Last year, Medtronic CEO Omar Ishrak described India as the “biggest hole” in Medtronic’s global operations.
Last week, the medical device maker named Preetha Reddy, managing director of Apollo Hospitals Enterprise Ltd., a division of India’s premier hospital chain Apollo Group, as a board member.
That same Friday, Medtronic also showed that it wants to do more than just business in India by announcing that the company is providing a $6 million grant over five years to speed up programs designed to increase access to cardiovascular and diabetes care for Indian patients who cannot easily get the care they need.
In announcing the grant, Medtronic said that cardiovascular disease kills three million in India annually while the country is host to 60 million diabetics, giving it the dubious honor of having the most diabetics of any other nation in the world.
“By focusing on diabetes and cardiovascular disease, we hope to strengthen overall health systems in order to expand access in underserved communities,” said Dr. Jacob Gayle, executive director of the Medtronic Foundation and vice president, Medtronic Community Affairs, in a news release. “Given both the need and opportunity in India, it was clear that we needed to ramp up our support to help those already working to improve care.”
While the move is clearly altruistic, the move will likely build relationships that are key to forwarding business interests in the region.
Medtronic has said in the past that it hopes to build a research and development center in the populous Asian nation, and Ishrak has said he will hire more engineers in Asia. No updates on the R&D center were available at this time, however.
