HealthPlix Bags $13.5 Mn Series B To Expand Digital Clinic Stack Across India

“Anyone who is solving for healthcare in India needs to build a solution for two minutes,” says Sandeep Gudibanda, founder and CEO of HealthPlix, told Inc42.

While this may seem odd at first, the doctor-patient interaction software startup’s founder explains further, “There are about 532 ways to treat a patient,” but given the workload of Indian doctors, they only have about two minutes to spare for each patient. So HealthPlix is looking to minimise the time taken per session through automation and data-driven recommendations. Today, the company is announcing a $13.5 Mn Series B funding round, led by Lightspeed Ventures, with participation from existing investors JSW Ventures, Kalaari Capital and Chiratae Ventures.

The company raised $6 Mn last June with a total of $22 Mn raised till date and is looking to grow its base of doctors and patients by 5x in the next couple of years.

Gudibanda believes that Indian healthcare products need to keep doctors at the heart of the idea and build a solution that helps them do their job not only effectively but also accurately with less time spent per patient.

“Doctors are at the core of healthcare delivery, and at the core of a doctor’s day is his interaction with the patient. These few minutes matter most. It is in this precious interaction that health decisions get made, diagnostic tests get prescribed, pharmaceutical brands get chosen, surgical procedures get planned, and hospital referrals get made. This interaction is the moment of truth, where $88 Bn of annual healthcare spend is decided,” he said.

Gudibanda founded HealthPlix along with Raghuraj Sunder Raju and Prasad Basavaraj in 2014. The started off its journey as an outpatient care platform but eventually found the product fit for doctors, helping them digitise clinic operations and treatment methodologies.

HealthPlix Preps Up To Expand Clinic Software Stack

The solution developed by HealthPlix offers a visual representation of the patient’s treatment journey and offers clinical decision support (CDS) to assist medical practitioners in real-time and deliver better health outcomes. Besides this, it also helps generate digital prescriptions under 30 seconds and offer video consultations solutions for telemedicine. The company claims to have over 6K doctors on board, using the software for daily consultations, while about 10K doctors and specialists use the platform for video consultations. The company claims to be currently supporting 60K consultations daily across 15+ specialities.

Now with Covid-19 giving a boost to Indian healthtech solutions, HealthPlix aims to grow another 5X this year and increase its doctor base as well as user base. HealthPlix aims to add over 50K doctors to its platform in the next two years, substantially increasing its user base from the current 12 Mn. The company also plans to step out of its existing 370 locations and enter more Indian cities.

Indian Healthtech Segment Poised To Hit $10.6 Bn By 2025

While being a terrible tragedy and causing businesses hardships, the Covid-19 pandemic has also acted like a catalyst for rapid digital transformation across business sectors. India also witnessed Indian government efforts to bring about telemedicine guidelines and the National Digital Health Mission initiative (NDHM) to further boost Indian healthcare services. With this, the country noticed some big funding rounds in the healthtech space, including Curefit’s $110 Series D round, 1mg’s $28 Mn debt funding and more. This also led to Innovaccer’s entry into the unicorn club.

The e-health market in the country is expected to reach $10.6 Bn by 2025. However, it will only be 1.6% of the total addressable healthcare market, pegged to reach $638 Bn by 2025. This amply indicates the huge headroom for growth and the massive opportunity that can be leveraged by the ehealth sector.

Gudibanda claims that it witnessed a tailwind in 2020 thanks to the digital transformation of clinics and hospitals. This reduced its doctor acquisition cost from $300-$350 to $150 as more healthcare specialists are opening up to digital clinics. The company believes that it will gradually be able to cut this cost down further as it reduces software training time and as inbound referrals increase. It is also planning to expand its sales team from the current 120 member team to 600 to back this expansion.