Sustainable supply chain practices with reverse innovation in healthcare start-ups – A Structural Equation Model (SEM) approach

Abstract

Healthcare is one of the fastest growing sectors in India. To mitigate the challenges of COVID-19, the small healthcare start-ups have changed the pave for rethinking their existing SCM practices by implementing sustainable Supply Chain Management (SCM) practices, introducing the awareness and advantages of adapting reverse innovation and provide the same to global SCM giants. This strategic approach has helped the manufacturers to optimize their network agile supply chain to provide a value based healthcare products or services to various supply chain partners. Thus in this paper we have made an attempt to propose a conceptual framework of the impact of the three interventions in manufacturing namely sustainable SCM practices, implementing Reverse innovation at plant level and to figure out the swiftness of using agile supply chain during the various pandemic waves. Data were collected using a structured questionnaire from 56 respondents which include the middle level Professionals or the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) in start-ups located in the clusters of Tamil Nadu. The data was analyzed using SPSS 19.0 and Smart-PLS software. The findings have concluded that the practices of sustainable SCM, structuring supplier parners using reverse innovation practices along with network agile SCM thriving the end customer in the supply chain led to offer value based health care products or services as resulted in analysis.