In a small village called Kinnigoli in coastal Karnataka, a boy named Devi Prasad Shetty grew up as the eighth of nine children, listening to stories of the world’s first heart transplant and deciding, even as a schoolboy, that he would become a heart surgeon. Born on 8 May 1953, he completed his MBBS and MS from Kasturba Medical College, Mangalore, and trained further at Guy’s Hospital in London, earning his FRCS.

Returning to India in 1989, he began work at the B.M. Birla Heart Research Centre in Kolkata. In 1992 he performed India’s first neonatal heart surgery on a 21-day-old infant. He later became the personal physician to Mother Teresa after treating her following a heart attack. Moved by the sight of so many patients who could not afford life-saving surgery, he resolved to make high-quality cardiac care accessible to ordinary Indians.

In 2000 he founded Narayana Hrudayalaya (now Narayana Health) in Bengaluru. Using assembly-line efficiency, high volumes and rigorous cost control, he brought the price of complex heart operations down dramatically while maintaining international standards. He has performed or supervised well over 100,000 heart surgeries, a large proportion on children. With the Government of Karnataka he designed the Yeshasvini scheme—one of the world’s largest micro-health-insurance programmes—covering millions of farmers for a few rupees a month.

“Healthcare is a basic human right,” he often says. “The poor cannot wait.” His model has been studied by Harvard Business School and praised around the world. The Government of India honoured him with the Padma Shri in 2004 and the Padma Bhushan in 2012. He has also received the Dr B.C. Roy Award, the Karnataka Ratna and numerous international recognitions for innovation and social entrepreneurship.

From a village schoolboy inspired by a distant heart transplant to the founder of a hospital chain that has transformed cardiac care for the many, Devi Prasad Shetty’s journey remains a powerful story of surgical skill married to a deep sense of social purpose.