HealthIndya wants to be the one-stop shop for all your healthcare needs
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We in India don’t give any particular importance to healthcare unless something goes wrong. It is then that we realize that it is one of the most important elements of security for our loved ones and family.
“I have heard many of my friends talk about misdiagnoses, healthcare issues and how they get exploited when they go to see a physician, or visit a hospital in India. Having worked in the US for all this while, I realized that we take things for granted till reality hits us. A few things happened with my family and friends, which called for a change,” says Ashish Dhar, Founder of HealthIndya about how he got started up on the idea.
What is HealthIndya?
HealthIndya serves as a technology enabled healthcare venture catering towards providing most informative and cost-effective healthcare choice to its customers, patients and their families. It envisions becoming an integrator of all the medical services and providing them under one roof with just a phone call.
“We have built a single sign-on patient centric model empowering the user to find, review and select any healthcare service available out there; whether it is choosing the best hospitals, lab or diagnostics center, or pharmacy, and even doctors in their local area. Our elaborate rating system which is completely user driven helps customers make a better choice and they are assured of their provider and treatments,” says Ashish.
The idea was conceptualized back in 2012 and the drive and intent was to make an impact in a fragmented and not-well-understood healthcare market. “We created a product first to make sure things are in order and we are not dependent on anyone else to take it ahead and scale it up eventually.”
The product is a web-based, cloud-based complete healthcare system enabling user-doctor connect with various components built into it.
EMR/HIS based systems are quite robust in India and worldwide and the team made and sold it to their initial client base. However, they realized that one cannot sell practice management to a provider that sees hundreds of patients and is overbooked at any given time.
“It doesn't make sense. How can you triple book yourself and be there for all the meeting. This would be just insane,” explains Ashish.
At the same time providers, clinics, hospitals are driven by a simple motive -- getting more users and more patients.
“There is no follow up or loyalty programs and hardly anyone from the provider side has spent enough time and thought around it. It is all about every day being a new day for all of them; yet it works because of so many users out there and demand supply concern,” he adds.
HealthIndya.com has since created a solid healthcare exchange over a period of time which is backed by having over 7000+ providers in the network and over 50 healthcare affiliate partners that service almost all needs of the customers.
Zeroing in on HealthIndya.com
Ashish speaks about the process for choosing the name.
“We thought about a couple of names and we had to ensure that the domain name for the same would be available. For the overall comfort level of the users, we decided on .com as it is widely used and served our purpose since there is not much to be specific with healthcare sector.”
The target market
The addressable market for HealthIndya is users and their families that seek medical attention or rather cater to the healthcare needs of their parents, and families.
“Women, children and elderly are going to be our main drivers of the engine powered by the youth, and the males in the families who serve as our customer are not necessarily the consumer,” says Ashish.
“The opportunity with HealthIndya will be like no other. We will be a unique high tech healthcare exchange where all segments and players are brought together to assist in better decision making with a focus on cost savings to the users,” he adds.
Differentiation
“We are a true information exchange platform offering patients the ability to pick and choose any healthcare affiliate in the market, call us and get information before they visit and finally put money back in their wallet. Our product is backed by web services and round the clock call center helping users and their families in the times when they need it most, reducing waiting time and making sure they get fair value for their payment and service. Moving forward we will expand our network to capture various health entities that offer healthcare services from doctors to pharmacies. This will bring together a strong value added rating and review system along with quality check program. We will also give the best in healthcare service with money back in their wallet as savings.”
The team
Right now, HealthIndya is a 12 member team on ground with 4 people working outside India to support on other fronts. “We have carefully chosen our group to make sure that each one complements the other person on the team. Our Business Head Sandeep Guadapati is an extraordinary combination of technical and management strength whose inclusion has shaped most of our goals and outcomes to follow.”
Indian customer is still not ready for a big change and the cost of acquisition for HealthIndya is on the higher side.
“It is still a savings economy and making the consumer understand the value of service and then pay for it is the key.”
Future plans
“We will be increasing our user base 5X in the next few months. We are looking at doubling our user base so we can offer entire cross platform on healthcare services and exchange network. HealthIndya just launched its new version and will continue making partnerships and outreach in the area so more benefits can be extended to our customers.”
“The passion and ability to make a difference in one’s life is so much more comforting than anything else. One smile on someone’s face and a sense of relief for having assisted them in their healthcare needs, makes it worth all the time and energy we put into it,” Ashish signs off.
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