Indian Government's Push For Education to Help This Healthcare-focused MNC "The population versus doctor ratio should ideally be 1300:1. In India it is 2000: 1, which makes it worse than Bangladesh and Sri Lanka."

An entrepreneur should always be mindful of the prevalent government rules and guidelines in India, at a time when Prime Minister Narendra Modi is walking the extra mile to make life easier for new kids on the business block. His flexible regulations are meant to put burdens off their shoulders.

Last year, Prime Minister Narendra Modi launched 'Start Up India, Stand Up India' scheme with much fanfare to promote entrepreneurship among women, the SC/STs by facilitating easy disbursal of loans ranging from INR10 lakh to INR 1crore.

The entire start-up community, including aspiring individuals working to make it big, is presently basking in the PM's attention.

The Entrepreneur India spoke to Shireesh Sahai, CEO (India), Wolters Kluwer, a global leader in information services and solutions for professionals mainly in the health sector and also in tax and accounting, risk and compliance, finance and legal sectors.

Founded in 1836 and headquartered in the Netherlands, the company serves customers from over 180 countries and maintains operations in over 40 countries.

Push for Increasing Number of Medical Colleges A Big Step

Sahai asserted that the government's initiatives were definitely working in favour of Wolters Kluwer, whose forte is the health sector.

"As per the WHO standards, the population versus doctor ratio should ideally be 1300:1. In India it is 2000: 1, which makes it worse than Bangladesh and Sri Lanka. The government's focus on increasing number of medical colleges is a big step for us. If the government is increasing the number of doctors, it works on our side because we are training students to become good doctors and professionals," he explained.

"I won't say that the change only started after the formation of Narendra Modi government, but the process got accelerated. We are a company solely for working professionals, to help them make critical decisions every day. So suddenly when new regulations are introduced, the employees have more work to do and that is where our role comes in," he added.

From the infrastructure point of view, the government is taking steps to improve internet speed and mobility, he said. Time is favourable for Wolters Kluwer as most of their solutions are mobile-enabled.

Best Time To Be in India

Sahai affirmed that for Wolters Kluwer, this was by far the best time to be in India.

"I say that on account of primarily four factors. I would say that there are considerable changes in the country in the spheres of macro-economics, infrastructure, quality and regulatory. These four things make the country the best place to be. These four factors leave no doubt in my mind that this is the best time for Wolters Kluwer to be in India," he stressed.

Macro-economics

"Change in the macro-economics sector has been really exciting for us in Wolters Kluwer. The average age of tech savvy people in the country is 28 years and most of our solutions are software-based. Adoption becomes much easier from that standpoint. India being an English-speaking country becomes a big advantage for a big company like ours because most of our content and solution is in English," he said.

Infrastructure

"Time is perfect from the infrastructure point of view as well. I will highlight three things for that. First, initiatives like Skill India, Digital india and Make In India fall exactly into where we play. Most of our solutions really are designed to meet Skill India initiative," he said.

"Digital India is a big thing because 80 % of our revenue is from software development. We have more than thousand employees in the country and around three-fourth of them are actually working on software solutions of the world," he added.

India is investing in the National Optical Fibre Network (NOFN) and this will bolster India's digitization drive.

Lastly, talking about infrastructure, Sahai said India offered the second largest smartphone market and 65 per cent of internet traffic was through mobile. "The situation is ideal for the company as most of our solutions are mobile enabled," he added.

Medical Tourism Industry

"From the quality standpoint it's an exciting time. The medical tourism industry is going from $3 billion to $8 billion dollars, setting an interesting trend. This meant close to 200- 1,000 foreign patients travelled to India to seek medical treatment. This forces Indian hospitals to improve their infrastructure and match up to the standard of healthcare that is available in the west. This suddenly makes our solutions, which are so much common in the US and Europe, applicable to India," he said.

Regulatory Changes

"The Modi Government has introduced many new regulations in the past two-three years. These have come handy for us in making our services applicable now," he said before signing off.