by shama@camphorsolutions.comThe health of a human being is always of prime importance. As rightly said; health is the biggest wealth in life. With a sound healthy pattern of life, a person tends to think better mentally, physically, emotionally, and spiritually. Good health is essential to the aforementioned parameters of life. Good health means good physicality and a sound mental level which reflects in your decision-making skills.
What is Health-Tech
Simply, put, it is a marriage of healthcare with technology. With the marked advancements in the field of healthcare, there are better ways and techniques for treatment. The combinations of technology with medical care; led to the advent of various healthcare start-ups called health-tech. This health tech is the essential breakthrough which emerged in the healthcare sector in the last ten years making it convenient for the people.
Technology integrated with medical care has helped people keep track of the condition of the patients, previous medical histories, ongoing medical conditions and diseases, any pathology, current or previous medications, devices or any technique employed for treatment, and the current treatment protocol followed. It gives you easy access to detailed and desired information required about the case.
Top Ten Health Tech Start-ups
Here has been compiled a short list of health tech startups that have brought a revolution in the way people interact with the healthcare providers. This article highlights the players based on the uniqueness they bring to the users. The accessibility and ease of navigating through their websites and apps and their contribution towards Indian mindset and requirement. For example: Practo makes bookings more easy and saves on the time and queuing up hassel. Pharmeasy makes refilling your mom’s medicine in Raigarh from Delhi as easy as clicking on the mouse. While Tata digital makes remote monitoring of patients with chronic illness possible. Yet another entry would be NIrmai that uses AI to detect breast cancer and has proven to be a life saviour. Let us now see some of the leading healthcare start-ups in India in the year 2023.
Pharm Easy
It is an e-commerce pharmaceutical company that deals in selling medicines and diagnostic- related products. It even helps in providing online telehealth services like medical care by healthcare providers on the call without going somewhere to visit. It is an online medical store that sells over-the-counter medicines and prescribed ones ordered by the customer on the concerned website. There is even information related to pathological tests and specialist doctors for online consultations.
This company acquired the famous Med Life and Thyrocare businesses. It has almost a base of thirty-two million customers under its belt. It partners with various local pharmacy stores and provides a range of pharmaceutical drugs across numerous pin codes. It is just not the medicines but a range of different products available on the website that even includes mother and baby care products.
Pharm Easy Healthcare startup was set up in the year 2014 by two persons named Dhaval Shah and Dharmil Sheth. This healthcare startup initially received funding from their parents. It has an employment force of around 2,830.
The investors of the company the Astarc Ventures, Aarin Capital, Eight Roads Ventures, Caisse de Depot et Placement du Quebec, Bessemer Venture Partners, F-Prime Capital, Fundamentum, Eight Roads Ventures India, LGT Group, JM Financial, Manipal Group, KB Financial Group, Nandan Nilekani, TPG, Think Investments, Temasek Holdings, Prosus Ventures, Orios Venture Partners. This company raised around $350 million about a year ago and $673.7M in the recent funding stage of Series F.
Net meds
Netmeds is known to be the largest startup in the field of healthcare. It is a platform that is an online portal which provides medicines and other healthcare products. This is known to be one of the first organizations which offered the online selling of almost every required medicine which even including baby care products, homeopathic medicines, Ayurveda, sexual, fitness, and wellness products, surgical devices, eye-related products, related to diabetes, general supplements, and veterinary products.
It holds a record of supplying medicines to around 7 million customers across various areas and covering more than 20000 pin codes. This healthcare startup has around 14 logistic centers spread across the country. They provide the facility for laboratory tests also. They offer discount schemes and cash back to the customers as per their suitability. They even have a range of beauty products and supply essential items at the time of the pandemic. They have employed pharmacists who see and analyze the written prescriptions by the customers. They are known for their speedy delivery and efficient service in the industry. They have made 3 aquisitions, including Kivi Health.
The healthcare startup was founded by Pradeep Dada in 2010. It consists of a workforce of around 500 employees. The investors of the firm are Orbi Med, Tancam Investment, Sistema Asia Capital, Daun Penh Cambodia Group, and MAPE Advisory. The funding raised by the company is 99 M USD.
