Curefit Launches Telemedicine Services Under Care.fit Vertical

Healthtech startup Curefit has now added a new component to its bouquet of offerings with Care.fit telemedicine services Care.fit is essentially a state of the art clinic with diagnostic and pharmacy centre. The company provides both online as well as offline consultation facility along with full-body checkup and personalized health plans for multiple specialities like gynaecology, orthopaedics, ENT, dermatology, dental and more. The product has been launched in Bengaluru for now, but the Curefit will take it to other cities soon.

Talking to Inc42, Madan Somasundaram, head of Care.fit said the company’s USP is that it immediately connects to the doctor without the interference of data collection or junior doctor etc. The company claims that it offers digital prescriptions and medical records. The company is also offering free follow up with doctors for eight days and unlimited message access to the doctor.

The company further plans to expand into preventive healthcare beyond telemedicine. Somasundaram said it already has hundreds of top doctors across 15+ specialities onboard. “We will continue to ramp this up in the next few weeks. Also seeing strong inbound requests from Doctors to join platform so their patients can consult without having to visit their clinics/hospitals,” he added.

He further claimed that the company’s tech backend has strong and scalable video quality infrastructure and product capable of doing 100K+ consults a day. On being asked about the security of patient data, the company claimed that all personally identifiable information is encrypted. “We maintain complete data privacy and confidentiality,” he added.

Further, for the doctors, Carefit offers customized electronic medical records and records management. “We see this as a large long-term opportunity, as there will be a potentially strong shift to digital with increasingly more consumer and doctor interaction happening online,” he added.

In terms of initial growth, Somasundaram said that the company has “seen very strong uptake in the services, with double-digit growth daily and expect significant traction on our platform over the next few weeks and beyond.”

Talking about how Care.fit fits Curefit’s growth strategy, he added, “A key component of that is making access, continuity and quality of care much easier for consumers through providing access to high-quality doctors, health check-ups and testing as well as lifestyle consultations which Care.fit provides.”

Care.fit is looking to work with accredited partners to offer Covid-19 testing at its centres and home for consumers soon.

Founded in 2016 by former Flipkart executive Ankit Nagori and Myntra cofounder Mukesh Bansal, Bengaluru-based Curefit caters to all segments within the health and fitness sector, including physical fitness through Cult.fit, mental wellness and yoga in Mind.fit, food delivery and diet recommendations through Eat.fit and medical and diagnostic centres Care.fit.

The IBEF has estimated the Indian healthcare market to be valued at $372Bn by 2022. In India, the doctor to patient ratio in the allopathy sector stands at 1:1596 (far lower than the 1:1400 WHO standard) and the country is ranked 145 among 195 countries on the healthcare index.

Curefit works on a hybrid model, with over 180 Cult.fit physical fitness centres and more than 35 Mind.fit centres in six Indian cities — Mumbai, Chennai, Jaipur, Bengaluru, Delhi NCR and Hyderabad, and a central app for all bookings.

Earlier, Curefit also launched a grocery and other healthy packaged food under its Eat.fit vertical. The new venture is called Whole.Fit and it has over 500 SKUs spread across more than 20 food categories — staples and spices, breakfast cereals, instant foods, health supplements, snacks, beverages, sauces, and spreads, among others.

Tapping the urgent need for improved healthcare data and quality access to doctors, telemedicine startups have sprouted in many cities in India. Further, amid pandemic, the government recently issued a set of guidelines for telemedicine or remote delivery of medical services.