Quelling the voice of self-doubt

ON A MISSION

Ameera Shah wants preventive healthcare to be accessible to everyone. With Metropolis Healthcare, the entrepreneur is doing her bit to make it happen, writes Deepika Nidige

Does the fact that more women are embracing preventive healthcare in urban areas mean that they are being more health conscious? “I’d certainly say so, at least with the statistics we have,” says Ameera Shah, CEO and MD of Metropolis Healthcare Limited. All of 35, she is perhaps the only Indian woman to build a diagnostics empire. Listed among ‘Asia’s Most Powerful Businesswomen’ by Forbes Asia this year, she also won the ‘Exemplary Women Leadership’ award at the World Women Leadership Congress and Awards last year. But accolades are not new to her. She had been conferred with ‘The Young entrepreneur of the Year Award’ by GE in 2006 and in recent times, was featured in the ‘Young Global Leader’ list by the World Economic Forum.

Born and raised in Mumbai, going to the US for higher studies came as no drastic change to Ameera. “I had absolutely no culture shock,” she says. The shock really began when she came back to India. “There were so many boundaries that sprung up – caste, community, income, gender – it was difficult adjusting to that. In the US, you work with people of all age groups and mingle with everyone freely. There are no drawn up divisions there,” she explains. So then, did she consider going back there? Not at all. “I’m patriotic by nature. And by that I mean I want to give back something to the society that shaped me, and make an impact,” elaborates Ameera. She believes that she was one of the privileged few born into a family that gave her all she needed for an all-round development.

She was only 21 when she began to overlook the functioning of her father’s diagnostic centre in Mumbai. In time, she was thinking about turning it into a chain – the prospect of more Indians having access to preventive healthcare seemed relevant and exciting. Her philosophy was to have an honest and ethical business, with no place for sub-standard practices. Thus began her development of the business, a task dotted with struggles, negotiations and achievements. Under her leadership, Metropolis expanded to a pathology chain with over 800 collection centres and 125 laboratories pan India. In due course of time, the company established its presence in seven other countries. Today, with several international pathological accreditations and awards in its kitty, Metropolis has expanded into new service lines like clinical trials, hospital lab management, home health services and corporate and wellness solutions.

Pride & joy

But the single-most difficulty in handling business comes with being a woman, she reckons. Men are often conditioned from their childhood to achieve big things. Girls, on the other hand, receive the short end of the stick. They are passively subdued and stripped away of opportunities. They suffer from self-doubt so they don't hear their own voice sometimes. This phenomenon is typically Indian, she reasons. People would often say things like, ‘Why do you want to study? You will anyway have to get married and have children.’ “Thankfully, I was never raised in such a confined environment. My family always encouraged me to pursue my interests, even if they didn't fully believe or agree  with them. So I could never relate to friends who faced such kinds of discrimination at home,” she says.

Keeping your faith and equanimity intact in times of hardship is tough. Ameera believes there are always two kinds of struggles for a woman - the internal and the external. “The external opposition comes from the society and is difficult to control. The other is the one within, which springs from self-doubt. Women generally tend to make outcomes personal and that's not good. There are several reasons why a firm does not do well in a financial year. The company’s performance is seldom an indication of one's personal abilities. The key is to not take it too seriously. If you don't experience pain, you will never learn to rebound. Resilience is a much-desired quality if you want to achieve something,” she asserts.

For Ameera, there was no particular breakthrough. It was a gradual phase of turning points. “Like the first time I raised private equity, the first time I built a sales force, the first time Metropolis went international – these successes worked as building blocks of confidence, slowly pushing me towards bigger heights," she recounts. But is all the responsibility and success too much to handle? “I prioritise. After all, I did choose to do this, didn't I?” says the “outdoor person” who likes to blow off steam by playing tennis, trekking, sailing, spending time with dear ones, or as she puts it, “being surrounded by love”. “Metropolis is like my baby. From where it was a few years ago to where it is today, it’s a well-made journey. There is much joy and pride in me when I look at it that way and I feel I must be doing something right,” she says.