Dr. Rita Bakshi

The woman with a gregarious set of talents and intellectual mindset is the Womennovator Dr. Rita who made her childhood dream of becoming a doctor true in every sense. During her residency in obstetrics and gynecology at Lady Hardinge Medical hospital in Delhi, she witnessed how pervasive systemic problems in the provision of health care led to maternal and child problems that were preventable. She took up a job at ESI hospital and was there for 16 years serving as the Head of the department. She would often get disappointed with the lack of infrastructure and initiatives to support infertility. The problem of infertility was growing day by day and the sadness that filled many couples’ hearts was just disheartening for her. Her passion for entrepreneurship led her to quit a comfortable job and start Adiva – a women-centric hospital. She was sharp to realize that fertility is highly valued in most cultures and for women, not being able to become a mother is an emotionally devastating experience, which is considered as a stigma in the society. With a profound shift in her awareness of the infertility issues, Dr. Rita became passionate about helping couples with infertility concerns and created a vision of at least “One Child Per Couple” (OCPC). Adiva was a profitable venture and Dr. Rita found it impossible to convince the stakeholders to follow the vision of OCPC. She later shifted her focus to infertility only and started International Fertility Centre. The emotional motivator of serving the society for this noble cause helped Dr. Rita to open her venture named International Fertility Centre (IFC) with its headquarters in New Delhi. By spurring success IFC became a renowned name in a short span of time reaching out to 1000 surrogacy patients and 4000 IVF patients since its establishment in 2011. Dr. Rita conducted camps for generating awareness in under-developed regions like Iraq, Ethiopia, Uganda and Afghanistan as these countries do not have access to good infertility treatments. Dr. Rita is a pragmatic dreamer and she has mastered the art of taking ventures beyond profitability. She is a missionary entrepreneur driven predominantly by heart and calculates social emancipation as equally as the revenue.