Health Zingo- Making Our Communities Healthier[/b]
Before I begin, let me ask a very fundamental question to those who want to be an entrepreneur. Why do you want to be an entrepreneur? I have heard several answers such as- I can not work for anyone else, I want freedom to do whatever I want, if I succeed I can earn much more than being in a job, I want to love doing what I do for living. Valid answers, but one word that stands out in all the above answers is- “I”. I want this, I want that. Do you really think that anyone other that you cares what you want? I realized very early in my career that while it is important to do things keeping you at the center, it is more important to do things that others need. If you can blend customers needs with what you love doing, you have got a winner at hand.
The idea of starting Health Zingo took shape based on several real life experiences I had as an individual, where i came across family members, friends and many others who had fallen prey to chronic diseases such as diabetes, hypertension, arthritis etc. at relatively young age. Worse realization was that many of these folks had become dependent on medication for life. And just hitting forty, I realized that probably even I was moving in that direction and moving very fast. That realization made me do lot of reading to gather information on the cause and cure of such diseases. I also met several experts in the field of healthcare (allopathic and alternative). A few common themes emerged”
1. Prevention is better than cure (what’s new in this finding?)- Shockingly, despite knowing this simple truth, majority still react to a health issue rather than being proactive about it.
2. One needs to look at health holistically-food, physical fitness and metal fitness. One can not ignore one of them and think that the other will make-up for that.
3. While awareness is an issue, actual implementation of things that can keep us healthy is a bigger issue.
4. Most of the allopathic medications for chronic diseases make one dependent on them for life.
5. Increasingly more people are ready to make serious effort towards adopting a natural healthy life-style
Health Zingo is architected and designed to address the above. We defined our mission as ‘making our communities healthier’. By communities we mean residential, corporate, educational or other like-minded communities. But why only communities and not individuals? Simply because, we think that our chances of adopting a healthy and environment friendly life-style increases if we collaborate and push each other within our communities. If individuals absorbed by similar concern interact with each other both virtually and physically, we intend to play a vital role in creating a platform and facilitating this interaction. And we also know that we can not do this alone. So we are working with like-minded individuals and organizations (many of them are NGOs) to realize this vision. We are essentially an ‘integrator of natural healthy living’.
Besides the above, we also want to ensure that we do some heavy lifting and make it easier for our customers to adopt a natural healthy life-style. Hence, we have set-up a health food restaurant chain, where we serve what we preach. The journey has just begun and the challenges are enormous Only time will tell whether this experiment succeeds or not. But, one thing I am really convinced about is the need of such offerings for the well-being and sustainability of our generation and the future ones.
Amen.
Deepali Bhagat
Health Evangelist and founder of Health Zingo
Health Zingo is a company that introduced the concept of Healthy food
Restaurants in the city of Bangalore.
[email protected]