Healthcare startup Hindustan Wellness goes from 0 to 16,000 customers in 15 months

Footing hospital bills usually causes a major dent in an individual financial status in case he/she doesn’t have health/medical insurance. Negligence (on the patient’s side) and lack of preventive care emerge as the biggest reasons for health issues in India. India has always had a curative focused healthcare market instead of a preventive focused one. The focus is usually on the disease and its cure.

While on the curative focused healthcare side, many startups have come up to ease doctor’s appointment seeking process, pathology collection etc; however, very little effort is directed by startups towards creating preventive centric solutions. Siddharth Sangwan thought of 360 degree preventive healthcare (and not just a health checkup) as a viable idea for his startup in July 2013 to fill in this very gap.

Within three months of ideation, Siddharth left his well paying job as head acquisitions (Online Verticals) at Times Group to devote full time to his venture Hindustan Wellness.

Hindustan Wellness is about preventive care which helps individual stay healthy and away from curative setups. “We don’t treat patients; we help our customers stay healthy and prevent them from turning into patients,” says Siddharth. At present, there are three kinds of preventive healthcare services usually provided by hospitals, labs and new age healthcare brokers. However, Siddharth outlines that there wasn’t a single agency/ lab/ organization capable of carrying out an accurate assessment of the customer’s health and giving unbiased and clear advice.

Genesis of the idea

“The idea was to collect blood and urine samples from the customer’s home (as opposed to the inconvenience of walking to the lab/ hospital), do the test in our own labs to monitor accuracy and quality; and provide the customer with on-phone consultation,” explains Siddharth.

Additionally, the company provides dietary services on phone and email, and allocates a dedicated health manager to discuss customers’ health related issues at regular intervals.

Siddhartha funded Hindustan Wellness for the initial year. “Within a year, we had 75 employees, 10,000 loyal and healthier customers (from retail), four large corporate customers along with four offices across Delhi NCR,” he says. Following quick scale Siddharth roped in Aditya Gupta (whom he used to report to while at Infovision) to come on board as the chairman of the company.

Aditya was the CEO and owner of Infovision which he later sold to Serco. “He loved the business idea and not only agreed to come on board as chairman but also to invest in the company,” reveals Siddharth.

From 0 to 16,000 plus customers in 15 months

Currently the company has over 16000 plus unique customers and adds close to 1000 new customers every month. In the last 15 months, it has grown from 0 to 16000 plus customers. “We are growing at 15-20 per cent every month in terms of revenue,” says Siddharth. Hindustan Wellness anticipates to close this financial year with a revenue of more than Rs 3 crore.

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“We are open as good as 24x7 (5am to 11pm) as our phlebotomists start their work of blood collection across Delhi by 5 am everyday while the route is chalked and finalized by the scheduling team by 11 pm taking into account all the orders booked in the day. This was a model that no one had executed till date,” says Siddharth.

How Hindustan Wellness overcame initial challenges?

To convince top doctors to dedicate two hours every day for Hindustan Wellness on phone was a big challenge; however the company overcame it successfully. As of now, Hindustan Wellness has done more than 16000 consultations on phone and the process has now been developed to an all new level by leveraging technology.

Hindustan Wellness covers a 50 km radius from Connaught Place to Manesar and Faridabad in south, Kundli in west and Greater Noida and Ghaziabad in the east. “Getting together a team which did not hesitate travelling relatively long distances in the morning and be at the customer’s house on time was another challenge. With the team growing larger and Delhi divided into zones now, distances are much shorter,” adds Siddharth.

Road ahead

Most of the startups in healthcare provide technology platform to find doctors or dentists. Hindustan Wellness is completely different from them. “There isn’t any other startup we have come across with our set of propositions,” says Siddharth. By the end of the current calendar year Hindustan Wellness plans to move to Mumbai, Bangalore, Hyderabad and Chennai.

Website: Hindustanwellness.com