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By:

Bhalchandra Chorghade

11 August 2025 at 1:54:18 pm

Healing Beyond the Clinic

Dr Kirti Samudra “If you want to change the world, go home and love your family.” This thought by Mother Teresa finds reflection in the life of Panvel-based diabetologist Dr Kirti Samudra, who has spent decades caring not only for her family but also thousands of patients who see her as their guide. As we mark International Women’s Day, stories like hers remind us that women of substance often shape society quietly through compassion, resilience and dedication. Doctor, mother, homemaker,...

Healing Beyond the Clinic

Dr Kirti Samudra “If you want to change the world, go home and love your family.” This thought by Mother Teresa finds reflection in the life of Panvel-based diabetologist Dr Kirti Samudra, who has spent decades caring not only for her family but also thousands of patients who see her as their guide. As we mark International Women’s Day, stories like hers remind us that women of substance often shape society quietly through compassion, resilience and dedication. Doctor, mother, homemaker, mentor and philanthropist — Dr Samudra has balanced many roles with commitment. While she manages a busy medical practice, her deeper calling has always been service. For her, medicine is not merely a profession but a responsibility towards the people who depend on her guidance. Nagpur to Panvel Born and raised in Nagpur, Dr Samudra completed her medical education there before moving to Mumbai in search of better opportunities. The early years were challenging. With determination, she and her husband Girish Samudra, an entrepreneur involved in underwater pipeline projects, chose to build their life in Panvel. At a time when the town was still developing and healthcare awareness was limited, she decided to make it both her workplace and home. What began with modest resources gradually grew into a trusted medical practice built on long-standing relationships with patients. Fighting Diabetes Recognising the growing threat of diabetes, Dr Samudra dedicated her career to treating and educating patients about the disease. Over the years, she has registered nearly 30,000 patients from Panvel and nearby areas. Yet she believes treatment alone is not enough. “Diabetes is a lifelong disease. Medicines are important, but patient education is equally critical. If people understand the condition, they can manage it better and prevent complications,” she says. For more than 27 years, she has organised an Annual Patients’ Education Programme, offering diagnostic tests at concessional rates and sessions on lifestyle management. Family, Practice With her husband frequently travelling for business, much of the responsibility of raising their two children fell on Dr Samudra. Instead of expanding her practice aggressively, she kept it close to home and adjusted her OPD timings around her children’s schedules. “It was not easy,” she recalls, “but I wanted to fulfil my responsibilities as a mother while continuing to serve my patients.” Beyond Medicine Today, Dr Samudra also devotes time to social initiatives through the Bharat Vikas Parishad, where she serves as Regional Head. Her projects include  Plastic Mukta Vasundhara , which promotes reduced use of single-use plastic, and  Sainik Ho Tumchyasathi , an initiative that sends Diwali  faral  (snack hamper) to Indian soldiers posted at the borders. Last year alone, 15,000 boxes were sent to troops. Despite decades of service, she measures success not in wealth but in goodwill. “I may not have earned huge money,” she says, “but I have earned immense love and respect from my patients. That is something I will always be grateful for.”

Stop Building Toys

Artificial Intelligence is not merely a technology upgrade cycle but a once-in-a-generation test of managerial courage and operational discipline.

In 1876, when Alexander Graham Bell demonstrated the telephone, a senior executive at Western Union reportedly dismissed it as an “idiotic toy” with no commercial possibilities. The company famously declined to buy the patent. A few decades later, that ‘toy’ had rewired global commerce. Similarly, in the early 1900s, automobiles were mocked by horse-breeders as noisy novelties for the wealthy, oblivious to the fact that the internal combustion engine would soon birth highways, suburbs, and global logistics.


History is littered with inventions that appeared impractical or overhyped in their infancy, only to eventually become the bedrock of civilization. Today, Artificial Intelligence stands at a remarkably similar crossroads.


Pilot Purgatory

While global enterprises are pouring billions into GenAI, a quiet frustration is brewing in the boardrooms of Mumbai and Bengaluru. Most AI initiatives are trapped in a ‘pilot purgatory.’ Internal demos win applause and proof-of-concepts (PoCs) generate headlines, but measurable business value remains elusive. The scepticism is rising whether or not Is AI failing?


The answer is no. AI is not failing. It is our traditional organizational systems that are failing to absorb it. The Industrial Revolution did not succeed simply because steam engines were invented; it succeeded because factories were entirely redesigned around them. Electricity did not transform the world the day Thomas Edison patented the light bulb; it changed the world when manufacturers replaced central steam shafts with distributed electric power, allowing for the modern assembly line.


Technology alone never transforms a society; systems do. Today, many organizations are treating AI as a ‘gadget’ rather than infrastructure. They experiment with chatbots to handle FAQs or use AI to summarize meetings, but they leave the underlying business processes untouched. Without answering who owns the outcome, how to scale across the enterprise, and how to track ROI, AI remains a high-priced showcase project rather than a growth engine.


The common narrative is that AI’s limitations are technical and that we need more compute or cleaner data. In reality, the bottleneck is cultural and structural. AI initiatives often stall because sales teams are misaligned with AI-driven insights, delivery teams lack implementation clarity, and governance frameworks are treated as an afterthought.


Breakthrough technologies do not scale through enthusiasm; they scale through discipline. When the internet arrived, the winners were not just those who built websites, but those who restructured their entire supply chains and customer engagement models. AI demands a similar ‘architectural’ seriousness.


Architectural Seriousness

To move from proof to profit, leadership must drive the following strategic shifts. AI must be tied to specific P&L goals - revenue growth, churn reduction, or speed-to-market – and not experimentation for its own sake. A PoC proves possibility while an enterprise-wide implementation proves value.


If a tool doesn’t have a clear path to 1,000 users, it shouldn't be built for ten.


AI must be integrated into the core. It should not be a ‘bolt-on’ feature. Like Amazon’s recommendation engine or Netflix’s personalization algorithms, it must be woven into the core product.


Governance must function as an accelerator. Without clear accountability for AI-generated outcomes, organizations create more risk than value.


Execution must take precedence over hype, for the winners of this era will not necessarily be the ones who invent the most models, but the executors who combine technical clarity with operational discipline.


For a nation like India, which sits at the heart of global IT services, this moment is pivotal. We have moved from being the world’s back-office to its R&D lab. If our institutions, incentives, and execution models are redesigned around AI, we define the next economic era. If we treat it as a fleeting trend, we remain spectators. JPMorgan Chase now uses AI to review legal documents in seconds - a task that previously took 360,000 human hours annually.


When they first arrived on the scene, the telephone was dismissed as an impractical curiosity. The automobile was mocked as a noisy indulgence for the rich. Electricity was underestimated as an incremental convenience rather than a transformative force. Similarly, AI, too, faces scepticism but it will not disappear. The only remaining question for the Indian C-suite is whether we will build with it seriously today, or look back and regret our hesitation tomorrow.


(The author is a strategy and transformation leader who writes extensively on technology and future of work.)

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