Prof. (Dr) Satadal Saha is a Professor at School of Medical Science & Technology at IIT Kharagpur, the key founder of the company in 2011. A General Surgeon by profession, he is trained in India and UK. On his return to India, he founded Westbank Hospital at Howrah and then went on to establish and operate four (4) more hospitals in different districts of West Bengal, all delivering speciality and super-speciality care to the rural population at an affordable cost, while ensuring sustainability. In 2011, he shifted his focus to primary care and public health delivery to the vast underserved rural population and started working on the hypothesis of how innovative, cutting-edge science and technology can be leveraged to develop frugal healthcare technologies and software systems that may be used by trained and certified health workers to improve access to affordable high-quality healthcare in rural areas. He is the Vice-president of a not-for-profit, “Foundation for Innovations in Health” that pursues similar objectives. He is a part of multiple research groups around the world that are working on healthcare technologies. He is recognised in this field nationally and internationally.
Dr G R Vijaykumar is a Neurosurgeon trained in UK and the USA. He was one of the co-founders of Westbank Hospital, along with Dr. Saha. He is one of the pioneers in West Bengal in bringing state-of-the-art neurosurgery to the middle-income population of the districts and villages of West Bengal. He is well-known for his brilliant academic career as a medical student; and that is reflected in his subsequent contributions to AO Spine International and his authorship of numerous books on Neurosciences. He is presently the Head of Neurosciences at AMRI Hospitals, Salt Lake. He is also the President of “Foundation for Innovations in Health”.
Dr. Jaydip Bhaumik is a Gynaecologist specialising in Gynae-oncology at Tata Medical Centre, Rajarhat in Kolkata. He brings enormous experience of evidence-based practice of medicine, frugal healthcare management and establishes high standards of clinical practice. His initial thoughts and ideas pave the way for the company to establish the first centre for training of rural youth as Allied Health Professionals.
Prof. Amitabha Ghosh is the Honorary Scientist, Indian National Science Academy and Honorary Distinguished Professor in the Aerospace Engineering and Applied Mechanics Department at the Indian Institute of Engineering Science and Technology, Shibpur, Howrah, West Bengal. He is an Emeritus Senior Fellow of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation and a Fellow of The National Academy of Sciences, India, of which he was elected a Senior Scientist Platinum Jubilee Fellow in 2012. He is a pioneering and inspiring figure in Indian higher education system. His major research contributions include discovering the effect of magnetic field on wear, developing methods of enhancing damping through introduced stress concentration, analyzing kinetoelasto dynamic problems of high-speed compliant mechanisms and discovering the phenomena of chaos in mechanical systems. He has also developed a modified law of inertial induction leading to modification of laws of motion. He has authored 9 books on science and engineering and the text books by him on engineering are considered classics and are followed extensively in India and abroad. He did set up the first robotics centre in India in 1986 and initiated robotics education in India in 1983. In 2001 when he was the Director of IIT Kharagpur, he started the school of Medical Science and Technology to start post graduate education and research for MBBS doctors at IIT Kharagpur.
Prof. Marc Madou (Google scholar hi-index 77) is the Distinguished Professor, Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering; Distinguished Professor (Joint Appointment), Biomedical Engineering and Distinguished Professor (Joint Appointment) Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at Henri Samuelli School of Engineering, University of California at Irvine. Widely known all over the world as one of the pioneers of ‘Microfluidics’ his research interests include Miniaturization science (MEMS and NEMS) with emphasis on chemical and biological applications. His projects include polymer actuators (for drug delivery), C-MEMS and CD based fluidics. He has authored numerous highly acclaimed textbooks on his subject. His predominant focus has been on developing frugal technologies for ‘Extreme-point-of-care’ (EPOC) applications. He is also a Visiting Professor at Technologico de Monterrey at Mexico. He is well-known for his love of India!
Prof. Suman Chakraborty is a Professor of Mechanical Engineering, and the Dean of Sponsored Research and Industrial Consultancy (SRIC) at IIT Kharagpur, where he is also an Institute Chair Professor. He was also formerly the Head, School of Medical Science and Technology. He received the prestigious Santi Swaroop Bhatnagar Prize, and became the youngest Fellow of the Indian National Academy of Engineering, and Fellows of the Indian National Science Academy (INSA), Indian Academy of Sciences (IAS), Indian National Academy of Science (NASI), in addition of being the recipient of the Indo-US Research Fellowship, Scopus Young Scientist Award given by Elsevier for high citations on his research publications, Alexander von Humboldt Fellowship (2005), and Young Scientist/ Young Engineer Award from various National Academies. He has been bestowed with the Fellowship of the American Physical Society, Fellowship of the Royal Society of Chemistry, and Fellowship of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers. He was a visiting Professor at Stanford University. In the year 2018, he has been awarded the prestigious J. C. Bose National Fellowship, which is the highest Fellowship awarded by the Department of Science and Technology, Government of India.
Ms. Kuheli Saha is a Director of the company and leads the vertical of training and skill development across multiple states and centres. With over 20 years of teaching experience behind her in formal schools, she moved into the organisation to work for the underprivileged youth and create employability, women’s empowerment and change lives, one life at a time. She addresses the social anthropological aspects of the training program to transform the disenfranchised youth into employable assets.
Ms. Mousumi Banerjee is a Director of the company and drives the Digital Rural Primary Care and Public Health program. With her background as an MCA and substantial teaching-administrative experience, she changed the course of her life and took up the onerous task of organising trained community health workers in a structured organisation, train them in systems and processes and build micro-enterprises around the digital health program in rural areas.
Dr. Bibaswan Basu, a PhD in Human Physiology from Presidency University, is the Chief Operating Officer (COO). He assures uniformity of teaching quality and brings innovativeness in the curricula and teaching methods. Enormously popular with the students, he drives a self-belief among the students. He is also responsible for smooth functioning of the activities across all the verticals of the company.
Sohom Banerjee, a post-graduate in Applied Physics from Jadavpur University takes acre of the technological aspects of the digital healthcare program. With his deep involvement in development of the decision-support software system, he is also promoting adoption of innovative diagnostic technologies among the community health workers.
Mr. Subir Bikas Mitra, A National Scholar with MBA, MA, LL.M; Ph.D. in Strategic HRM and also Ph.D. (Law) in ADR Mechanism. Former Executive Director (Law & HR) in GAIL (India) Limited and Former Director in GAIL Gas Limited (wholly owned subsidiary of GAIL). Presently, Advisor (Law) in GAIL (India) Limited (a Maharatna PSU) and Directorate General of Hydrocarbons, Government of India. Has authored numerous research papers/ articles published in various reputed journals. He has been featured twice as the top General Counsel Power-list for India, published by Legal 500, a leading global legal directory (2016 and 2018). Visiting faculty of IIMs, VV Giri NLI, Other management and Law Colleges, Industry Forum etc. With an overall experience of more than 37 years, he is associated with following professional institutions in various capacities- UPSC, ICA, FICCI, CII, FICL, SCOPE.