The Doctor Who Reinvented Healthcare Investing: How Pankaj Jethwani Built India's First Healthcare Venture Studio
A physician's personal tragedy sparked a revolution in healthcare innovation, creating companies that serve millions while reshaping how investors approach the world's most complex industry
The hospital room in Mumbai fell silent except for the steady beep of monitors. Dr. Pankaj Jethwani, then a young physician, sat beside his father's bed, watching the man who had sacrificed everything for his son's medical education lose his battle with cancer. The irony wasn't lost on him, here was someone who understood the healthcare system intimately, could afford the best treatment, and still faced an uphill battle against a disease that claimed half a million Indian lives annually.
"My father was the first generation to get an education. He moved from partition-era Pakistan to Mumbai to pursue a medical degree, never made it, and spent his life building a small business. When he got cancer, I became a caregiver and helped navigate the system. We were fairly fortunate in being able to afford the right treatment at the right time. The cancer had already progressed, and he passed away a few months later. But that left a desire to challenge the status quo. There are lots of opportunities to impact lives of other people."
That moment in 2014 would ultimately reshape not just Jethwani's career, but create a new model for healthcare innovation that has since served over 25 million patients across two continents. Today, as CEO of 2070 Health, India's first healthcare venture studio, and Managing Partner of W Health Ventures, Jethwani represents a new breed of investor who combines clinical expertise with Silicon Valley-style company building to address healthcare's most intractable problems.
Check out the video of the conversation here or read on for insights.
The Accidental Entrepreneur
Before he became one of healthcare's most innovative investors, Jethwani embodied the traditional path of Indian medical excellence. His grandfather sold gums and sweets on Mumbai streets. His father, displaced by partition, never realized his own medical dreams but built a small business and ensured his son could pursue the education he'd been denied. After medical school at Maharashtra University of Health Sciences, Jethwani began practicing primary care, seeing hundreds of patients and believing he was making a difference one consultation at a time.
But the personal tragedy of his father's death coincided with a professional awakening. Despite understanding the system better than most patients, despite having the financial means for optimal care, the outcome remained unchanged. If the system failed someone with every advantage, what hope did the other 1.4 billion Indians have?
"Maybe doing that as a physician seeing one patient at a time is one way of doing it. Maybe there's something else as well to address the status quo."
The "something else" began with The Boston Consulting Group. In 2014, Jethwani made the counterintuitive career move from practicing medicine to management consulting, joining BCG's Social Impact and Development Sector Practice in India. The transition was jarring.
"You went from being an expert to being a beginner. From clinical expertise to understanding data and process. I had to unlearn habits, sometimes. And that made treating simple conditions a little bit more complex."
But it also opened his eyes to the mathematics of healthcare failure. Working with government agencies on large-scale healthcare delivery, he encountered statistics that crystallized the challenge: pediatric cancer survival rates in India stood at just 45%, compared to 99% in the United States, despite using identical treatment protocols.
"The only difference was nutrition, environmental factors, hygiene, and obviously other medical and social factors. This management perspective was constantly challenging because there were systematic solutions, not just individual care solutions, that a doctor would describe."
Building Solutions at Scale
While consulting on healthcare transformation by day, Jethwani was building his own solution by night. Partnering with his mother, Neelam Jethwani, he co-founded The Breakfast Revolution in 2014; a social enterprise aimed at addressing India's malnutrition epidemic, where 43% of children under five were malnourished, contributing to 50% of all child deaths.
The venture embodied the systems thinking he'd learned at BCG. Rather than treating malnutrition after it occurred, The Breakfast Revolution manufactured affordable, fortified foods that could prevent it. Operating at price points between 10 and 70 rupees (roughly $0.12 to $0.85), the company created sustainable nutrition solutions that didn't rely on charity.
"We manufacture and distribute affordable, tasty and power-packed meals that are proven to work. All the money goes back into scaling the mission. So far, we've sold about three lakh plus children [over 300,000], and the impact."
The numbers tell the story of systematic impact: over 18 million fortified meals served to more than 125,000 patients over six years. But more importantly, The Breakfast Revolution provided Jethwani with his first lesson in building healthcare companies that could operate sustainably at scale, a principle that would later define his investment philosophy.
