A doctor’s journey from pain to entrepreneurship
Dr Patil Uses Acupuncture To Cure His Migraine And Set Up A Flourishing Business
IT WAS 1966 and 26-year Ratnakant Patil had to leave his examination hall. A severe headache made his final-year MBBS exam at the Kasturba Medical College in Mangalore a nightmare. He had a severe migraine attack and was vomiting. His sympathetic professors, who had been treating him over the previous few years, let him wait out this bout at the back of the hall. When he felt better a few hours later, they let him finish his paper in an empty hall.
Little did they realise that a couple of decades later, this experience would push Dr Patil to start his own business of curing people, just with a set of pins and needles.
Stress had kick-started the migraine, and for a while, the young Patil thought it was incurable. He had never met a doctor who could help him. Then, he decided to help himself. “Allopathy has no cure for these migraines. They can only give you pain killers,” says Dr Patil, who today heads a busy acupuncture clinic in Bangalore specialising in cures for pains and aches.
In the early seventies, while working in Denmark as a gynaecologist, he began to read about the benefits of acupuncture. He didn’t really believe in the benefits of some pinsand-needles therapy. However, all this changed when he and his fellow doctors at the Copenhagen City Hospital began to lose patients to the Swedish and Norwegian hospitals, which offered acupuncture. He went up to the hospital administration and suggested that they allow him to study the technique and bring these skills to the hospital to help retain patients.
Today, the soft-spoken doctor admits that his primary reason was to find a cure for his own affliction. Since he opened his own clinic in 1982, he has had the satisfaction of helping several victims of migraine, among other chronic aches and pains. He does acupuncture for pain management and practices from Kampo Clinic on Cunningham Road, in Bangalore. The word ‘kampo’ means ‘healing’ in Japanese.
He first worked from a rented room from the same location. As soon as he opened his doors, he says he saw an immediate surge of patients, who wanted to benefit from this ancient Chinese treatment.
“All these people had read about acupuncture and were readily willing to try it out,” he says. He used to treat 10 to 15 patients a day and charged them a fee of Rs 50 per sitting. Soon, he had to build his own clinic and hike the fee to up to Rs 75 per sitting. Interestingly, the cost of the treatment was Rs 100 until 2003. In the past five years, his fee has climbed five-fold and he still doesn’t treat more than 15 patients a day.
Over the years, Dr Patil has added to the services that he offers. These include multiple-Chinese needle treatment, the Japanese single-needle Royodarku method and Depo-acupuncture, where a needle stays in the patient for three days. He has combined these with modern machinery to offer sono-puncture-ultra sonic sound waves.
His latest addition came two years ago in the form of his Sonotron machine. This machine emits radio frequency waves and is described as a “totally non-invasive alternative medical therapy for patients with chronic and acute pain in their joints, and other soft tissues, without needing to use drugs.”
Article Resource:
Author: Jacob Cherian is the Chief Editor in the The Economic Times, Mumbai and the article appeared in one of their successful columns on Entrepreneurship/Start-ups called "Starship Enterprise".
Dr Patil Uses Acupuncture To Cure His Migraine And Set Up A Flourishing Business
IT WAS 1966 and 26-year Ratnakant Patil had to leave his examination hall. A severe headache made his final-year MBBS exam at the Kasturba Medical College in Mangalore a nightmare. He had a severe migraine attack and was vomiting. His sympathetic professors, who had been treating him over the previous few years, let him wait out this bout at the back of the hall. When he felt better a few hours later, they let him finish his paper in an empty hall.
Little did they realise that a couple of decades later, this experience would push Dr Patil to start his own business of curing people, just with a set of pins and needles.
Stress had kick-started the migraine, and for a while, the young Patil thought it was incurable. He had never met a doctor who could help him. Then, he decided to help himself. “Allopathy has no cure for these migraines. They can only give you pain killers,” says Dr Patil, who today heads a busy acupuncture clinic in Bangalore specialising in cures for pains and aches.
In the early seventies, while working in Denmark as a gynaecologist, he began to read about the benefits of acupuncture. He didn’t really believe in the benefits of some pinsand-needles therapy. However, all this changed when he and his fellow doctors at the Copenhagen City Hospital began to lose patients to the Swedish and Norwegian hospitals, which offered acupuncture. He went up to the hospital administration and suggested that they allow him to study the technique and bring these skills to the hospital to help retain patients.
Today, the soft-spoken doctor admits that his primary reason was to find a cure for his own affliction. Since he opened his own clinic in 1982, he has had the satisfaction of helping several victims of migraine, among other chronic aches and pains. He does acupuncture for pain management and practices from Kampo Clinic on Cunningham Road, in Bangalore. The word ‘kampo’ means ‘healing’ in Japanese.
He first worked from a rented room from the same location. As soon as he opened his doors, he says he saw an immediate surge of patients, who wanted to benefit from this ancient Chinese treatment.
“All these people had read about acupuncture and were readily willing to try it out,” he says. He used to treat 10 to 15 patients a day and charged them a fee of Rs 50 per sitting. Soon, he had to build his own clinic and hike the fee to up to Rs 75 per sitting. Interestingly, the cost of the treatment was Rs 100 until 2003. In the past five years, his fee has climbed five-fold and he still doesn’t treat more than 15 patients a day.
Over the years, Dr Patil has added to the services that he offers. These include multiple-Chinese needle treatment, the Japanese single-needle Royodarku method and Depo-acupuncture, where a needle stays in the patient for three days. He has combined these with modern machinery to offer sono-puncture-ultra sonic sound waves.
His latest addition came two years ago in the form of his Sonotron machine. This machine emits radio frequency waves and is described as a “totally non-invasive alternative medical therapy for patients with chronic and acute pain in their joints, and other soft tissues, without needing to use drugs.”
Article Resource:
Author: Jacob Cherian is the Chief Editor in the The Economic Times, Mumbai and the article appeared in one of their successful columns on Entrepreneurship/Start-ups called "Starship Enterprise".
RSS Feed (xml)
3 comments:
Interesting article. I want to run a business some day, and this was very motivational. I've been thinking about buying a business instead of starting one from scratch. I've even been looking for some, but I haven't found anything that I like. Do you have any suggestions? Thanks.
Hi Claire,
I am nobody to suggest you anything.....nothing is impossible in this world.......if you have sheer determination and passion about your work.......you would be able to cross all the obstacles in your way. Divise a Vision and start aiming on that. Develop short term goals and start achieving them. People who have risen high in life and career were those who never looked back after starting. invovle yourself in any business activity for which you ahve a personal liking and not that others are succeeding in that. Everybody has their own likes and dislikes. Pen down what you would like to do.
Regards
Amit
Thanks so much for the advice, Amit. I really appreciate it. I know running a business is and will be tough, but I feel like I'm ready for the challenge. I know I won't give up. I pounded away researching, and I was able to find a potential business for sale through BizTrader.com. Great place to find a business on the Internet. I'm looking forward to its development.
Again, thanks.
Post a Comment