In this Expert’s Corner, Dr. Arunkumar Govindarajan, Executive Director and practicing radiologist at Aarthi Scans and Labs, reveals how his network of 85+ centers across 12 states is revolutionizing diagnostics in India. By consolidating blood tests, X-rays, CT, MRI, and more under one roof at 30-40% below market rates, Aarthi tackles fragmentation, delays, and costs that burden patients.
1. Describe your role at Aarthi Scans and Labs and your core diagnostics mission.
I wear two hats. On the clinical side, I am a radiologist, and my work involves peer reviews, second opinions, and radiology quality control across our network. As Executive Director, I oversee process engineering, strategy, and marketing. The two roles are not as separate as they may sound. Being in touch with reports every day keeps me honest about what is actually happening on the ground, and that feeds directly into how we build systems and make decisions.
Our mission is straightforward. To make advanced diagnostics affordable and accessible to the common man. That may sound like a tagline, but for us, it is very much the decision filter. Every pricing call, every location we open, every technology we invest in is measured against that question.
2. What specific diagnostic problem in Indian healthcare are you solving, and why now?
The diagnostics industry in India is still fragmented in ways that can be genuinely harmful to patients due to delays and inefficiencies. Today, if a person has a fever, they may have to visit one place for blood tests, another for an X-ray, and a third for an ultrasound or advanced scan. Each of those visits costs time, money, and energy, especially when the patient is already unwell.
There is also a deeper cost problem. In some situations, diagnosing a condition costs more than treating it. For instance, an MRI of the spine at a private centre can cost more than Rs. 10,000, while a course of physiotherapy for the same back pain may cost less. That inversion is broken.
What we do at Aarthi Scans is bring everything under one roof, blood tests, X-rays, ECG, ultrasound, CT, MRI, and price it 30 to 40 per cent below the market. We can sustain that pricing because of scale, lean operations, and a zero – commission model. These savings go directly to the patient.
India’s middle class is growing, internet penetration is increasing, and patients today can research and compare prices on their own. There is also a generational shift where people are more willing to choose their own diagnostic provider. That behavioural shift is one of the reasons our model works at scale.
3. Name one Aarthi initiative or product with the biggest impact on patients and providers.
There are two initiatives I would point to, one for patients and one for providers.
For patients, it is our Smart Health Report, which comes free with all preventive health checkups. It gives a health score based on the tests done and explains results in plain language rather than medical jargon. More importantly, it gives actionable guidance on what to eat, how to exercise and how to adjust sleep, and that guidance is based on the patient’s own biomarkers, not generic advice. The aim is that a patient walks out understanding their own body, not just holding a report paper they cannot interpret.
For providers, I am particularly proud of our critical report alerting system. We built it using a large language model that continuously reads all our radiology reports. If it identifies something urgent, an appendicitis, a brain infarct, a skull fracture, an aneurysm, it flags a ticket immediately to our internal alerts team, who then call both the patient and the referring doctor within minutes.
We have had this system running for nine months now, and we are seeing a measurable reduction in morbidity and mortality. Referring physicians appreciate it because it helps them triage emergencies instead of discovering them only at the next review. It is the kind of system that does not always make headlines, but it genuinely saves lives.
4. What innovation or decision transformed Aarthi Scans in the last 2 to 3 years?
The biggest transformation came not from technology, but from an organisational model we call Team Owners.
We now run close to 85 full-fledged diagnostic centres across 12 states in India, each ranging from 2,000 to 10,000 square feet and offering CT, MRI, blood tests, and more. At that scale, service quality is not easy to manage. Founders cannot be physically present everywhere, all the time.
So, we restructured the organisation. Every branch now has five or six Team Owners, senior frontline staff who are formally accountable for the patient experience in that centre. They are also empowered to make changes to our SOPs to customise the experience for different patient needs. Their KPIs are based on actual patient Net Promoter Scores, and they are rewarded accordingly.
That cultural shift, giving people real ownership, not just a title, has been significant. It has helped us keep service levels consistent even as we expand into new cities. Accountability now lives at the branch level, not only at head office. It has also helped us scale faster without adding unnecessary corporate overhead.
5. From a business view, what is Indian healthcare’s top operational or financial challenge, and what is your approach?
The biggest challenge is that healthcare is a need – based business. That means the inefficiencies of large organisations often get passed down to patients as higher costs, because this is not discretionary spending. People cannot shop around the way they would for a phone or a flight.
Our response has two parts:
First, radical transparency. We publish all our prices openly, on the website, on the mobile app, and through the call centre. No prescription is required to get a price quote. This is unusual in private diagnostics, and it keeps us internally disciplined as well. We cannot quietly inflate prices because patients can check.
Second, we invest aggressively in automation. We use AI agents for credit billing approvals and discount authorisations with pre-set rules, processes that would otherwise require multiple layers of human sign-off. We also invest in newer generation MRI machines that consume significantly less electricity and need little or no helium for cooling. Every greenfield project is built with sustainability in mind.
The discipline of keeping costs low is not just a financial decision for us. It is a patient service decision. The savings do not go to the margin. They go to lower patient pricing.
6. Who are Aarthi Scans’ key partners, and how do they add value?
Our most critical partnerships are with equipment OEMs. All our MRI and CT machines are from Siemens, ultrasound from Mindray, and our lab equipment is predominantly from Roche and Bio Rad. We follow a single vendor model deliberately. It simplifies training, standardises protocols, and makes maintenance more predictable.
But the partner I value most is actually our patient.
We send a WhatsApp feedback request to every patient twelve hours after their visit, and our response rate is around 30 per cent, which is very strong for any feedback channel. That feedback then goes into a system where we identify patterns, and wherever a pattern appears, we convert it into an operational change.
That loop, patient feedback to action to better experience, is a genuine competitive advantage. Many organisations collect feedback. Very few acts on it systematically enough that patients can actually feel the difference.
7. What one diagnostic or healthcare trend can leaders not ignore in the next 3 to 5 years?
The biggest shift is from sick care to performance care.
In the last two years, the fitness movement and biohacking conversation have gone mainstream in India. We are now seeing patients who are not sick and are not worried about a disease, but still want to track and optimise their biomarkers. They want to know their biological age. They want to understand whether their VO2 max, strength metrics, inflammation markers, and hormones are at the levels they need to perform at their best.
This is a fundamentally different kind of customer. They are self-directed, research-driven, and they return regularly, not because they are ill, but because they want to track their health on a schedule. The diagnostics industry has historically been built around illness. The players who build products and experiences for the optimisation-minded patient will have a significant advantage over the next decade. We are already building for that patient.
8. One lesson for emerging healthcare leaders building sustainable businesses?
Healthcare is a faith-based business. By that I mean a patient trusting you with their body and their health is an act of profound trust. You earn that trust, or you do not. And it cannot be bought with marketing spend.
In day-to-day operations, this is easy to forget. We focus on footfall, revenue, Google Ads, and margins. But the only sustainable growth engine in healthcare is a patient who has had a good experience and tells another patient about it. That referral loop, patient to patient, built on trust, is far more durable than any marketing campaign. So, the lesson is simple. Do not build for acquisition, build for trust. The patient is the only customer who matters. The moment you design your operations, pricing, or communication around someone else, you start drifting. Every system you build should pass one test. Does this improve the patient’s experience? If yes, build it. If not, question why you are doing it.