The American Laboratory
In 2017, Jethwani took his systems thinking to Boston, joining Iora Health, a primary care company that was pioneering value-based care for Medicare patients. Founded by Dr. Rushika Fernandopulle, Iora had developed a radical approach to healthcare economics: instead of being paid for each service provided, they took financial responsibility for the total cost of their patients' care.
"The way we pay doctors is wrong. Doctors get paid when you see a patient. So you're incentivized to do a little bit more than what's needed. And a lot of times you don't do a lot that is needed for preventive healthcare."
Iora's model flipped this incentive structure. By spending 10-15% more upfront on comprehensive primary care, they could reduce patients' total healthcare costs by 30-50%. The key was using technology to manage population health at scale, exactly the kind of systematic solution Jethwani had learned to appreciate at BCG.
"We had access to data because we had technology. We had access to what medications patients were on, what conditions they had, what their behavioral patterns were. Technology enabled us to do more effective population management."
Managing 2,000 high-needs patients with a team of just a few doctors and health coaches required sophisticated AI-driven systems to identify which patients needed immediate attention and which could be managed through digital touchpoints.
"Of my 2,000 patients, 100 would probably cost me 40-50% of the whole spend for that cohort. So how do I spot these patients and make sure that they are being taken care of more frequently? I'll let the next 100 get taken care of them adequately. And then how do I make sure that my healthy adults, healthy seniors, 60, 70 years, are being attended to so that we can effectively provide relationship-based primary care as a team."
The validation came through exits: Iora Health was acquired by One Medical for $2.1 billion in 2021, which was subsequently acquired by Amazon for $3.9 billion in 2022. Jethwani had witnessed firsthand how technology-enabled healthcare models could create massive value while improving patient outcomes.
The COVID Catalyst
Returning to India in 2020, Jethwani found a healthcare ecosystem transformed by the pandemic. Digital health adoption had accelerated dramatically, with Indians suddenly buying content and products online, consulting doctors virtually, and embracing telemedicine at unprecedented rates.
"We saw a marked uptick in health tech adoption. Indians were buying content online, buying products, etcetera. So the behavior was changing. And then COVID truly proved our lack of foundational healthcare infrastructure and made everyone think more about health and healthcare."
The opportunity was massive, but so was the problem. Thousands of entrepreneurs were entering healthcare, but most lacked the domain expertise to build sustainable solutions. Having seen both the clinical realities and the business models that could address them at scale, Jethwani recognized that healthcare needed a different approach to innovation.
"Most clinical-first innovation solutions are not scalable. So in addition to investing in our fund, we launched a venture studio where we took convictions on problems. We have confidence that this is a real problem that affects a large number of patients."
The Company Factory
In October 2022, Jethwani co-founded 2070 Health with serial entrepreneur Sunil Wadhwani, who had previously built and sold iGate Corp for $4.5 billion. Their vision was ambitious: create India's first healthcare-focused venture studio that could build companies from scratch, faster and more efficiently than traditional startups.
The model was systematic and data-driven. First, they identified healthcare white spaces through extensive research, interviewing doctors, patients, and healthcare administrators to understand unmet needs. Then they validated these insights through clinical studies and go-to-market experiments. Only after proving both clinical efficacy and business viability would they recruit founders and launch companies.
"We evaluate hundreds of potential ideas that address white spaces in healthcare, which subsequently undergo a validation process at the venture studio. The proposed solution is run through clinical studies and go-to-market experiments to finally devise a proposed product range."
The speed of execution was unprecedented in healthcare. With a 40-member shared platform providing everything from engineering and regulatory support to clinical partnerships and marketing expertise, 2070 Health could compress typical startup timelines dramatically.
"After we got the founders in place, we launched the company and saw our first patient in fifty-three days. In fifty-three days, we hired doctors, we hired a care team, we built our business model, we implemented technology."
The venture studio raised $30 million in seed funding from W Health Ventures in June 2023 and immediately began deploying capital across multiple healthcare verticals simultaneously.
