1. ACUMEN LEAN DATA
CASE STUDY
AMBULANCE SERVICES
FOR THE POOR
A Case Study of Ziqitza Healthcare Ltd. In India
1

2. Throughout this course, we’ll walk
you through the example of Ziqtza
Healthcare Ltd, an Acumen investee
that is providing ambulance services
in India. In early 2014, Ziqitza
successfully implemented a Lean Data
project to gather new insights about
their customers.
Learn more about Ziqtiza here:
http://acumen.org/investment/zhl/
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3. PART 1
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4. The brightly-lit room in
Amritsar, Punjab buzzes with
life. A few dozen young
people sit in front of phones
and computers. Their phones
ring every few seconds and
pending calls flash on their
computer screens. Fingers
run quickly and lightly across
keyboards, punching in
numbers and commands
instinctively.
4
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5. 5
But this isn’t just any call center
in India – the young employees
are answering calls that are
often a matter of life and death.
They’re working for Ziqitza
Healthcare Limited, which runs
240 ambulances for the
government of Punjab in
addition to several hundred
ambulances across several other
states. The call center processes
almost a thousand calls a day
from traffic accidents to
expectant mothers headed into
labor.
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6. 6
Watch this short video to learn about Ziqitza and
glimpse the problems it tackles on the streets of India
every day. Click on the link below to watch.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OC7LqVqkrY8
Video produced by GOOD. All use, reproduction and distribution of this work is subject to a CC-BY-NC-ND license.
Image Credit: Noun Project, Anton Outkine. All use, reproduction and distribution of this work is subject to a CC-BY-NC-ND license.

7. 7
Acumen invested in Ziqitza
more than five years ago,
when the company had a
fleet of just nine ambulances
in Mumbai and a can-do
spirit. Through a number of
public-private partnerships
with state governments the
company has since grown to
serve more than 2.5 million
callers with a fleet of nearly a
thousand ambulances.
Image Credit: Center for Health Market Innovations. All use, reproduction and distribution of this work is subject to a CC-BY-NC-ND license.

8. 8
Ziqitza’s emergency medical
technicians are very reliable.
They were first responders in
the 11/28 attacks at the Taj
hotel in Mumbai, and they
played a major role helping
victims of the flooding in
Orissa in 2014. Acumen has
always known Ziqitza to be a
socially-focused company
with cutting-edge standards
of service. Their CEO, Sweta
Mangal, knew that, from an
impact perspective, success
would mean providing
ambulance services to the
poorest of the poor and
upholding the company’s
“Access for All” motto.
Image Credit: Center for Health Market Innovations. All use, reproduction and distribution of this work is subject to a CC-BY-NC-ND license.

9. However, they did not yet have robust hard
data on who they were serving and whether
they were reaching as far in to poorer
segments of the population as they
intended. Given the company’s social
mission, Sweta was determined to better
understand these questions: she knew
Ziqitza received 3 million calls a year,
deployed 1250 ambulances across 5 states
in India and had an access for all model,
but she didn’t reliably know where and how
they were serving the poorest segments of
the population.
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10. 10Image credit: Noun Project , Mister Pixel. All use, reproduction and distribution of this work is subject to a CC-BY-NC-ND license.
They had a lot of great
anecdotes, but they didn’t have
the data to answer questions
like:
• Had its services been excluding
those with the fewest alternatives?
• Were its marketing campaigns
succeeding in spreading the
message of universal service?
• In emergencies, like the rush to
hospital for childbirth, were the
very poorest of expectant mothers
actually using Ziqitza’s service?

11. By the end of this course, you’ll learn the
answers to these questions. But, more
importantly, you’ll learn how Ziqitza
gathered the data to answer these
questions without disrupting normal
company operations or hiring external
surveyors. They found that a Lean Data
approach—like the one we’ll walk you
through in this course—yielded the key
insights the needed to enhance how they
create value for customers.
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