Shaffi Mather

“I learnt the hard way about positioning in business, about catering to the right segments.”

“The stronger you stand on your principles, the easier it is to fight. The first time, it's tough, but the second time, it's always easier. You just have to push for your rights.”

“I realized some time ago that, while there are really, really high quality schools in urban India - my daughter attends one - there are very few high quality schools in rural India. And that is mostly because of the perception that there are not enough people to pay a reasonable fee in rural India.”

“Legitimate profit is good. What's bad is profiteering.”

“The cardiac calls require medical intervention. So an ambulance for a cardiac call requires a doctor, a ward boy and medical equipment.”

“The TED Fellowship exposed me to a set of youngsters who had wilder ideas than I did - and almost all of them were pursuing their wild and crazy ideas without fear of failure.”

“In the modern-day world, where time is premium and battle for subsistence is unimaginably tough, the hapless common man simply gives in and pays the bribe just to get on with life.”

“There is a social stigma attached to ambulance services, mostly because ambulances in India are often used as hearses for carrying the dead rather than transporting patients. We made presentations to graduating students at various healthcare institutes, trying to debunk this myth.”

“Having come from the U.S. and observed the way the health care system works there, we definitely felt that we could do something in India.”