Indian entrepreneur Amira Shah was able to turn a small private laboratory into a business worth nearly a billion dollars.
Amira Shah was born into a family of doctors, but even though medicine surrounded Amira since childhood, she decided to study finance. At the age of 21, Amira Shah worked at the famous Goldman Sachs bank in New York, but in 2001 Amira returned to India to help her father run the business.
The family business was a small private laboratory that Amira’s father opened in the 1980s after studying in the United States. By the time Amira returned to India, the lab was successful and had a reputation in South Mumbai, but still, the entrepreneur wanted to expand the business. On her trips to different Indian states, Amira offered small private laboratories to unite under the name Metropolis. Sometime later, Amira Shah became the head of the Metropolis Healthcare private laboratory network.
The company thrived until March 2020, when the world faced the threat of the COVID-19 pandemic. India’s Supreme Government has set up private laboratories to test residents for coronavirus. The local authorities, on the other hand, have fiercely opposed the testing because they were scared there might be an increase in statistics. Many treatment services were also suspended, which also affected Metropolis Healthcare’s revenue in March 2020.
In April 2020, the Indian government ordered private laboratories to conduct coronavirus tests for free. With the support of many lawyers, Amira Shah directed all her efforts to annul this ruling, which she managed to implement.
The entrepreneur hopes that the acute phase of the crisis has already passed, and the company will face a recovery period, as people are more inclined to visit proven medical centers and laboratories with a reputation.
Amira Shah has been included in Forbes India’s Tycoons of Tomorrow list as well as in Business Today’s list of India’s Most Powerful Women.
