Nirog Street: A Disease Free Way Through Ayurveda
Nirog Street: Driving disease free with Ayurveda
The unprecedented COVID-19 laid a strict emphasis on the need of a strong immune system and the importance of preventive healthcare and overall well-being. India has been known to hold a treasure trove of incredible natural and holistic remedies that carry enormous benefits for the mind, body and soul. Scholars from across the globe have hailed the ancient Indian medical practice of Ayurveda for its effectiveness. However, when compared to modern medicine, Ayurveda is still far less popular with a disorganized supply chain and trust issues. The team at From The Experts’ Mouth (FTEM) spoke to Ram N Kumar, founder of Nirog Street, a platform for Ayurveda that aims to restore trust and streamline the Ayurveda supply chain to help us lead a disease free life i.e. to live on Nirog Street!
In an exclusive tell-all chat with FTEM, Ram N Kumar shares how he braved the odds and ploughed ahead in his journey of reimagining Ayurveda. You can also find the video of this conversation between Ram N Kumar, Founder and CEO, Nirog Street and Rajiv Maheshwari, Business and Start-up Advisor and Co-Founder, From The Experts Mouth and Manasi Srivastava, as part of the Unleash With FTEM series on our YouTube channel.
Sowing the seeds of Nirog Street
FTEM: What was the motivation behind Nirog Street? What was the problem you were trying to solve?
Ram Kumar: My startup journey is different than probably a few others. I together with my team wanted to create a healthcare impact in this country. Unfortunately, our country has a poor healthcare infrastructure; there are several challenges. India is a country of billions and it can be intimidating trying to fuel a huge change. What encouraged me was the fact that I was going to solve a problem that most people were facing on a daily basis- the lack of satisfactory healthcare facility. So, nothing was easy but the drive to bring about a change to actually help people through traditional medicine, particularly Ayurveda, was bigger than anything else.
What is the genesis of your startup journey? What convinced you to start Nirog Street?
This is very personal to me. The journey started much earlier when I was diagnosed with Hepatitis C in my early youth. Going through western medicine treatment, I reached a point where I was surviving on the drip. The medicine and the treatment weren’t working and then I changed the course to Ayurveda. It took me almost 6 months to respond to the Ayurvedic treatment and 3 years to fully cure and become healthy again. While being bed-ridden and going through the treatment, I learnt about the issues the Ayurveda sector faces.
What I realized was that people trust Ayurveda but they don’t trust its doctors and the medicines, and this is the biggest problem facing the Ayurveda industry. It dawned upon me that I needed to solve this problem of trust. There is no reason that Ayurveda, which has survived thousands of years and has helped mankind ever since its discovery, should not become a mainstream treatment for people not just in India, but all over the world. This was the most compelling reason that led me to the realization of my vision.
Going through Western medicine treatment, I reached a point where I was surviving on the drip.
Ram Kumar
What do you love the most about your journey so far?
Nothing gives me a stronger kick than the fact that I am able to support someone in living a better life. For instance, when a doctor on our platform through peer-to-peer learning gets to know something, and implements for his own patients. I work for an unorganized sector and there was no platform for Ayurveda. Unlike the modern healthcare system, the Ayurveda practicing community remained largely unconnected. Doctors worked in silos and there was practically no knowledge-sharing platform which could connect them. Getting these practitioners to feel like a community and learn real-time, and have access to everything they want through Nirog Street, fetches me immense happiness. We are able to contribute towards something that has been the heritage of our nation.
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Keeping the Team In Good Health at Nirog Street
What is your relationship like with your team and stakeholders? How do you ensure they are happy all along?
We never hire. We tell them, while you take care of Nirog Street, we take care of your health! We ensure that everyone working with us is healthy mentally and physically.
Our team members can take a variety of treatments such as Panchkarma and yoga sessions. They can consult with any practitioner at any point in time and go for a treatment and the cost is borne by the company. This relaxes the mind and body and that’s all that one needs, to be able to enjoy what they do. Moreover, most of us actually work like friends; we are not a hierarchy-led organization. Everyone works with everyone.
It must be a young team. What is the pecking order of the youth of today? How important is health and how enamored are they by the promise of a potential employer prioritizing their health over their financial wellbeing and other such aspects?
Today, a 25-year-old is more concerned about their health and well-being than a 60-year-old. They want to stay fit and eat healthy and they know a lot more than the most of us. They’re aware about what their body needs. Young people are going to drive the change that India is witnessing, particularly in healthcare. How I see is that over the next decade, people will know more about themselves than anybody else. They’ll be able to choose the kind of treatment they would like to undergo. This is going to be an important change in how healthcare is being delivered. Today, healthcare practitioners are at commanding positions but 10 years from now, the customer would be on the decision-making side and this I have deduced after keenly observing the young members of my team.
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Building Trust in Ayurveda
What are some of the things that you have done around building trust in Ayurveda?
