Dr. Yogesh Gurjar – King of Hearts!

Meet Yogesh Gurjar, just another boy coming from a typical middle-class
Maharashtrian family boasting of a number of National Award-winning
teachers. He did his schooling from a Marathi medium school in the heart
of Pune and then joined Garware College, again a college with a typical
Maharashtrian middle-class culture. So, what would you expect this boy
to do when he grows up – of course, become a teacher and add another
National Award to the family kitty! Well, add a National Award he did,
but not the kind you would expect him to. As a youngster, Yogesh was a
real sports freak. He played baseball at the national and international level
and cricket at the zonal level. Paradoxical as it may sound, it was
probably his keen interest in sports, which developed in him the killer
instinct that later helped him save a number of lives, including his own.

In 1979, Yogesh joined the Instrumentation Engineering degree course at

University of Pune. During his engineering studies, Yogesh got an
opportunity to work, learn and study things about the human heart at the
Ruby Hall clinic in Pune. The time spent at Ruby Hall set him thinking
about something which most of us would have laughed at – he started
thinking about an artificial heart! And the thought stayed with him. When
he was about to complete his instrumentation degree, he came across an
advertisement inviting applications for the highly prestigious Lady Ratan
Tata Memorial Research Fellowship. Yogesh applied for the fellowship
not expecting much because he knew he had a crazy idea that not many
would buy. There were 2500 applications for the fellowship from all over
the country and this boy who was not even fluent in English, had little
chance. But he persevered. An arduous six-tier interview process left him
with eight others to fight for the final spot. He had to submit a 20-
sentence synopsis of his research project before the final interview with
top-notch experts in the field. Yogesh had the rare honour of being
congratulated during the interview itself for his brilliant conceptualization
of the idea. Declaration of the result on 18 th June in the Times of India as
per the Tata tradition was but a formality!

Yogesh shifted to Mumbai to pursue his research. He used to attend heart

operations at Nair Hospital in the mornings and work at Tata Institute of
Fundamental Research (TIFR) in the second half. He made quick strides
in his research and soon published quality Papers in international
journals. A year and a half into his research, at an International
Conference of Heart Specialists at the Taj Intercontinental, he presented
another brilliant Paper. Attending the Conference was Dr. Alberto
Pacifico from the University of Alabama. Dr. Pacifico had spotted his
man and he knew how to get him. Yogesh was soon on the flight to
Alabama – no GRE, no TOEFL. But at Alabama, Dr. Pacifico was not
happy with his knowledge of Physiology and Anatomy. He told Yogesh
to pass these papers from the Surgical Assistantship Degree, a course
mandatory for all those who study to become doctors. Not to be left
behind, Yogesh decided to take-up the full degree course and not just two
papers. He soon surprised everybody except himself by passing all the six
papers in one sitting - he was now not just an Engineer but also had the
Surgical Assistantship degree.

All along this period, Yogesh knew what he wanted to do finally. His
heart was set on returning to India and making Artificial Heart Lung
System. By the end of 1986, Yogesh completed his research and returned
to India. For capital, he had his savings of one lac rupees and his dreams.
He needed to buy land for setting-up his artificial heart manufacturing
unit. His family treasure had awards but no land. He used the one lac
rupees to buy a piece of land and went to the bank with his dreams. The
banks had little business with the dreams of a young scientist gone crazy.
They didn’t want to touch his 35-lac rupees project with a ten-foot pole.
But Yogesh was determined. He had not spent his best years for nothing.
He approached a Pune based top Industrialist, whom he had met in UK.
He promised him help but told him to come with a Project Report – the
condition was that Yogesh should prepare it himself without the help of a
consultant. It was not before he had tested Yogesh’s patience that he was
finally convinced of Yogesh’s sincerity. It took over a couple of dozen
visits to his office, in most of which Yogesh had to simply wait for hours
only to be told that he won’t see him. He once sent him back just because
he was unshaven. It was his way of testing Yogesh. Once satisfied, he
recommended him to his bank. As Yogesh was to know years later in
1992, he was satisfied not because the project report was well-made but
because it was so shabbily made that he was convinced that Yogesh had
made it himself!