Portfolio of Systematic Solutions
Each company launched from 2070 Health targets a massive healthcare gap with a technology-enabled solution designed for Indian realities:
ElevateNow addresses India's obesity epidemic as the country's first doctor-led, medication-based weight loss program. Combining FDA-approved medications with personalized health coaching, the platform targets the growing market of affluent Indians struggling with lifestyle diseases, a demographic that traditional healthcare largely ignores.
Nivaan Care tackles chronic pain management through India's first asset-light, single-specialty chain using a holistic biopsychosocial approach. Rather than just treating symptoms, Nivaan addresses underlying causes of pain, achieving significantly better efficacy than traditional pain management clinics.
BabyMD provides comprehensive pediatric care through 24x7 chat, video consultations, and in-clinic services. With pediatric expertise in short supply across India, the platform democratizes access to specialized child healthcare through technology-enabled delivery.
Reveal HealthTech, operating across the US and Singapore, provides B2B technology and strategy services to healthcare companies, leveraging India's engineering talent to support global healthcare innovation.
The crown jewel is Everhope Oncology, a $10 million joint venture with Narayana Health launched in 2025. The platform aims to standardize cancer care delivery across India, addressing the stark reality that the country has only 2,000 oncologists for approximately 1.5 million new cancer cases annually.
"The journey of a patient with cancer, if you have all the means in the world, might be average at best. If you don't, life is very hard. It doesn't have to be this way."
The AI-Healthcare Convergence
As artificial intelligence transforms healthcare globally, Jethwani sees India uniquely positioned to benefit. In 2025, AI-enabled healthcare startups captured 62% of digital health venture funding globally, raising $3.95 billion in the first half alone, a premium of 83% over non-AI healthcare companies.
But Jethwani's approach to healthcare AI is distinctly patient-centered, balancing efficiency gains with the trust requirements inherent to medical care.
"The interaction can still be human, but a lot of the administrative and data-capturing work can happen through AI. Click a picture of your baby's rash and send it on WhatsApp. A lot of that stuff that would have been done by doctors at very high cost can be replaced, but the consumer experience cannot be diluted for efficiency gains because that's not sustainable."
His vision extends beyond the Indian market. Through W Health Ventures' dual-market strategy, Indian companies are building AI-enabled services for the massive US healthcare market, where regulatory complexities and cost pressures create opportunities for efficient, technology-driven solutions.
"AI-enabled healthcare services will be India's biggest gift to the world after pharma."
The Economics of Healthcare Innovation
The financial model underlying 2070 Health reflects years of learning about what makes healthcare companies sustainable. Having seen too many healthcare startups fail due to unsustainable unit economics, Jethwani insists on high-margin, technology-enabled business models that can achieve profitability while scaling impact.
"We need high-margin, high-quality businesses. So that's the second criteria for product-market fit. The third is around defensibility and scale. Sure, we've gotten the first thousand, two thousand, five thousand patients. Can this grow significantly large when you have product-market fit? Will it be a 'must-have' and will it be difficult for someone else to replicate?"
The evolution from tech-enabled to AI-enabled services represents a fundamental shift in healthcare economics. Where traditional healthcare services operate with hospital-like margins (40-60% gross margins but significant operational overhead), AI-enabled platforms can achieve software-like economics while maintaining clinical quality.
"Instead of having a consultation or coaching cost 500 rupees for 30 minutes, can we make a consultation cost 50 rupees because AI is powering a lot of the interaction while still being clinically appropriate?"
This economic transformation is already visible across the portfolio. Companies that might previously have required significant human capital to scale can now serve exponentially more patients with the same clinical team, supported by AI systems that handle routine tasks, identify high-risk patients, and optimize treatment protocols.
The Trust Equation
Despite embracing AI and automation, Jethwani understands that healthcare's fundamental challenge remains unchanged: trust. Unlike other industries where customers might tolerate occasional failures, healthcare mistakes can be literally life-threatening.
"In healthcare, more than any other industry, people trust you with their lives and the lives of their loved ones, and they blindly trust the system. And they trust the system because you go to an established hospital or you go to an established doctor. We are building trust from zero, but we don't have decades to build it. You have six to twelve months to build it. How do you build trust rapidly is an interesting problem that a lot of our companies try to address."