We work with practitioners and not directly with the consumers. The problem in India’s healthcare sector is on the supply side and not on the demand side. Nirog street is streamlining the supply chain of Ayurvedic services and medicine so that our practitioners are able to deliver better healthcare. We work with doctors from various clinics. One doctor can interact with another, share cases and information and thus on our platform peer to peer learning takes place and the knowledge is fortified for other practitioners to access and use. Our journey started with creating knowledge and that too in a peer-to-peer manner for the practitioners who play a very important role in what we are doing.
Building the trust by enhancing the knowledge quotient of the practitioners ensures that their knowledge is up to speed. And that, in turn, gives the consumers the confidence that the practitioners associated with Nirog Street are up to date.
We have developed a protocol that needs to be adhered by the doctors listed with us for them to be Nirog Street certified. So, there are multiple layers of trust-building mechanisms that we have. A patient has the right to get a quality prescription and products. Our work model revolves around our practitioners and we want them to lead a better life, be financially independent and deliver better healthcare.
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Addressing Supply Chain issues through a platform for Ayurveda
In terms of the supply chain for Ayurvedic services and medicine do you see major challenges given the unorganized marketplace that you are in?
Ayurveda is indeed a very unorganized category. But we are equally enthused to organize an unorganized category such as this. We have been able to create an impact while partnering with brands and practitioners and we are going to be a very different company in the next 6, 12, 18 months and as we grow we will be impacting both the supply side, from the quality perspective and the kind of products that will be coming in the market and at the same time we will also be helping a lot more SMEs reach out to a larger number of practitioners and become mainstream players. We would like to empower small companies go places, become bigger. So while we grow, we would also like our partners to grow.
The Street to Success
What is the kind of impact that Nirog Street has been able to create so far, and what is your vision for the future?
On our platform, we have over 50,000 practitioners listed. They use our tools and services to deliver better healthcare for their patients and also provide them with products and medicines to which they never had access. We are creating an all-rounded ecosystem, where all the issues that Ayurveda practitioners had been facing earlier get resolved. India has close to 2 million practitioners in the traditional medicine space and they together reach out to over 1 billion people. We started with a vision to touch a billion lives through the practitioners associated with us.
How has the journey been so far? What did not turn out in line with your expectations? Were a few things easier than expected? Or, more difficult?
When I started I knew what I had envisioned was not the lowest hanging fruit. Nothing goes as planned and one needs to accept that. When we started, we were just a small community. In the phase where we were raising funds, I was often told that Ayurveda has no future and that I should shift my focus to western medicine or do both. I had a belief that “apna time aayega” (our time will come) and that the world needs Ayurveda. So, we kept at it and it did take longer than it should have for us to get access to capital. We never got any Indian capital to trust us. The first capital that came to us was from a Japanese investor.
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Was there any stage in your journey when the going got tough and you felt like giving up or changing course?
When we had just started out, I had invested whatever I had. I reached a point where I had run out of every single penny I had ever saved. There was an instance when I didn’t even have the money to commute and I had to ask a friend to recharge my metro card. But the thought of quitting never crossed my mind. I was absolutely determined to make our vision successful despite all odds.
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From the point where you had to get financial help to being able to scale up the organisation, what was the turning point? Was it the first round of funding you received or something else?
I always see funding as a catalyst, not as the main reason. You need money to execute what you want to do. You don’t need money to think about what you are going to do with it. The first high we experienced when we launched the products and we got over 100 customers on the platform. That was the biggest high for us, other than of course the funding which is very important and a measure of our success, because without money one cannot scale or grow.
It is very interesting that you measure success with the impact that you create. But, we seem to be celebrating funding as the end rather than the means to the end. What are your thoughts on that?
Nothing wrong with that. We should celebrate every single thing that comes our way. We should never miss a chance to celebrate. Funding is certainly a reason to celebrate. When India gets precious foreign currency, it creates employment and adds to so many other aspects of development, so it is actually a thing for celebration.
Celebrating being disease free through a platform for Ayurveda
On that note, let us celebrate the chance to live a disease free life by relying on traditional medicine, in conjunction with modern medicine and aided by modern digital technology! Our best wishes to Ram Kumar and the team at Nirog Street for creating this platform for Ayurveda that can restore trust and fix the supply chain issues so that we can all become nirog i.e. disease free.
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Unleash With FTEM – Watch The Full Video
The above are excerpts from the conversation between Ram N Kumar, Founder and CEO, Nirog Street and Rajiv Maheshwari, Co-Founder, From The Experts Mouth in this episode of ‘Unleash With FTEM’
Check out the playlist of Season1 of UnleashWithFTEM.
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About Ram N Kumar
Ram N Kumar is a serial entrepreneur, who has worked in the domains of marketing, advertising and technology. His personal experiences led him on a mission to make Ayurveda trusted and mainstream.
He is the founder of Nirog Street that was launched in December 2016 and is creating real impact in its quest to make Ayurveda medicine system become Ayurveda healthcare ecosystem.
More from the Unleash With FTEM series:
Watch other conversations as part of the Unleash With FTEM series in this playlist
Inspiring journey..all the best for restoring trust in Ayurveda