Portea Medical is a Bangalore-based home-healthcare company that is present in 24 cities like Mumbai, Surat, Ahmedabad, Kolkata, Pune, NCR-Delhi and more. It was founded by Meena Ganesh in 2013 and since then has transformed the way people receive healthcare at home. It brings patients services like post-operative care, vaccinations, chronic and geriatric care, lab tests and physiotherapy in the comfort of your home. Ganesh, the former CEO of a top MNC (British retailer Tesco), believes that she has had the great privilege of building new sectors and disrupting them. “All my start-ups–from BPOs to education to healthcare–have created new employment opportunities for the youth of India and this gives me a great deal of satisfaction. I am desirous of making a similar impact in the rural and semi urban communities by creating grassroot entrepreneurs through my family foundation, Bahaar,” she explains.
Ganesh has worn many hats over the years and has over three decades of experience in the fields of healthcare, consulting, tech, education and e-commerce. But, despite all the different industries she has worked in, her goal has not changed: To make a difference in the lives of people and solve problems at a larger scale. “I want to create jobs, create jobs and in the process, inspire others,” she explains. This is what led to the inception of Portea. “I want to address long-standing challenges like high out-of-pocket healthcare expenditure, insufficient public financing, and inability to afford healthcare services by the impoverished and migrant workers. With the dynamic model, we can make it possible to free up hospital beds for the critically ill,” she elaborates.
As someone who is so involved in healthcare, Ganesh sees women continue to endeavour to do the best in their life and profession and as a consequence, brush aside their needs. “In trying to be ‘super women’ we tend to ignore our physical and mental health and this can have long term implications. There is, thus, a need to ensure that right from the time they are over 25 years of age, women undertake regular health check-ups for various parameters.” She also sees how women have to deal with medical gaslighting more than men. “They are more likely to be misdiagnosed in comparison to men and doctors also tend to dismiss their symptoms as minor and primarily psychological. This can make women get poorer quality of healthcare and delay diagnosis and treatment. One way to address this would be increase awareness about medical conditions and symptoms experienced by women.”
Through her aforementioned family foundation Bahaar, Ganesh hopes to boost cognizance about the importance of women taking care of their health, both in urban as well as rural parts of the country. “I have been working to create a squad of female community health entrepreneurs who are picked from within groups in rural and remote tribal areas. These women are trained and equipped to provide diagnostics for common conditions in the community, and are supplemented with doctor teleconsultations. Over the last year, we have created nearly 50 such women entrepreneurs in extremely remote conditions and in return, communities have gained access to healthcare that did not have earlier, having to travel as much as five to 10 km to reach a primary health care or even a pharmacy. The women in turn have been able to generate a modest income that has completely changed their position in society and their ability to provide a better life for their children,” she explains.
Women, she believes tend to have a ‘superwoman syndrome’ that in the long run, doesn’t serve their well-being. “We can manage everything. Even if you can, instead of putting everything on your plate, learn to delegate! Help comes to those who ask for it,” she explains.
All images: Instagram.com/Portea.medical