Based in Mexico

salaUno

A For-profit with social mission

How This Works

As part of the TRANSFORM Support Hub, you will learn how to advance your career while getting hands on experience with organizations like this one.

Organization Details

A start-up company founded in the winter of 2010 to eliminate needless blindness in Mexico. The Company offers affordable and high quality eye care services for the bottom of the pyramid. We generate a superior social impact; this is achieved through its services as well as indirectly by exerting pressure on market prices. The Company model is based on applying operating and strategic principles pioneered by the successful Aravind Eye Care System in India

Support Needs

We’re looking for:

Business StrategyHuman ResourcesOperationsStrategic CommunicationsTraining

Impact Story

In Mexico, blindness is the 2nd leading cause of disability. Cataracts, a curable disease through a safe outpatient surgery performed at low cost, cause 67% of cases. 

Currently, Mexico has more than 2 million people suffering from cataracts, of which 700,000* are blind. Additionally 3% of the population suffers from glaucoma and another 3.5% diabetic retinopathy, which if not diagnosed and treated in time lead to blindness. 60% of the population need vision correction - only 30% uses it. 

With the support of our shareholders, World Bank (IFC) and Adobe Capital, today we build cost-effective solutions in partnerships with government, NGOs and private institutions to alleviate this situation. 

Our operating model is designed to provide benefits that enable cross-subsidies and prices up to 60% less than competitors in treatments that prevent or reverse blindness. This opens the possibility to offer savings to government to treat more people with the same budget. 

In January 2013, we became the most productive cataract hospital in Mexico showing levels of quality and world-class efficiencies with ISO-9001 and Ministry of Health certifications. In May 2014 we won the National Entrepreneur Award and in 2012 "Entrepreneur of the Year" of CNN/Expansion. salauno has case studies by Harvard Business School and DUKE University and is part of the Endeavor and IPIHD entrepreneur networks