Healtheon founder lines up India initiatives

Healtheon founder lines up India initiatives
N SHIVAPRIYA

MUMBAI, MAR 17: Pavan Nigam, who co-founded Healtheon Corporation of the US with the legendary Jim Clark, has lined up a series of India initiatives for school children, his alma mater, and what promises to be the most ambitious of them all -- for hospitals through the United Nations backed WebMD Foundation.

Children with no access to computers or the net will now have a good chance of becoming tomorrow's maverick infotech moghuls, thanks to the free learning centre Nigam is setting up in Kanpur. He believes few things take priority over alumni, and family is one of them. So he is setting up a free learning centre complete with PCs, software and internet at his hometown, Kanpur.

"I've spent my whole life in two places: Kanpur and Silicon Valley," he joked to The Indian Express. The centre is geared towards school children who cannot afford PCs and will be run by Nigam's eldest brother, Kush Nigam. It currently boasts of 15 to 20 PCs and a leased line, all housed at Gaya Electric, the large electronics store Nigam's father built from scratch. Nigam's father started off with a pavement shop and grew it to a prosperous store.

Some of his entrepreneur genes and knack for success, no doubt rubbed off on Nigam. Best described as one of Silicon Valley's sharpest minds, Nigam worked for Intel and Silicon Graphics before attacking the mammoth task of the connecting patients, doctors and the heathcare industry through the internet, as co-founder of Healtheon. While most would have dismissed such a daunting assignment as impossible, Nigam took on the challenge and nurtured Healtheon into the largest interent healthcare company. Healtheon/WebMD (Healtheon merged with WebMD in 1999) has a market capitalisation in excess of $ 10 billion.

Nigam will also pay his alumni dues to IIT-Kanpur. He and other alumni including N R Naryana Murthy will meet at Silicon Valley next month for a brainstorming session on how best to help IIT-Kanpur. They will discuss with Hari Bharatiya, governor of the IIT-Kanpur board, and the director, Dr Padmanabhan. They are likely to set up an incubator along the lines of whatIIT-Bombay has done. "Whatever it is, it has to be more than just money. Money has lost meaning, there is too much of it," says Nigam.

Nigam believes India will be the next Silicon Valley and that the internet is a godsend answer to all the country's prayers. "The Indians have been very successful in America. There is no reason why it won't work here... The internet plays into our IT strengths. Software engineers are the rockstars of the internet age," says Nigam.

In the Silicon Valley, being an Indian is a competitive advantage. "The person doesn't even need to open his mouth. If he is an Indian, he automatically has an edge. It is like in the sixties, if you were a band from Liverpool you automatically had an edge."

But Nigam's biggest contribution to India will be through the WebMD Foundation. The foundation, backed by the United Nations, has chosen India for its pilot project to connect a 100 hospitals in the country through the internet. Doctors and nurses in these hospitals will have access to internet kiosks. They will be able to put regional content and get valuable feedback from UN agencies like the World Health Organisation. The UN will not help by providing information but also mobilizing physical resources.

Once the pilot is successfully executed, the $ 100 million project will be implemented in 100 developing countries and connect a 100 hospitals each. The foundation is currently scouting for an Indian IT partner for the pilot here. "It is a very hi-profile initiative involving Healtheon/WebMD, a US foundation, the UN and an Indian partner. So we don't want to just select anyone who will use it for marketing their own company," says Nigam, "The Indian partner should have expertise in third world projects and be committed to a philanthrophic cuse."