Acumen Fund

1298 Ambulances Offering Service for All

1298's growing fleet of ambulances is providing much-needed emergency medical services in Mumbai.

Mumbai is a city of 16 million people, yet it lacks any reliable ambulance or emergency medical response service. People use autorickshaws, private cars, or van “ambulances” that have no medical equipment or trained technicians to take patients to the hospital. More often than not, these ambulances function only as hearses.
The poor suffer disproportionately from the lack of these services because they face greater transportation challenges but have lesser means to pay.

1298’s focus is on providing service for all. Its business model uses a sliding price scale driven by ability to pay, which is determined by the kind of hospital to which patients choose to be taken. Those who are admitted to general wards of a Government Hospital, ultimately the poorest patients, are given a subsidized rate of 50%. 15-20% of the services are offered at subsidized rates or are free of cost.
The ambulances are controlled by a state-of-the-art call centre available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week that identifies the ambulance closest to an emergency and directs the ambulance team.
1298 has also developed training programs, certified by the American Heart Association and New York Presbyterian Hospital, to train its own emergency care doctors and technicians.

1298 has grown from 10 ambulances in Q1 of 2007 to 60 ambulances as of 2009.
1298 has responded to about 70,000 calls in the last 5 years, saving precious lives and offering much needed access to emergency care in India. 15 percent of those calls were free or subsidized for patients, making the service available across all strata of the society.
Investment discussions are under way to enable the company to expand into 7 new regions across India (taking its pay-per-use network to about 400 ambulances in the next few years).
1298 has also received valuable support from several institutions that have donated ambulances to 1298 as they see that this is a truly efficient and accountable way of providing life-saving emergency services to all sections of society. 1298 has also obtained corporate sponsorship of all its ambulances by a leading insurance company.
1298’s pay-per-use model has the potential to be replicated not only in other Indian cities, but also around the world.