In an exclusive interview, Vivek Sharma, Founder of Uhapo Health Services Pvt. Ltd., recounts the moment of near-collapse that reshaped a startup into a movement. Backed by 700+ patient journeys and grounded in human connection, UHAPO Cancer is now filling India’s most overlooked cancer-care gaps: awareness, ethical affordability, care navigation, and caregiver empowerment.
Here’s the conversation behind a model built on trust, community, and resilience.
Q1. UHAPO Cancer takes a community-first approach to cancer care—what gaps in the current cancer ecosystem prompted this model, and how is it changing patient outcomes on the ground?
While building Uhapo, we faced two major setbacks. Things didn’t work out the way we had planned, and there was a point where we almost lost everything. More than the financial strain, what hurt the most was the doubt it made us question the value of years of hard work. That’s when my wife said, one more time… if it doesn’t work, focus on something else.
That moment took us back to the whiteboard. We reviewed every assumption and returned to what mattered most the voices of 700 people affected by cancer who had trusted us with their experiences. Through those conversations, one insight became impossible to ignore: a community-first approach had to be at the heart of Uhapo. That clarity changed everything.
We relaunched Uhapo with a stronger, more grounded purpose, and this time it worked. We shifted focus to the real needs people live with every day care navigation, emotional support, social connection, financial guidance, and rehabilitation. This reset helped us improve outcomes not just medically, but emotionally and socially, by ensuring patients never feel alone or directionless in their journey.
Q2. Beyond treatment, UHAPO focuses on awareness, early detection, and emotional support how do these pillars work together to create a more holistic cancer-care journey?
We came to a simple but important realisation our work would not be truly meaningful unless we started at the very beginning: helping people understand the disease, and standing with them as they move past the two biggest fears that often silence them the fear of death and the fear of financial toxicity, which can push families toward treatment abandonment.
We also felt a strong responsibility toward survivors to help them return to everyday life with dignity and pride. Not as “former patients,” but as full individuals with dreams, capabilities, and a future.
So we began building steady pillars of support, one step at a time. From awareness videos featuring doctors, survivors, and paramedics, to cancer-specific support groups, and even a matrimony platform designed with empathy every initiative was built to reduce fear, restore confidence, and make the journey a little less lonely. When awareness leads to early detection, and detection is met with emotional and community support, the journey becomes less overwhelming and more human.
Q3. In a country where access and affordability remain major challenges, how is UHAPO Cancer leveraging partnerships, technology, or grassroots networks to reach underserved populations?
Partnering with the right stakeholders is a huge responsibility because we are the face for patients and caregivers. When we introduce a family to a provider, we are not just making a referral, we are putting our trust, and their well-being, on the line.
That is why we collaborate only with like-minded, cause-driven professionals and organisations who support patients in a cost-effective and ethical way whether it is molecular diagnostic testing, home-care services, consultations, surgery, radiation, or medical treatments.
Before engaging with anyone, we meet them personally to assess their approach, values, and reliability. We hold ourselves to a clear standard: stay unbiased, stay outcome-driven, and always do what is best for the patient.
Technology matters to us, especially to scale operations and manage administrative work. But we also learned from our early, heavily tech-led versions that cancer care cannot be tool-first. People need human connection, reassurance, and a personal touch when everything feels uncertain. So we balance technology for scale, and humans for trust.
Q4. Cancer care often overlooks caregivers. What initiatives has UHAPO introduced to support families and caregivers alongside patients?
We see it differently. Most survivors don’t credit their recovery to treatment alone. They speak about the people who stayed by their side, showed up in the hardest moments, and simply didn’t let them feel alone. Some even extend that credit to our support groups.
That is why caregivers are included in every programme we run. Their role is not secondary, it is central to the cancer journey.
Over time, many caregivers have evolved into patient advocates themselves. Today, several of them work with us with a deep sense of pride and purpose, becoming voices of strength for others. Supporting caregivers means supporting patients better.
Q5. Looking ahead, what is UHAPO Cancer’s long-term vision in terms of prevention, policy influence, and scaling impact across regions?
Uhapo wants to be a long-term partner in shaping cancer-care policy and even more importantly, helping implement it on the ground. Because of our reach and our day-to-day understanding of what patients and families actually face, we can see how policies translate into real experiences where they help and where they fall short.
We hope to bring lived insight into the policy process so that decisions are not just well-intended, but also practical, patient-centred, and easier to deliver at scale across India.
Our vision is to strengthen prevention networks, scale early-detection awareness, expand rehabilitation support for survivors with dignity, and grow caregiver-led advocacy across regions ensuring cancer care evolves from clinical intervention to community-driven impact.
