Around 930 Million Indians currently own smartphones but do not have access to quality health care. Various upcoming digital health startups are filling this gap between the citizens and healthcare facilities. Since most of the people own a smartphone nowadays, mHealth startups have been established with the aim of utilizing this digital boom to provide quality health services to everyone owning a mobile handset. Here is a list of 10 hottest mHealth startups in India.
The healthcare sector in India saw investments worth $1,458 Million in 2015 across 144 deals, compared with transactions worth $1,342 Million across 124 deals in 2014.
Here is a list of 10 hottest mHealth startups in India
Practo
One of India’s fastest-growing healthcare platform, Practo was founded by Abhinav Lal and Shashank ND in the year 2008. Practo provides Android and iOS applications to patients to find and book an appointment with doctors. It offers physicians new and innovative ways to advertise their practice and reach new target patients, ultimately leading to increase their revenue by providing online consultations.
Apart from booking appointments, Practo provides a significant number of services to patients including scheduling an appointment with a diagnostics lab and order medicines online.
Practo has presence in 5 countries, 7 Indian cities with 200,000 registered doctors, 8000 diagnostic centers, 10,000 hospitals and 4,000 wellness and fitness Centers. Practo has raised $179 million since its inception in 2008, making it by far the most well-funded home- grown healthcare start-up. It raised $55 Million in a Series D funding led by China’s Tencent Ltd in January 2017.
Voted as the best app at Google Think Mobile Conference 2014, Practo continues to charter unknown territories in digital health market in India.
| Recommended for you | |
| 10 Hottest mHealth starups in Israel | |
| Hottest technologies in digital health sector | |
| Connecting health across platforms: Health data exchange |
NetMeds
Needs Marketplace Ltd. is a Chennai based online pharmacy which provides online ordering and mail delivery of prescription and non-prescriptions medications. Founded in 2015 by Pradeep Dadha, it has been recognized as India’s one of the path-breaking and disruptive startup companies.
Netmeds boasts of a highly user-friendly interface to search medicines or upload prescription and get it delivered right at your doorstep. It provides a web interface as well as mobile applications.
The company secured Rs 324 crore ($50 million) in funding from a clutch of investors led by healthcare-focused investment firm OrbiMed and expects to enter the B2B segment after the Goods and Services Tax (GST) is implemented.
The team had to go through its fair share of challenges as the online sale of drugs by pharmacies is new and somewhat controversial in India, because legislation controlling drugs is the same for both online and brick and mortar stores.
Lybrate
Founded in the year 2013, the platform aims to address care accessibility through the two Ts- Telemedicine and Transparency. The users are provided with a choice to choose from over eighty thousand vetted doctors, see the fee amount and pay for the live consultation. This ends up saving up to 70% of the patients’ time and other expenses.
Before bringing any doctor on its platform, Lybrate runs a background check to verify medical licenses and credentials. The users can seek multiple opinions from doctors for free on the open platform, or start a one-on-one dialogue privately for a fee with doctors and share text, photo and voice. It provides online consultation facilities and recently introduced the feature of booking pathological lab tests online.
It secured $10.2 million in Series A funding from Tiger Global Management, Ratan Tata, Chairman Emeritus of Tata Sons, and existing investor Nexus Venture Partners. Backed by the top investors, the company is poised to gain ground rapidly as the penetration of Internet services and smartphones surges.
SocialBlood
SocialBlood is a mobile and facebook application that connect blood donors and recipients of the same blood type. It has created a social space for thousands of potential blood donors and recipients to meet and potentially donate. ‘It is challenging to find a blood donor in countries like India due to the stigma associated with blood donation. SocialBlood is working in this direction to provide a convenient platform to search blood donors in your area’, says KarthikNaralasetty, Founder of SocialBlood.
Users can receive blood requests from their neighborhood and can get geo-targeted alerts to let them know if their blood type is needed in a 5Km radius.
It raised an undisclosed amount of funding from RajanAnandan (MD, Google India), Karthik Reddy (Blume Ventures), and Ramesh Kumar Shah and Ravi Gururaj of Harvard Business School Alumni Angels. The startup is doing a commendable job to combat deficiencies in the local system of blood transfusions.
