EMRI, Ramalinga Raju’s brainchild, has survived the Satyam fiasco
Ramalinga Raju, the disgraced chairman of Satyam, will go down in history as the perpetrator of the biggest corporate fraud in the country. But the man also had a philanthropic streak in him. Emergency Management Research Institute (EMRI), his corporate social responsibility initiative, provided free medical emergency service to people in Andhra Pradesh. All they had to do was ask for it by dialling 108. Its ambulances reached any emergency in less than half an hour anywhere in the state. In congested lanes, its paramedics on two-wheelers would reach before the ambulance. No ambulance driver would accept even a ten-rupee tip.
When Raju confessed to his misdemeanors in early 2009, speculation was rife that EMRI would collapse and all the good work it had done would come to a standstill. The fears proved unfounded. The GVK group stepped in to fill the void. In its new avatar, GVK EMRI, the service interfaces with a third of the country's population. Its image, to be sure, was hardly tainted by the Satyam scam. In the 2009 Andhra Pradesh Assembly elections, former chief minister YS Rajasekhara Reddy would imitate the siren of an ambulance wherever he addressed public rallies to underline how he cared for them.
EMRI attends emergencies within 15 minutes of receiving a call in urban areas and 25 minutes in rural areas with a fleet of 2,750 state-of-the-art ambulances. GVK EMRI has so far saved 280,000 lives while attending to over 12,000 emergencies. The pilot and paramedic staff undergoes 60 days of rigorous training at the institute before it is deployed in ambulances. “It gives me immense satisfaction to hear that EMRI is saving 350 to 400 lives every day,” says GVK Group Chairman G V Krishna Reddy with pride.
“This is the only emergency response system in the world that not only receives calls but also provides ambulance service backed by a well-trained paramedic staff on the field and a dedicated research team at the institute that works on improving the system on a continuous basis,” GVK EMRI Director Krishnam Raju adds. It also tracks the progress of the patient for the next 48 hours.
Other states too have begun to see GVK EMRI as an agent of change. Ten have already partnered with GVK EMRI with 100 per cent expenditure to be borne by their respective governments. Once Uttar Pradesh, with a population of 26 million, joins, the emergency management services will reach out to almost 60 per cent of the country’s population.
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About 29 per cent of the over 10 million emergency cases attended by this service are pregnancy-related, followed by trauma cases (18 per cent) involving road accidents and burns. Pregnancy-related cases predominantly come from rural areas, while most of the accident-related emergencies are reported from urban areas. “The presence of GVK EMRI services has been able to singlehandedly reduce child mortality rate in these states,”
Raju says. The 108 service has also attracted the attention of other countries, including Pakistan, which have been keen to replicate the system, according to him.
The service comes at a cost — Rs 1,900 per emergency on an average. The user, though, does not have to pay anything. GVK EMRI knows that the subsidy is not limitless and it needs to restructure its processes, which includes efficient deployment of ambulances. It may save 10-15 per cent of the costs this year, Raju says.
