Four Days in Kozhikode: What Kerala’s Cooperatives Taught ICA-AP Staff About Care, AI and Community

ICA-AP staff spent four days in Kozhikode, Kerala, from 2 to 5 August, on a learning visit that moved between hospitals, a business school and some of the district’s best-known cooperative institutions, including the Uralungal Labour Contract Cooperative Society (ULCCS), and left the team with a much sharper sense of what cooperatives can do when they commit to a place for the long haul.

The visit opened on Sunday at MVR Cancer Hospital; a facility built on a non-profit model by the Care Foundation and supported by Calicut City Service Cooperative Society. It’s one of the ten most sought-after cancer care facilities in India, with 300 beds and LINAC-3 radiation therapy on site, a striking reminder of what cooperative-backed healthcare can scale to. From there, the team visited the Society’s 365-day branch, open every single day of the year, before heading back to the hotel.

Monday belonged to the classroom. At IIM Kozhikode, staff took part in a training programme on AI for Social Impact and International Development, digging into how AI tools could be put to work in their day-to-day tasks and where they could genuinely improve productivity. Some more specific details would be good. Add another 1-2 sentences with session names/ topics.

Day three brought two visits that, in different ways, made the same point: cooperatives can serve their communities and still hold their own as destinations people choose to visit. The team toured KDCH, the Kozhikode District Cooperative Hospital, and Sargaalaya, the crafts village managed by ULCCS. Both stood out for being value-driven without compromising on quality, proof that cooperative institutions don’t have to choose between purpose and appeal.

On the final day, staff visited the headquarters of Calicut City Service Cooperative Society and its free dialysis center, a service the Society runs for the community at no cost. The day continued at Matter Lab, where ULCCS conducts material studies for construction projects it runs around the world, and closed at UL Cyberpark, home to startups incubated by both the government and multinational companies, and ULTS, ULCCS’s technology subsidiary.

Four days, one district, and a clear thread running through all of it: in Kozhikode, cooperatives aren’t a side business to healthcare, technology or hospitality, they’re the institution making all of it work.