This insight shapes every aspect of portfolio company development. Clinical validation comes before scaling. Regulatory approval precedes market expansion. Patient safety metrics receive as much attention as growth metrics.
"The clinical decision-making still is going to be human-led until we have FDA approvals for AI making clinical decisions. All prescriptions and next steps will still be human-led. A lot of the administrative and data-capturing work can happen through AI, but the consumer experience cannot be diluted for efficiency gains because that's not sustainable business."
The Founder Partnership Model
Unlike traditional venture capital, which typically invests in existing companies, 2070 Health's venture studio model requires finding founders willing to build companies around validated opportunities. The process is intensive and selective.
"We've sourced about 40 to 50 thousand profiles over the last 18 months. We have spoken with 1,000-plus founders. It's sourced maybe 3,000 to 4,000, spoken with 1,000, maybe evaluated 400 to 500."
For the first founder, the studio conducted over 110 interviews before finding the right match. The selection criteria go beyond traditional metrics like experience and domain expertise.
"You need to be extremely passionate about the idea. Founder-passion fit is really important. And one of the ways we assess that is: look, you're going to get equity in this. This is a concept. Let's validate the concept a little bit more. Once these people who have large amounts of equity, high salaries, a lot of stake in other companies, are willing to come work with us for small equity, couple hundred dollars salary, and which is 10x or 20x less than what they were earning, at the same time, we will come on board, we will spend 3-6 months of our life, we will bring capital, and we will co-build with you."
This "all-in" philosophy ensures founder commitment while providing the intensive support needed to navigate healthcare's complexities. The studio's 40-member platform provides shared resources across engineering, regulatory affairs, clinical development, and go-to-market strategy, capabilities that individual healthcare startups typically can't afford to build independently.
The Global Healthcare Context
The timing of Jethwani's venture studio coincides with a broader transformation in global healthcare investing. In 2025, healthcare AI investments reached unprecedented levels, with funding surging 47% in Q1 alone despite overall venture capital contraction. The market recognizes that AI represents healthcare's best opportunity to address fundamental challenges of access, quality, and cost.
But the opportunity is particularly acute in India, where healthcare infrastructure gaps create massive market opportunities. The Indian healthcare market is projected to reach $60 billion by FY 2027-28, driven by demographics, digitization, and growing affluence. With only 1 doctor per 1,400 people (compared to WHO's recommended 1 per 1,000), technology-enabled solutions aren't just convenient, they're essential.
"Healthcare innovation in India remains 10-15 years behind global benchmarks. That gap is a generational opportunity. We're in an evergreen sector that will continue to grow at a reasonable pace for the next 20 years."
The numbers supporting this thesis are staggering: 150 million Indians currently living will develop cancer at some point, but the country has only 2,000 oncologists. The mathematics of traditional healthcare delivery simply don't work.
"The only way to solve a lot of these problems is by leveraging innovation, recognizing technology, and then using AI to enable the ecosystem and building patient-centric frontend solutions."
Fund II and the Next Phase
In July 2025, W Health Ventures launched its second fund with a target corpus of $70 million, potentially scaling to $100 million by final close. Unlike traditional VC funds that spread capital across numerous companies, Fund II will make concentrated investments of $3-5 million in each startup, with provisions for substantial follow-on rounds.
"We're targeting 8-10 companies over the next four years. In contrast to traditional venture capital firms that typically diversify investments across numerous companies, W Health plans to focus on substantial investments."
The fund's investment thesis reflects lessons learned from Fund I, which deployed $43 million across 12 companies including BeatO (diabetes management), Mylo (parenting platform), and Wysa (AI mental health). Portfolio companies have collectively served over 25 million patients globally, validating the model's ability to achieve impact at scale.
Fund II's first investment, Everhope Oncology, exemplifies the evolved approach. Rather than backing existing companies, W Health and 2070 Health co-created the venture with Narayana Health, bringing together clinical expertise, technology capabilities, and systematic scaling experience from day one.
