Prabhdeep Singh MBA’16J is CEO and co-founder of Red.Health, which provides emergency healthcare services in more than 30 cities across India. When we spoke to him at the Alumni Reunion in June 2026, he was delighted to be back on campus to catch up with old friends and reconnect with INSEAD, where he began an entrepreneurial journey that has taken him, in only 10 years, from an idea in a breakout room, to a business that has saved one million lives.
After an early career in pharmaceuticals, Prabhdeep arrived at INSEAD in 2015 with grand ambitions. “I wanted to do an MBA because I wanted to build and lead global companies and INSEAD was the best school for me to develop the skills for this,” he says. A scholarship helped make it possible for him to come to INSEAD, and he remains grateful for the generosity that gave him this opportunity.
Initially, Prabhdeep planned to go into consultancy after the MBA, but INSEAD led him down a more adventurous, but ultimately more rewarding, path. “Two of my classmates, Antoine Poirson and Jose Leon, and I had an idea: to build an ambulance network in India, which does not have a medical emergency service,” he explains.
Inspired, they presented a business plan at the INSEAD Venture Competition. This was an important lesson in resilience, a preparation for the frustrations that Prabhdeep would face as an entrepreneur. “I still remember what the judge said: ‘This is untenable, unrealistic, fantastical!” recalls Prabhdeep.
Disheartened perhaps, but not defeated, the three returned a few months later to a second Venture Competition. And this time they were better prepared, winning the competition and the €15,000 prize. And this gave the three friends the capacity and confidence they needed to get started.
“So – a Frenchman, a Costa Rican and an Indian walk into Hyderabad with €15,000 and an idea: to set up 911 in India,” Prabhdeep says. And they stuck with it. Since then, Prabhdeep has expanded Red.Health significantly beyond its origins (Antoine and Jose left the company during the pandemic). After that initial €15,000, the startup has raised c.€35 million – the first €300,000 of which came from MBA’16J classmates. Red.Health is now present in 35 Indian cities, employs 1,200 people, and is valued at over €87 million.
But for Prabhdeep, these numbers are not the true measure of success. “The most important thing is doing business for good. We have saved over a million lives in India; we save a life every three minutes. We are creating advanced ambulances, and paediatric and neonatal systems where none exist,” he says.
Prabhdeep says that INSEAD has been integral to his achievement. Alongside the scholarship and seed funding from the Venture Competition, “INSEAD has given me friends across the world, people that I rely on blindly for advice and support,” he says. “But most importantly, INSEAD's given me belief. Those 10 months at INSEAD have made it all possible.” This is why he is happy to support the school as a Reunion volunteer.
Looking to the future, Prabhdeep aims to take Red.Health global. “I’ve spent the last 10 years scaling a company that’s solving for a uniquely Indian need. But what has emerged is a highly resilient system that could operate across multiple countries,” he says. We look forward to checking in with him at his next Reunion.
