In recognition of Earth Day, we’ve been speaking to entrepreneurs who have used their education to make a difference. These individuals have created start-ups that solve a business problem in a sustainable way.

Priya Prakash is a healthcare entrepreneur and the Founder and CEO of HealthSetGo Education, India’s largest healthcare organisation for schools. In 2019, she took part in the INSEAD Social Entrepreneurship Programme, which teaches business skills and frameworks to enable high-level entrepreneurs and intrapreneurs from around the world to build support amongst stakeholders, attract investors, and scale their innovations.

We spoke to Priya about her experience starting HealthSetGo, and about how her business school education helped her in her entrepreneurship journey so far.

Can you tell us a little bit about your business and what it does?

HealthSetGo Education is India’s leading healthcare organisation for schools with the vision to ensure that every school becomes a health promoting school. Our health programs designed to make quality healthcare affordable and accessible to schools, currently operate Pan India impacting 300,000+ students.

HealthSetGo’ Education’s programs have been internationally recognised by the World Health Organisation, Global Citizen and the Indian Education Awards. Aligned with the Sustainable Development Goals 3&4, HealthSetGo Education is a member organisation of UHC2030 and has pledged to impact one million children by 2026.

What inspired you to start this business and tackle this issue?

I founded HealthSetGo Education because of my own lived experience of struggling with my physical and mental health in school. Being someone who was overweight, I was severely bullied throughout school. I struggled with my self-esteem and body image but there was no support from my school or home. After years of struggle, I decided to take my health into my own hands.

Today as a healthy woman I know that if I knew as a child what I know now, things would’ve been very different. I’ve made it my life’s mission to ensure that no child goes through what I did, and this was my inspiration behind HealthSetGo Education’s work.

How has your business school experience helped you become an entrepreneur?

My time at INSEAD was very insightful to my journey. Being a social entrepreneur and trying to solve problems at scale is not easy, and it was very important early on to know the direction and the type of impact that I wanted to create.

The curated case studies that we went through under the guidance of some of the best professors I have come across, empowered me to get the clarity I needed to streamline my vision.

“By investing in preventive healthcare today, we are saving millions of future emissions from the heavily unsustainable curative care industry.”

What challenges have you encountered while integrating sustainability into your business operations, and how have you overcome them?

At HealthSetGo Education our services have always been inclusive of all cultures, genders, sexuality and backgrounds for every child. We do not discriminate on who we provide our services to based on gender, sexuality or background. Our social mission is to make health affordable and accessible for all.

We believe that by investing in preventive healthcare today, we are saving millions of future emissions from the heavily unsustainable curative care industry. It has been a challenge to showcase the correlation between climate change and health for a lot of our partners, but through our advocacy efforts we have seen a huge shift in the mindset. From an operational perspective, we knew that technology would play a pivotal role in our efforts towards building a sustainable and scalable solution.

One of the key activities for us is an annual health check of a child that has historically been done by schools on paper every year, with the reports being stored and shared with parents further on paper. With an average strength of 1,000 students per school, these offline health records were resulting in huge paper wastage as well as data inaccuracies.

A big challenge we faced and overcame was digitising this process to reduce paper usage, particularly overcoming resistance from doctors accustomed to paper reporting. We addressed this by providing comprehensive training, offering incentives for digital adoption, and gradually phasing out paper-based processes.

On the backend, we are using a sustainable cloud system, AWS, which is committed to becoming 100% Renewal by 2025. Additionally, we successfully incorporated modules on the intersections of climate, health, and hygiene into our online health education program for students. Through these endeavors we contribute to several Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) including 3, 4,13 and 17.

As a sustainable-focused entrepreneur, how do you navigate the balance between profitability and purpose?

As an entrepreneur, navigating the balance between profitability and purpose is integral to my mission. We had decided early on that purpose will be a part of everything we do.

To strike this balance effectively, we prioritise integrating purpose and sustainability into every aspect of our operations, from our business model to our daily practices. Despite our commitment to keeping our services accessible with low-cost pricing, we have been able to maintain profitability through innovative business strategies.

A key part of our model is partnering with like-minded organisations across India so we can keep our organisation asset lite and use fewer resources to get the same work done. Since our work is spread across India, we partner with local healthcare professionals in each city, reducing any need for inter-city air travel and helping us to deliver at a low cost.

All our initiatives have helped us to further reduce the price of our services for our beneficiaries.

Looking ahead, what are your aspirations for the future of your sustainable business?

It is our mission to impact one million students by 2026. Additionally, we are innovating in the field of tackling hidden hunger and malnutrition in India and hope to launch our solution by end of year.

By 2030, we aim to become the leading organisation globally providing preventive care for children and providing solutions to the malnutrition crisis.

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