be nurtured for the entire duration of pregnancy and beyond.
How does your family contribute to your success? Talk about your family values, the culture which has strongly impacted your professional journey?
I work long hours, but balance my life and work effectively – thanks to my family for their understanding. I relax with them; travel together at least twice a year – that way we come closer including our Indian heritage & culture. My wife, Vidya – contributes to the success of Cloudnine – has been instrumental in having established various programmes including Prenatal Workshop, an award-winning Management of Baby Affairs (MBA) programme, Pre & Postnatal Fitness & Nutrition Sessions, Lactation Counselling and Baby Shower. My family values are driven by my parents and my in-laws who have been instrumental in shaping both me and my wife with what we are today. We value the Indian culture, though we have lived nearly half of our lives abroad, which is responsible for the success of Cloudnine.
Please mention the challenges, issues you have faced in your professional journey and your efforts or solutions you have identified to overcome the challenges.
Challenges abound in every field, but challenges in healthcare in India are unique; right from consumers, who have come to expect better value for their money, non-medical labor pool available and retention often proving arduous. Also, the licensing challenges posed across geographies adds to it. India, before Cloudnine, didn’t have a specialised mother and baby hospital or institution, so the concept itself was foreign – hence, it took time for the public to accept us, starting from our specialists who among others, were resistant to fathers being present in the delivery room (not to mention the fathers themselves). Our specialists were used to traversing multiple hospitals in a single day – convincing them to leave all their practices in favour of an exclusive association with Cloudnine was difficult. Our nurses are the best in the country, but training them to be that way was a challenge at first. Nurses needed training to operate our state-of-the-art equipment, and then the retention of trained staff. Customers were a different challenge altogether – they were not used to pregnancy being treated as wellness; we struggled to get them to attend prenatal workshops – then changing their mindsets with respect to post-delivery mobility was a project in itself. Most new mothers expected to be relegated to bed rest for days, encouraging them to be mobile within hours would cause an amusingly large uproar with the extended family.
Kindly talk about the experience of working in MNC’s and other companies has transformed your perspective towards business?
Cloudnine’s healthcare services spans entire journey of a woman right from menarche to menopause and children right from birth till teenage years. Notably we have many multi-national companies associated with us because of the quality care we provide including Wipro-GE, IBM, Dell, Oracle, L&T, ITC, Infosys, among many others.
We also have an exceptional relationship with GE – they have been helping us to evaluate our customer service among many other things, including leadership training for our employees.
Kindly describe in detail about your company and its unique services and products.
Cloudnine has been a shining star in India’s healthcare mosaic, since its inception. Its exceptional services suite separates it as a premium healthcare facility that pivots on superlative technology, exemplary medical expertise and tailor-made treatment plans.
Maternity
Cloudnine is India’s leading chain of woman and child hospitals, offers childbirth practices; scientific insights, fitness & nutrition tips to empower new-age parents to feel confident, self-sufficient and to promote natural births.
Gynaecology
Cloudnine provides comprehensive gynaecology care & counselling, adolescence clinics, menopause support, minimal laparoscopic surgical care and solutions for Abnormal Uterine bleeding, PCOD, Fibroids, Ovarian Cysts, Endometriosis, among others.
Neonatal Intensive Care
The Level III NICU at Cloudnine welcomes babies as premature as 24 gestational weeks, offering the highest-order preterm ecosystem in India today. It has world-class infrastructure to take care of sick babies.
Fertility
Cloudnine’s approach to fertility is especially noteworthy – Indian women are much younger than our counterparts in the western world and Indian doctors are one of the best – the combination with improved technology offers one of the highest success rates in India. Cloudnine offers fertility technologies including IVF, IUI, ICSI, PGS, Laser-assisted Hatching, Time-lapse Monitoring, among others.
Brief us about the industry scenario from your perspective.
India, before Cloudnine, didn’t have a specialised mother and baby hospital, so the concept itself was foreign. Lots of people discouraged us from starting a dedicated mother and baby hospital, but after 12 years – we seem to have multiple brands coming up with ventures like ours – which in itself is a testimony to our success and also explains the industry scenario from our perspective. This has not only boosted our confidence, it has even given more passion for us to grow.
What would you advise to the budding entrepreneurs?
Budding entrepreneurs – need to work hard. Success doesn’t come easily. If you have TGIF attitude, one will not succeed. “Work is Worship” and you should enjoy what you are doing – follow your heart and making money should not be the goal for being an entrepreneur and follow your passion – and you will succeed.
State us your major achievements and your company’s achievements under your leadership
The major achievement under my leadership is establishing Cloudnine from scratch and running it for the first 6 years – as CEO, Managing Director, Chairman, Junior doctor, Senior Neonatologist and being a nice colleague to many of our Obstetricians. The success achieved during the first 6 years started yielding so many awards – we can only name a few here (see the enclosed photos) – and subsequently as the company grew we established lot of verticals including hiring a professional CEO, Mr. Akash Malik – about 5 years ago – to have a transition to being a bigger company – which is a major step and we are proud of that having found the right person to lead our company to the future.
With over 55,000 births across 19 facilities in 6 cities and a 500+ bed strength supported by 3000+ strong workforce, Cloudnine’s care extends beyond maternity services and includes high-risk pregnancy care, gynaecology, paediatrics, neonatal care, fertility, and foetal medicine. Also we boast of our clinical excellence – having attained Zero percent maternal mortality despite having delivered over 55,000 babies till now and the highest survival rates for premature babies of 99.37% – that too in India – is a testament to our success.
State your passions, aims, and goals.
My passions are clinical excellence, teaching to make the care and future doctors – better trained, traveling, exploring and seeing smiling faces!
My goals are simple – I want to see India achieve the MDG (Millennium Development Goals) sooner rather than later. Millenium Developmental Goals were framed long back – but we seem to be still struggling to achieve this. Until we do, we are not going to be a developed world.
How are you foreseeing the future in terms of expansion of your business, the advent of new technologies and increasing players in the market?
We intend to do better partnerships, innovation and clinical excellence through better systems, quality, and education. We plan to use technology to the maximum and to this effect we are already creating apps, programmes to make the customer satisfaction ultimate – an we even planning to provide distant monitoring of pregnant women from home using technology. We plan to provide neonatal care in remote areas using Tele-NICU. We are also looking at opportunities to provide international standards of care to the public through a public-private partnership model. We believe that we have a lot to offer our public hospital system where caregiving can be better.
