About Oncourage

The people behind the foundation

Oncourage Cancer Care Foundation is the social support wing of PCC Cancer Care & Research Center, serving communities across Vashi, Thane and Panvel.

Our Trustees

The doctors behind Oncourage

Oncourage was founded by two doctors who spend their working lives with cancer — one at the bedside, one at the microscope.

Why we started Oncourage

In clinical practice you learn quickly that a cancer diagnosis is rarely the hardest conversation. The hardest one comes a few days later — when a family sits down and works out what they can afford.

Between them, our founders have seen this from both ends of the journey. Dr. Manali Rane has spent years at the microscope, where a diagnosis is confirmed long before the patient hears it — and where too many slides arrived far later than they should have, from people who had waited because a test felt like a luxury. Dr. Pushpak Chirmade has sat across from those same families afterwards, explaining a treatment plan while quietly knowing that the medicine he was recommending might be out of reach.

Oncourage grew out of that gap. Not out of a business plan, but out of a conviction that early detection should reach people before the disease does, and that no family should have to choose between treatment and survival of a different kind. The clinical care already existed at PCC. What was missing was everything around it — the screening camps in neighbourhoods that never get them, the funds that bridge an impossible bill, the person who picks up the phone when a family does not know what to do next.

That is what Oncourage exists to do.

Dr. Pushpak Chirmade, Founder Director of PCC Cancer Center and Trustee of Oncourage Cancer Care Foundation
Dr. Pushpak Chirmade
MD, DM — Founder Director, PCC Cancer Center
Vashi · Panvel · Thane
Trustee

Super specialist in adult and paediatric oncology, with expertise across chemotherapy, targeted therapy, hormonal therapy and immunotherapy — dedicated to making advanced cancer treatment accessible without barriers.

  • Certified Expert in Immuno-Oncology & Precision Oncology, Harvard Medical School, USA
  • ESMO Certified Medical Oncologist (ECMO), European Society of Medical Oncology
  • Advanced Certification in Molecular Oncology, Sidney Kimmel Cancer Institute, USA
  • Gold Medalist, MD Internal Medicine
  • DM in Oncology & Hemato-Oncology, BJ Medical College & Ahmedabad Civil Hospital, Gujarat Cancer Research Institute
  • MBBS, LTMMC & LTMGH, Sion Hospital, Mumbai
Dr. Manali Rane, Senior Oncopathologist and Trustee of Oncourage Cancer Care Foundation
Dr. Manali Rane
Senior Oncopathologist
Histopathology & Hematopathology
Trustee

A senior oncopathologist with deep expertise in histopathology and hematopathology — the diagnostic work that determines how a cancer is understood and how precisely it can be treated.

A social entrepreneur at heart, she has long argued that the most powerful intervention in cancer is also the least expensive one: catching it early. That belief shapes Oncourage's focus on screening camps and community awareness, taking detection to the people least likely to seek it out.

Need support, or want to help?

Whether you are facing a diagnosis or want to contribute to our work, we would like to hear from you.