Healer

Most people approaching fifty begin thinking about winding down. Dr Prathap Chandra Reddy, an established cardiologist, did the opposite. In 1983 he set out to change how Indians received medical care, founding the country's first professionally managed private hospital system, which became Apollo Hospitals. Three decades on, Apollo ranks among the largest providers of high-technology healthcare in the world. It is a pioneer in heart, liver and bone marrow transplants, in knee and hip replacement, and in robotic surgery. Its fifty hospitals, staffed by more than 70,000 professionals, have treated over 32 million patients. This biography by Pranay Gupte follows Reddy from his boyhood in Aragonda, a small village in Andhra Pradesh, to the head of that enterprise. It asks how a man from such modest beginnings turned an ambitious idea into reality, what obstacles he had to overcome along the way, and how he came to be counted among the enduring figures of Indian public life. Told through lively anecdotes and plenty of unexpected turns, the book offers an inspiring account of institution building and of one man's refusal to slow down.