The bank sent the proposal to its consultant for his views. The consultant
sent it back expressing his inability to comment – this was something he
had never come across. The proposal was then sent to a private consultant
who made secret inquiries with heart surgeons and finally gave a positive
remark. Yogesh was now all set to become the first Indian maker of
artificial hearts. By this time Yogesh got married. He got the factory
building designed, awarded the contract for the construction, placed order
for a German machine and left for US for a few months to tie-up some
loose ends.
When he returned to India, Yogesh was all eagerness to see his dream
building. On landing in Pune, he rushed to the site. To his surprise, there
was no building; he rushed to the bank only to find to his utter surprise
that the builder had already collected all his payments by submitting
periodical completion reports and when he tried to contact the builder, to
his utter shock, he was absconding! But more was to follow – to add
insult to injury, the bank alleged that Yogesh was hand in glove with the
builder and had fraudulently siphoned off money. They even accused him
of financing his US visit from this money. As far as the bank was
concerned Dr. Yogesh Gurjar was a fraud! A lesser person would have
been shattered at this turn of events – but a lesser person, not Dr. Yogesh
Gurjar. Anybody in his place would have lost heart but this young man
was not someone who lost, but someone who made hearts – well, at least
in his dreams! It is a long, arduous and an intriguing journey from here.
Out of money, out of reputation and with a dream to realize, it was not a
journey for the weak hearted.

Yogesh took an unlikely route to realize his dream. He revived his old
connection with Ruby Hall. He approached Dr. Sudhir Bhate and took-up
an assignment at Ruby Hall. By then his guru Dr. Nitu Mandke was also
in India. He started assisting heart surgeries and started getting 2,500
rupees per operation. He would assist the surgeries in the mornings,
collect his remuneration immediately in cash, buy building material and
send it to the site. But that’s not all. Soon, it was another kind of a ‘Dr.
Jekyll and Mr. Hyde’ story. When sufficient building material was
accumulated, Yogesh, assisting chief surgeon in the morning,
transformed into a mason in the afternoon. In a believe-it-or-not kind of
stuff, Yogesh started constructing his factory with his own hands with the
help of other masons. He literally laid the bricks of his factory. The
delicateness of the hands in the morning gave way to roughness in the
afternoons and slowly but surely, the building started taking shape. All
along this period, the bank was after him for the interest and the
repayment. He tried to invite the bankers to see his progress with the
building. The bank brushed aside his invitations as humbug. He took it all
stoically. Meanwhile, the machine from Germany landed at Mumbai Port.
The bank very reluctantly released its part of the payment for the
machine, though not before a lot of persuasion. A new branch manager
had joined in the meantime and the new one visited the site to find the
building taking shape. The machine was hypothecated to the bank and
taken to the site but there was no building yet to keep it. It had to be kept
in the open.
Soon enough, the building was completed and the machine was taken
inside. But when he tried to operate the machine, to his utter horror,
Yogesh found that almost all the ten thousand wires of the CNC machine
were gnawed by the field mice. It was practically impossible to inform
the bankers of the calamity. It would have only confirmed their belief that
this person was definitely a fraud – first the building and now the
machine. Yogesh contacted the German supplier and requested for
training at some place in India. He got the opportunity of training at
Mumbai itself. It was to be a 15-day training. During the training when
Yogesh started copying the drawings, he was prohibited. But it was really
the drawings which he was interested in. He had to find a way out and
find it soon enough. It was not before a week had passed that he struck an
idea. He kept a notebook with the corner tobacconist. He would simply
memorize the drawings, come out every couple of hours, copy the
drawings quickly in the notebook and return, only to memorize further
drawings. As they say, everything is fair in love and war –for Yogesh,
this was both. After coming back from the training, it was a matter of
another fifteen days for the engineer Yogesh to repair the machine. Just
around this time, the bank sent him a Closure Notice. The bank now
wanted to take possession of the land, whatever construction was there on
it and the machine. They had planned to liquidate these assets and recover
whatever they could from the proceeds. The interest itself had touched the
figure of four and a half lac rupees by this time. It was hard for the
officers concerned not to take action. It took a huge effort from Yogesh to
buy some more time from the bankers. He did sign the possession papers
but requested the bankers to sit on them for a while.

