Dr. Devi Prasad Shetty

Dr. Devi Prasad Shetty is a cardiac surgeon and the chairman and Founder of Narayana Health, a chain of 21 medical centers in India. In his three decades in the profession, Dr. Shetty has conducted more than 15,000 heart surgeries—including India’s first neonatal cardiac surgery in 1992—and held the distinction of serving as Mother Teresa’s personal physician. In 2003, he also designed the world's cheapest comprehensive insurance scheme, Yeshasvini Co-operative Farmer’s Health Care Scheme, which provides cover to poor farmers across 805 surgical procedures for just Rs 18 every month.

For his service, Dr Devi Prasad Shetty received the country’s Padma Shri in 2004 and Padma Bhushan in 2012. he has performed Asia’s first dynamic cardiomyoplasty operation to strengthen the weak heart muscle using the chest wall muscle. He also aims for his hospitals to use economies of scale, to allow them to complete heart surgeries at a lower cost than in the United States.