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One important question didn’t make it into the conversation: why do doctors have such bad handwriting? After hearing Ritika’s journey, the best explanation seems to be that when someone spends their life healing faces as a maxillofacial surgeon, building hospitals, raising a family, and leading thousands of people, perfect handwriting simply isn’t high on the priority list.

In this episode of Beyond the Case, Ritika Khanna, an OPM participant at Harvard Business School and owner of Indus Healthcare Services Private Limited, shares her journey as a surgeon, entrepreneur, and leader. Her husband, Ramandeep Singh, who co-owns and co-built the organization with her, was kind enough to join the conversation—adding depth and balance to the story.

Together, they reflect on starting their healthcare venture in 2001 at a very young age, choosing to build a full-fledged hospital from day one based on a clear understanding of India’s IPD-driven healthcare economics. With limited experience but strong family support, they learned operations by immersion, expanded through a mix of building and later acquisitions, and eventually transitioned from hands-on execution to leadership centered on systems, teams, and long-term sustainability.

The conversation also explores what it means to build a business as a married couple—where trust, difficult conversations, and evolving boundaries are essential. Ritika offers a compelling perspective for women entrepreneurs in India, advocating patience and the idea of keeping one’s career on a “slow cooker,” particularly during years dominated by family responsibilities. Raman reflects candidly that, in hindsight, he would have made more long-term decisions earlier, eased urgency-driven stress, and enjoyed the journey more instead of operating in constant survival mode.

The episode closes with reflections on gratitude, humor, spirituality, and redefining failure—not as financial loss, but as the fear of letting family down. Their story underscores how enduring companies and meaningful lives are built patiently, thoughtfully, and over decades.

Here are the Top 10 Takeaways from the conversation:

1. Women entrepreneurs in India don’t need to rush - slow, consistent progress compounds.
2. Keeping work “brewing” part-time preserves identity and momentum during family-heavy years.
3. Happiness, not labels (working mom vs homemaker), is the real measure of success.
4. Starting young enables risk-taking, but long-term thinking matters from day one.
5. Building strong teams earlier can significantly reduce founder strain.
6. Family security reshapes how founders experience and recover from failure.
7. Running a business as a couple requires trust, private disagreement, and public unity.
8. Leadership means separating people from problems and fixing systems.
9. Gratitude and humor are essential resilience tools, not soft skills.
10. Enduring businesses are built with patience, humility, and sustained purpose.

Books: 

1. Rich Dad Poor Dad
2. The Strategy
3. Debt: The First 5,000 Years