Turning down a million-dollar offer for a company that was barely off the ground was a tough call, say healthcare innovators Arjun Kalyanpur and Sunita Maheshwari, but it paid off
Arjun Kalyanpur & Sunita Maheshwari
Profile: Co-founders of Teleradiology Solutions
They Say:
Sunita: For me, it wasn’t so much a plunge as a gradual dipping the toes in the water to later being fully immersed. I did not see myself as an entrepreneur at all—just a good doctor helping her hubby do something he enjoyed. I wanted it to work so that Arjun didn’t get frustrated in India and want to return to America! After Yale, once we realised this idea was an amazing one, I encouraged Arjun to stay in the game, kept saying that worst case scenario, it doesn’t work and you get a local job; best case scenario you create something magical for India. I guess our needs then and even now were minimal—we were not driven by money. So the fear was minimal. As the company got bigger and we crossed 100 employees, then some amount of fear set in because at that point we could no longer afford to fail. For a long time, I had an identity crisis—I saw myself as only a doctor and would introduce myself as a paediatric cardiologist at Narayana Hrudayalaya. So I was a doctor from 7 am to 9 pm and an entrepreneur from 9 pm to midnight and on Sundays! It took me many years to become comfortable with this second hat that I was wearing.
(This story appears in the 03 August, 2012 issue of Forbes India. To visit our Archives, click here.)