Infinite Vision

‘Reveals the power of a model that combines business discipline with compassion. May the wisdom of Dr V and Aravind shared here inspire many such initiatives for the wellbeing of future generations’ – Muhammad Yunus, Nobel Peace Prize Laureate and founder, Grameen Bank In 1976, fifty-eight-year-old Dr Govindappa Venkataswamy (or Dr V as he is better known) founded Aravind – an eye clinic run out of a rented home, with no money, business plan or safety net. All that the hospital had were eleven beds, a visionary doctor and a seemingly impossible mission: to eliminate curable blindness. Today, Aravind Eye Care System is the largest and most productive blindness-prevention organization in the world. It has performed over four million surgeries and treated over thirty-two million patients. In India, which has more than twelve million visually handicapped persons, and where the majority live at bare subsistence level, Aravind has made eye-restoring surgery affordable and accessible by treating a third of its patients free of cost. And it has become the global benchmark in eye care, offering a comprehensive range of services, with a marketing strategy that targets those least able to pay. So much so that a case study on Aravind is mandatory reading for every MBA student at the Harvard Business School. Infinite Vision tells this extraordinary story. The authors go beyond the facts and figures to delve deep into the ethos that drives the organization and the man who founded it. In the process, they come up with a book that is as much a study of the business model behind Aravind as it is an inspiring human interest story that will appeal to readers across the spectrum – from management students to people in the social and corporate sectors to the lay reader looking for what the authors call an awe-inspiring ‘David and Goliath’ tale.