The Measurement of Success
Traditional venture capital measures success primarily through financial returns—fund multiples, IRR, and exit values. But healthcare venture studios must optimize for additional metrics that reflect their social mission: patient outcomes, clinical validation, regulatory approvals, and systemic health impact.
"We look at clinical validation, scalability, willingness to pay, and a focus on innovation, aiming for solutions that are significantly better than existing alternatives."
Early indicators suggest the model is working. Portfolio companies are achieving clinical validation faster than traditional healthcare startups, reaching patients sooner, and building sustainable business models that align investor returns with health outcomes.
But the ultimate measurement will be whether venture studios can democratize healthcare innovation, enabling the creation of systematically important healthcare companies at the pace and scale that traditional methods cannot match.
The Philosophical Framework
Jethwani's approach to healthcare investing reflects a philosophical framework shaped by his journey from individual clinical care to systematic healthcare transformation. Unlike pure technology investors who might focus solely on scalability and margins, or traditional healthcare investors who might prioritize clinical outcomes over business sustainability, his model insists that both clinical efficacy and business viability are essential for meaningful impact.
"Building healthcare companies in India is particularly hard. The rules of building fast-paced technology startups seldom apply when you're dealing with people's lives and the resulting need for regulation."
This recognition that healthcare requires different rules has led to the venture studio model's emphasis on intensive support, shared resources, and systematic validation. Rather than expecting healthcare entrepreneurs to navigate regulatory complexities, clinical validation, and technology development independently, the studio provides these capabilities as shared infrastructure.
The approach extends to investment criteria. Where traditional VCs might focus primarily on market size and founder credentials, healthcare venture studios must also evaluate clinical evidence, regulatory pathways, and long-term patient outcomes.
"The framework is solving large patient problems affecting large numbers of people, with the status quo being inefficient. We need confidence that we can build the best solution and get first-to-market advantage."
Looking Forward: The Billion-Patient Vision
As 2070 Health enters its third year of operation and W Health Ventures deploys its second fund, the question becomes whether their model can scale to address healthcare challenges at the magnitude they envision.
The mathematics of the opportunity are clear: India's healthcare needs are growing faster than traditional infrastructure can accommodate. By 2030, the country will need to serve aging populations, rising chronic disease burdens, and increasing affluence-driven demand for quality healthcare services. Technology-enabled solutions aren't just an opportunity, they're a necessity.
"We're building for scale that matters. Our goal is to build companies faster, better, cheaper than traditional startups in the riskiest early months of company building. We're not just investors; we're builders."
The global context amplifies this opportunity. As healthcare AI markets mature and cross-border service delivery becomes normalized, Indian healthcare companies built through systematic venture studio processes could become global platforms for healthcare delivery and innovation.
But success will ultimately be measured not just in financial returns or even patient numbers served, but in whether the systematic approach to healthcare company building can be replicated and scaled by others. The venture studio model's real test is whether it creates a replicable methodology for transforming healthcare at the pace and scale that traditional approaches cannot match.
"Healthcare innovation in India remains 10-15 years behind global benchmarks. That gap is a generational opportunity. Together with our shared vision of transforming healthcare, we can drive greater impact for patients, teams, and investors."
For Dr. Pankaj Jethwani, the physician who began this journey sitting beside his father's hospital bed, the measure of success remains fundamentally personal: can systematic innovation in healthcare ensure that fewer families face the helplessness he experienced that day in Mumbai? The early evidence suggests the answer may be yes, but the true test lies in the years ahead, as venture studios and AI-enabled healthcare platforms prove whether they can deliver on their promise to democratize access to quality healthcare for billions of patients worldwide.
Dr. Pankaj Jethwani is CEO of 2070 Health, India's first healthcare venture studio, and Managing Partner of W Health Ventures. He holds an MBBS from Maharashtra University of Health Sciences and an MBA from The Wharton School. Portfolio companies from 2070 Health and W Health Ventures have collectively served over 25 million patients globally. Dr. Pankaj Jethwani’s journey raises an important question: can healthcare venture studios scale systematically enough to transform access for billions of patients? I’d love to hear your perspective, share your thoughts in the comments.
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