1st September, 1987 is one day that Yogesh – and now that we know it,
even we – will never forget. This was the day when Yogesh started the
production of Artificial Heart Lung System to be used as stand-by hearts
during open-heart surgeries. Now there was no looking back for this
entrepreneur. It took him but three months to pay two and a half lac
rupees to the bank! But this was just not enough because by this time the
figure of accumulated interest had reached five lac rupees even after
payment of this amount. There was a time when Yogesh found to his
horror that he was paying interest at the rate of five rupees per minute.
Every power failure of one hour meant a loss of three hundred rupees and
at times, power went off for a week at a stretch. But things had definitely
taken (were given?) a turn for the better. The bankers now realized that
this young man was made of different stuff. It was the bankers who
suggested that he take additional finance of five lac rupees to be directly
adjusted towards interest so that there was no outstanding interest. It was
then a matter of just four years when the entire loan was repaid – one year
in advance, too! Since then, Yogesh has not borrowed a single rupee from
any bank even at an annual turnover of over five crore rupees. He is
financing his unit entirely from his own profits. He has developed his
own financial fundas. He says that a small-scale unit must generate its
own working capital and do it in the first five years itself. He firmly
believes that it can be done if you do not siphon-off funds.

On an average, Yogesh tries out not less than forty new & crazy ideas
every year. That comes to a whopping average of over three per month or
one every ten days; about a couple of them click. He takes utmost pride in
the fact that he is not answerable to anybody for the money he spends on
his passion. His staff members, comprising of two engineers and twelve
semi-skilled associates who have stayed with him through the thick and
thin, are also similarly encouraged to experiment. Not surprisingly, he
now boasts of over a hundred different products ranging from bio-
medical to purely engineering. Artificial Heart Lung and other bio-
medical products now account for only about twenty-five percent of his
range and turnover. Yogesh is now a global supplier to countries
including China, a country he is especially proud to export to. His forte is
development and he is now well-known for the same. Whenever
somebody wants a crazy idea developed, they think of Yogesh. So even
after becoming a successful entrepreneur, a crazy scientist and innovator
he remains.

Yogesh humbly acknowledges the role played by his family, especially

his parents & wife. The family firmly stood behind him when he was
struggling. Other traits that he believes stood him in good stead, were his
steely determination and patience in the face of adversity. Faced with
similar difficulties, anybody’s heart would have sunk, but not Yogesh’s.
His indefatigable entrepreneurial spirit has brushed upon his classical-
singer wife, who was also a teacher at the SNDT College. She is now an
entrepreneur in her own right designing & manufacturing jackets under
the Reindeer brand. She is not at all dependent on Yogesh for her unit –
well, except when the machines long for a mechanic.

A high point in this journey came when after knowing about his product,
Rajeev Gandhi, the then Prime Minister of India sent for him and he had
a meeting with the Prime Minister in January 1988. But it was not before
the proverbial baptism by fire. The icing on the cake came in 1992 when
he bagged the President’s Award as the Best Small-Scale Entrepreneur in
India. Very recently, Yogesh has also won the JRD Tata Award for Best
First-Generation Entrepreneur.
(This case is written by Professor Vinod Shastri of Bennett University-India)

Assignment-1

Please read the case" Dr.Yogesh

Gurjar" and identify
the entrepreneurial
competencies exhibited by Dr.Yogesh
Gurjar. Highlight the exact incidents
from the case to justify your point.