Cult Fit
This start-up is a digital platform that provides fitness services and nutritional guidance to customers. It just started as a mobile application providing training plans customized personally for individual clients. It provides fitness sessions such as aerobics, yoga, and gym workouts. It is a leading gym brand known which even provide training at home. The other activities carried out are meditation sessions for all age groups, specifically for stress, mindfulness meditation, and laughter sessions of 7 days. It provides diet plans and services for mental health. It has a brand under its name called Eat Fit which provides healthy meals, snacks, and beverages.
This startup was founded by Mukesh Bansal and Ankit Nagori in 2016. It has an employee base of around 2,050 people. The investors of the company are Epiq Capital, Accel Partners, Accel, Anand Piramal Trust, IDG Ventures, InnoVen Capital, Kalaari Capital, Chiratae Ventures, GableHorn Investments, IDG Ventures USA, Kotak Mahindra Bank, Oaktree Capital Management, Prathithi Investment Trust, Unilever Ventures, Tata Digital, and Temasek holdings. It has risen funding of around $655 M in the series D stage.
Healthify Me
Healthify Me is an online platform known for the management of healthcare and fitness programs. The startup began with just fitness, dietary intake and lifestyle management. After the pandemic lockdown, healthcare became another essential service offered by the company. It helps in personalized meal planning, nutritional guidance with fitness. It carefully monitors medical parameters like glucose, weight management, and body and food metabolism with the help of the application of Healthify Me. The application is known to have a smart scale assessing the different parameters of the human body.
This healthcare startup was founded by Tushar Vashisht in 2012 and the CEO of the company is Mathew Cherian. It has a workforce of 1482 employees. It is a great healthcare tracker that is just a click away. The investors of the company are Atlas Ventures, Blume Ventures, Leapfrog, Atlas Asset Management, Chiratae Ventures, Health Quad, Dream Incubator, Microsoft Accelerator, Elm, Gopal Srinivasan, Amit Gupta, IDG Ventures USA, Khosla Ventures, NB Ventures, Roopa Nath, Pallavi Nadhani, Unilever Ventures, Sashi Reddi, SamsungNEXT Ventures, Neelesh Bhatnagar, Sistema Asia Capital, Sistema Asia Fund, and Microsoft Accelerator Bangalore. A fund of $130M has been raised in around eight rounds of Series C funding.
Tata Digital Health
It is one of the great healthcare startups that provide a range of services from medicines, to laboratory tests, doctor consultations, and Ayurveda remedies. It is a new venture of Tata by the name of Tata 1 mg providing services to the consumers as well as the medical care providers. It was founded in the year 2015 and is based in Gurugram, Haryana. The Tata digital health helps in the management of electronic media record, which keeps information about the health of the patients, and is a cloud-based record system. It is an integrated tool that works online and keeps the data of the appointments of the patients, the schedule of the visits, prescriptions, and the record of invoices. It provides the service of remote monitoring for patients who are suffering from chronic diseases.
There is Virtual Care + which is a telemedicine portal for physicians. It has a serving record of 6 lakh consumers. The investors of the company are HBM Healthcare Investments, KWE, Mauritius Africa Fund, and Deep Kalra. The total funding raised is around $40.8M in the latest Series D round. As of now, a total of $231M is raised in a total of 12 rounds of funding.
Innovacer
It is a digital health platform that offers services in the form of managing the collective data of a population. It employs the use of some advanced data tools and artificial intelligence for the evaluation of the data. It helps in patient records, virtual care networks, decision-making, social factors of health data, and remote monitoring. It has its patent tool called the Data Shop which helps in the integration and evaluation of complex data of the patients gained from various sources.
This company was founded in 2012 by Abhinav Shashank, Kanav Hasija, and Sandeep Gupta. It is a Silicon Valley-based healthcare startup whose headquarters are based, in San Francisco, California. The investors of the company are B Capital Group, Dragoneer, Arihant Patni, Avidity Partners, M12, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Pankaj Jain, Pravega Ventures, OMERS Growth Equity, Mubadala, Tiger Global, Phanindra Sama, Mubadala Capital, Steadview Capital, Lightspeed Venture Partners India, Rajan Anandan, WestBridge Capital, and Whale Rock Capital. The company has risen a total funding of $379.1M in the recent session.
