ACUMEN LEAN DATA CASE STUDY

AMBULANCE SERVICES FOR THE

POORA Case Study of Ziqitza Healthcare Ltd. In

India

1

Throughout this course, we’ll walk you through the example of Ziqtza Healthcare Ltd, an Acumen investee that is providing ambulance services in India. In early 2014, Ziqitza successfully implemented a Lean Data project to gather new insights about their customers.

Learn more about Ziqtiza here:http://acumen.org/investment/zhl/

2Image credit: Noun Project , Mister Pixel. All use, reproduction and distribution of this work is subject to a CC-BY-NC-ND

license.

PART 1

3All use, reproduction and distribution of this work is subject to a CC-BY-NC-ND license.

The brightly-lit room in Amritsar, Punjab buzzes with life. A few dozen young people sit in front of phones and computers. Their phones ring every few seconds and pending calls flash on their computer screens. Fingers run quickly and lightly across keyboards, punching in numbers and commands instinctively.

4All use, reproduction and distribution of this work is subject to a CC-BY-NC-ND license.

5

But this isn’t just any call center in India – the young employees are answering calls that are often a matter of life and death. They’re working for Ziqitza Healthcare Limited, which runs 240 ambulances for the government of Punjab in addition to several hundred ambulances across several other states. The call center processes almost a thousand calls a day from traffic accidents to expectant mothers headed into labor.All use, reproduction and distribution of this work is subject to a CC-BY-NC-ND license.

6

Watch this short video to learn about Ziqtza and glimpse the problems it tackles on the streets of India every day. Click on the link below to watch.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OC7LqVqkrY8

Video produced by GOOD. All use, reproduction and distribution of this work is subject to a CC-BY-NC-ND license.Image Credit: Noun Project, Anton Outkine. All use, reproduction and distribution of this work is subject to a CC-BY-NC-ND license.

7

Acumen invested in Ziqitza more than five years ago, when the company had a fleet of just nine ambulances in Mumbai and a can-do spirit. Through a number of public-private partnerships with state governments the company has since grown to serve more than 2.5 million callers with a fleet of nearly a thousand ambulances.

Image Credit: Center for Health Market Innovations. All use, reproduction and distribution of this work is subject to a CC-BY-NC-ND license.

8

Ziqitza’s emergency medical technicians are very reliable. They were first responders in the 11/28 attacks at the Taj hotel in Mumbai, and they played a major role helping victims of the flooding in Orissa in 2014. Acumen has always known Ziqitza to be a socially-focused company with cutting-edge standards of service. Their CEO, Sweta Mangal, knew that, from an impact perspective, success would mean providing ambulance services to the poorest of the poor and upholding the company’s “Access for All” motto.

Image Credit: Center for Health Market Innovations. All use, reproduction and distribution of this work is subject to a CC-BY-NC-ND license.

However, they did not yet have robust hard data on who they were serving and whether they were reaching as far in to poorer segments of the population as they intended. Given the company’s social mission, Sweta was determined to better understand these questions: she knew Ziqitza received 3 million calls a year, deployed 1250 ambulances across 5 states in India and had an access for all model, but she didn’t reliably know where and how they were serving the poorest segments of the population.

9Image credit: Noun Project , Mister Pixel. All use, reproduction and distribution of this work is subject to a CC-BY-NC-ND

license.

10Image credit: Noun Project , Mister Pixel. All use, reproduction and distribution of this work is subject to a CC-BY-NC-ND

license.

They had a lot of great anecdotes, but they didn’t have the data to answer questions like:

• Had its services been excluding those with the fewest alternatives?

• Were its marketing campaigns succeeding in spreading the message of universal service?

• In emergencies, like the rush to hospital for childbirth, were the very poorest of expectant mothers actually using Ziqitza’s service?

By the end of this course, you’ll learn the answers to these questions. But, more importantly, you’ll learn how Ziqitza gathered the data to answer these questions without disrupting normal company operations or hiring external surveyors. They found that a Lean Data approach—like the one we’ll walk you through in this course—yielded the key insights the needed to enhance how they create value for customers.

11All use, reproduction and distribution of this work is subject to a CC-BY-NC-ND license.