lean data case study 6

PART 6

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So what happened to Ziqitza? Are its ambulances in fact reaching the poor?

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Rather than send surveyors back to ambulance pick-up locations, we built on existing company operations. This meant leveraging customer service follow-up calls Ziqitza conducts with a percentage of the over half million people who use the ambulance service each year. Customers were asked a short series of additional questions aimed at helping the company’s leadership better understand the profile of the people relying on the service. Each call took no more than an additional 4 to 5 minutes.

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Ziqitza’s call center operators completed 1,000 customer insight calls using the PPI tool across the Indian states of Punjab and Odisha, where Ziqitza has several hundred ambulances in operation.

In both states, Ziqitza operates through public-private partnerships with state governments that allow emergency medical transportation to be offered free of charge. Acumen then validated five percent of those responses through in-person interviews to test the accuracy of the results collected by phone.

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And what did we find?

The data found that, on average, 76% of Ziqitza’s callers in Punjab and Odisha live under $2.50 a day. Upon hearing the findings, Sweta Mangal, the company’s CEO, remarked proudly that this was the first time the company had ever “known for sure” that it was meeting its social mission.

The results are affirming both for Ziqitza and for the state governments that support the service.


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The surveyed group was found to be poorer than state averages across the regions we studied except rural Odisha where the population the company is serving is about 10% less poor than the regional average. There, Ziqitza is in the process of expanding its ambulances to reach poorer districts.


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We also found that Ziqitzais having a disproportionate impact on women. In Punjab, poverty levels of female patients were higher than that of their male counterparts. In the random sample selected, of total medical complaints registered, 43 percent of cases were related to pregnancies or maternal and child health.


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Coordination efforts between Ziqitza and government schemes that support maternal and child health are the likely contributor to poorer women accessing Ziqitza’sservices in higher numbers, demonstrating the potential for impact when successful partnerships are forged among several public and private players.

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Ziqitza is intent on undertaking more of this analysis to better understand who they are serving, now possible through lower-cost, more company-friendly techniques that are still highly accurate.

For Sweta and Ziqtiza, or indeed any company or impact fund, we hope these Lean Data methods will ensure that impact measurement is no longer a daunting or distracting challenge. Instead the collection of data on matters such as their customer’s poverty levels becomes part of their own DNA; collected and assessed regularly in order to improve its performance against its own social mission.


Still curious about Ziqitza?

Read the full study here:

http://acumen.org/content/uploads/2014/09/

ZHL-PPI-study-final.pdf

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http://acumen.org/content/uploads/2014/09/ZHL-PPI-study-final.pdf

lean data case study 6

Education