In the autumn of ’98, Romita was diagnosed with Stage 2B Hodgkin’s Lymphoma, a type of blood cancer. The daily walk to school was replaced by long rides to Hinduja Hospital; instead of playing on the court, she now had to spend most of her time on the bed, tired and drained out due to the long chemo sessions. As for the height, she never gained it, thanks to the hormonal imbalance caused by the radiation therapy.
Yet the one thing that did not drain out was her self-belief. As she watched the Bombay skyline from her thirteenth-storey hospital window, she promised herself that she would do something meaningful with the gift of Life, if she made it alive.
A couple of years passed, and she went into remission. Keeping her promise with Destiny and against her parent’s wish she opted to graduate in Biotechnology from Kerala University. After graduating with distinction and achieving double Majors in Biotech and Biochemistry, she applied for Master’s from Cambridge University. She was parallelly doing research as a Student Scholar on Cancer Biology from the Tata Cancer Research Institute. It was here, her seniors suggested that she switch from academia to Industry, where she would be able to influence and witness the differences she made in patients’ lives.
After completing MBA in BioTech from Amity Business School, Noida in 2008, Romita started her career in healthcare management. The next three years saw her change jobs and profiles in MNCs.
While she was at Bangalore, the spirit of entrepreneurship completely engulfed her. She had nursed the penchant for tech entrepreneurship since childhood, and was looking for an opportunity to realize her dream.
With two enterprises already in her kitty, Romita had the requisite skills to start once again. Romita soon founded Admirus, first as a proprietary firm, and then as a Private Limited. Gradually, the challenges associated with healthcare consultancy began to emerge: the competition had grown, the healthcare rules were constantly changing. The efforts started bearing fruit in 2014, when more and more companies started approaching Admirus for their India entry.
While undertaking a management course at IIM, Udaipur, the idea of MedSamaan was conceptualized and the initial business plan was formulated. The idea was to build an online portal, exclusively for medical devices, that would make healthcare accessible and affordable for all. The inspiration behind MedSamaan was a result of Romita’s wish to make a significant impact in healthcare delivery and patient experiences. She had seen and felt the agony of suffering from a debilitating disease, and knew that she had been lucky enough to have access to proper healthcare facilities. MedSamaan would not only cater to the tech savvy patient pool in the cities but would also deliver to those millions of patients in Class B and C cities and semi urban areas, thereby limiting their travel to metros to seek expensive treatment.
On MedSamaan platform, manufacturers can easily find end users, doctors and clinics can order innovative medical devices without the burden of minimum orders and long lead times of procurement, and patients can be empowered to make a choice depending upon their Product preference and pocket size. Romita strongly feels that a marriage between digitization and healthcare is the only key to change the dismal state of healthcare in our country.
Romita is being ably supported in her enterprise by the WE CAN Initiative. Her exposure at the initial workshop and in subsequent interactions has helped her fine-tune her Business Plan. Recently she got a chance to share her story with Ms Cherie Blair in Delhi and the former First Lady of UK was quite impressed with her journey from a cancer survivor to a healthcare entrepreneur.
Romita’s story is an inspiration to all those women out there that who are today faced with challenges of gender, ill health and lack of resources. Her mantra is very clear:
Stay focused, come what may
Believe in Yourself and Success will Follow…
