Chennai: Till about four years ago, Dr Gayathree Mohan was just another college professor, who was content with teaching her students and doing her thesis. But today, she is a successful businesswoman and an accomplished innovator who is all set to receive a national award next month.
“After 19 years of my teaching experience, I never imagined this change,” says the 43-year-old woman, who has won the DST-Lockheed Martin Indian award for her innovation on doubling her ambulance stretchers as emergency labour cots.
Hailing from a small-scale business family engaged in supplying stretchers for ambulance vans, Dr Gayathree Mohan was familiar with the manufacturing business since her childhood. However, she refused to join her father citing her interest in maths and theoretical physics, in which she went on to get a doctorate.
But when her uncle retired three years ago, she was forced to join her elderly father to keep the unit running. “Since it was a manufacturing unit, it needed someone around and I joined much against my will in 2011,” said the sole child of her family. Theirs was a small unit in Arumbakkam which could make up to 400 ambulance stretchers per month.
However, what was nagging the mind of this mother of twin daughters was her personal trauma that she experienced about 20 years ago during her pregnancy. “I had a very difficult pregnancy as my fluid sac burst before I could reach the hospital. I was held up inside the ambulance for a long time due to heavy traffic which is still afresh in my memory,” said Dr Gayathree Mohan, whose daughters now study architecture.
So, when she got a chance to take over as managing partner of her firm, Rite Products, she decided to do some structural modifications to their stretchers that can double up as emergency labour cots. “What was running in my mind was the millions of rural women whose lives can be saved by just doubling the ambulance as a mobile delivery unit with this simple equipment,” said the woman who worked on this project with her father’s help for over six months. And in 2012, she got the product out and got it patented.
Though selected as the top 30 best innovations from 8,000 entries, Dr Gayathree Mohan said, “My reward will come only when my product is put to use and makes a difference to the lives of pregnant women.”