DocEngage
Founded by Asha Satapathy & Ahimanikya Satapathy in the year 2013, DocEngage is a platform aiming to standardize procedures across clinics and helping users assess inventories across different locations in a country to help them better manage resources.
It helps hospitals and care providers to analyze consumer behavior patterns to engage, recommend adequate health services and measure outcome which leads to the increase in revenue and customer satisfaction.
After partnering with NYC-based health incubator, StartupHealth, their number of partner clinics grown from four locations to 25, and adoption of the platform has resulted in a 40% reduction in overall costs reported.
Praxify
Praxify is a Pune based startup founded by Abhijeet Gupta. It has been designed to store patient’s electronic health records, track medication and enables care providers to engage patients in their health. SIYA by Praxify is a SaaS-based, holistic care management platform that allows care teams, caregivers, patients and their families to better manage the patients’ health outside of the hospital.
The platform has made the lives of patients easier by providing appointment and telemedicine services online. It also provides them digital access to test results, treatment plans, and medical information.
Being one of the first EMR platforms on the market, Praxify has an enormous potential to be successful but has a lot of distance to cover actually to create impact in the society.
Portea
Founded by Zachary Jones and Karan Aneja in 2012, the company was bought by Meena Ganesh and K Ganesh Krishnan in 2013. Portea strives hard to provide hospital-quality healthcare in the comfort of your home.
They provide doctors, nurses, and physiotherapists for home visits and facilitate lab tests at home and medical equipment rentals, making health care more accessible for the patients. Physicians and nurses are prepared to go through rigorous a hiring procedure and have to get their backgrounds and medical knowledge verified by senior doctors.
The company has a presence in 24 cities in India as well as in Malaysia. Portea raised $37.5 million Series B funding led by existing investor – Accel and International Finance Corporation (IFC), Qualcomm Ventures, and Ventureast in September 2015. The company has made rapid strides in the digital health sector and planned to expand its operations to Tier II and Tier III cities in India.
LifeInControl
Based out of Hyderabad, LifeInControl is a mobile companion for diabetes management. Run by Curo Healthcare Technologies Pvt. Ltd. and co-founded by Amitabh Nagpal in 2015, it has established itself as a highly successful solution for tackling diabetes epidemic. It seamlessly connects doctors, patients and diabetes coaches to allow patients to manage their blood sugar level and maintain a healthy lifestyle. Patients get personalized diet and activity plan and continuous access to a diabetes coach on chat while Doctors can drive better patient outcomes and provide a delightful patient experience.
The platform also features a test to find out if you are at risk for Type 2 diabetes. Companies like LifeInControl are playing an important role in managing chronic diseases through digital health initiatives.
eKinCare
eKinCare is a Hyderabad based startup that helps one keep his/her family’s medical records in one place and access it from anywhere, anytime using a computer, smartphone or a tablet. Founder Kiran Kalakuntla says, “eKincare is an online and offline solution for an individual to assess, track and stay informed about their health. The data is encrypted using 256-bit encryption algorithms and stored in the cloud.”
The platform also analyzes data from user’s medical records to predict potential health risks before their onset. It then converts the medical data into easier to understand color coded results, graphical history, pattern lines and clickable timelines to help them assess their health.
While the platform is free for users with no limit on the data stored, the firm earns a sales commission from the healthcare organizations it has partnered.
eKincare raised Rs 1 crore ($161,000) in seed funding from BitKemy Ventures and US-based healthcare enterprise firm Adroit Pvt Ltd in December 2014 and January 2015 respectively.
Swasth India
Established in 2008, Swasth India is a Mumbai-based Private Limited Company with a track record of working in various aspects of healthcare. The team is working hard to make detection and treatment of cancer in India more convenient, affordable and trustworthy. Their efforts are aimed at creating satellite centers to take cancer screening and treatment as close as possible to the patient’s home using low-cost and equipment-light processes
The company plans to make last-mile cancer treatment to 20 tier II cities by 2020 by working with existing oncologists, hospitals, and general physicians who are already in service of the community.
Ratan Tata invested 2 Crore Rupees in Swasth India in his capacity because of the startup working hard to leave a profound social impact in the future.
Start-ups mentioned in article
Image credit: www.istockphoto.com