Docplexus
It is a healthcare startup which is a digital platform completely online for doctors. It makes in making clinicians skilled by sharing basic to advanced knowledge to be more informed in their field. The more aware and informed the doctor is better the decision-making skills are. It offers knowledge about the latest advancements in treatment planning, academia, and medicines that can be discussed with fellow doctors in the community groups formed with fellow clinicians.
It has doctors of more than 99 specialties with more than 3, 80,000 registered and verified clinicians onboard. There are more than 60,000 discussions of the clinical cases that have happened till this time. It is a fast-growing online platform, which is; liked by many doctors. It serves as a much-needed and valuable source for doing evidence-based practice. This platform was founded in the year 2013. It has an employee base of 134 people. The
investors of the company are ASP Consulting, Unicorn Ventures and more. The funds raised by the company were $1.89M, with latest round in 2020.
MediBuddy
Medibuddy is a healthcare startup providing multiple choices in providing healthcare services. The services offered are pathological tests across various laboratories, delivery of medicines, and online consultation of doctors. The other products offered are the insurance packages for both individuals and corporate groups. There is evaluation and record keeping of medical records of the patients as you can submit the authorization requests and claims.
There is a total network of 90,000 doctors, 3000 diagnostic centers, 7000 hospitals, and 2500 pharmaceutical stores delivering at almost 23000 pin codes in India. The company has a team of 1000 team members in around 22 cities which have served the healthcare demands of almost 3 crore Indians.
This startup was founded in the year 2013 by Satish Kannan and Enbasekar Dinadayalan. The investors of the company are Innoven Capital, Bessemer Venture Partners, Lightrock, Stride Ventures, Quadria Capital and many more. It has raised a total of $18M in the latest Series C round funding taht happened in teh year 2023. Till now, a total of $192M has been raised over the 10 rounds of fundraising.
Practo
Practo is one of the very well-known and older healthcare startups that offer the service of telemedicine. It contains a directory of individual specialist doctors and helps in the management of their clinical practice. The patient can book the concerned doctor’s appointment through the Practo application and can get an online consultation or an in-clinic appointment.
It maintains a record of the doctors and their visiting clinics with the other necessary information regarding experience and fees. It also assists in the buying of the prescribed medications and a record of the prescription advised.
The founder of this startup is Abhinav Lal in 2008. The co-founder and the CEO of the company is Shashank ND. It is a Bangalore-based startup with a workforce of 1653 employees. The investors of the company are Capital G, Google Capital, Matrix Partners, Sequoia Capital, Sofina, Thrive Capital, Yuri Milner, Trifecta Capital Advisors, Matrix Partners India, ru-Net, and Tencent Holdings. The total funds raised by the company are $251.2M.
Niramai
This Karnataka based health tech startup was established in the year 2016. The company has patented its product ‘Thermalitics’ . This device is based on AI and is a thermal sensing device that helps in detecting early stage breat cancer accurately. This is indeed a lifesaver. It is currently being used to detect cancer in 9 Indian cities in 22 locations. As reports suggest, 95% of breast cancer is curable through early detection. Still abot 76K women lose their lives to this disease that can go undetected for a very long time leading it to be life threatening. This is where Nirmai and its team comes in. The company claims to have treated around 5,500 patients with 90% accuracy by 2019, and since then the numbers have just been growing.
The company was co-founded by Geetha Manjunath and Nidhi Mathur. It has raised a total funding of $14M. It has 22 investors, namely Pi ventures, British International Investment, Ankur Capital, T-hub and others.
Closing Thought
Healthcare startups are in the boom in the healthcare industry and everyone offers something different than the others. Though, the list may account for many the above-mentioned are much in demand with their services and convenience offered to a majority of people. And, the future of these depends upon keeping the novelty and pace with upcoming times and demands of the human population. If you are in the Health Tech space and looking for digital solutions we are here to help. Healthcare is something that will create a healthy today and define a healthier future. The GenZ is more aware, demanding and tech-savvy; and with the changing times the health tech start-ups will lead the innovations in the field of health care for the citizens of tomorrow.
