Chairman and Founder Narayana Health

Dr. Devi Prasad Shetty is an Indian philanthropist and a cardiac surgeon. He has leveraged economies of scale to provide affordable healthcare. He was awarded the Padma Bhushan, the third highest civilian award in India for his contribution to the field of affordable healthcare.

In 2001, Dr. Shetty founded Narayana Hrudayalaya (NH), a multi-specialty hospital in Bommasandra, on the outskirts of Bangalore. Apart from cardiac surgery, NH also has cardiology, neurosurgery, pediatric surgery, haematology & transplant services and nephrology among various others. The heart hospital is the largest in the world with 1,000 beds, performing over 30 major heart surgeries a day.

Dr. Shetty also founded the Rabindranath Tagore International Institute of Cardiac Sciences (RTIICS) in Kolkata. Dr. Shetty has also signed a MOU with the Karnataka Government during the Global Investor’s meet to build a INR 1,000 Cr. 5,000 bed super specialty hospital near the Bangalore International Airport. His company has signed and MOU with the Government of Gujarat, for setting up of a 5,000 bed hospital at Ahmedabad.

His company has built a low-cost, 150 bed hospital at Mysore, on land provided by the Government of Karnataka that uses cross-ventilation instead of air conditioning, to cut the investment cost. He was a part of the seven-member panel of the Board of Governors that replaced the MCI, and served for a period of one year before it was further reconstituted.

His hospitals have reduced costs by taking advantage of the economies of scale. This allows them to complete heart surgeries for a tenth of the cost in the United States. The Wall Street Journal has given him the title of Henry Ford of Heart Surgery.