Exclusive: Healthcare Content Startup Medinfi Pockets Another $125K From International Angel Investors

Bengaluru-based healthcare content startup Medinfi has raised $125K in a fresh round of funding from Angel investors in Singapore, Germany and the Middle East. This is the sixth funding round of the healthcare content platform, since its launch in 2014.

The list of angel investors included PBS Srinivas, a Middle East-based professional; Vinod Martin, COO of Singapore-based IT Services firm; Prijit Debnath, Germany-based senior IT professional; and Alok Bahl, with Singapore-based Hedge Fund.

Existing Directors, Dr. Ram Kumar Kakani, Associate Dean & Professor, XLRI; and Hemant Kaul, Ex-MD & CEO, Bajaj Allianz General Insurance also participated in this round.

As stated by Dr. Ram Kumar Kakani, “I backed Medinfi again in this round owing to the visibility of potential green shoots in terms of early revenues.”

The newly raised funds will be used for further expanding its user base to 5 Mn and extend its reach to 50 cities in India by 2018, as shared by Medinfi founder Ravi Shankar Mishra.

Medinfi: What The Healthcare Content Startup Is Counting Upon

Medinfi is India’s first pure-play healthcare content platform which offers verified information to its users for taking healthcare decisions.

Medinfi has an easy-to-use mobile website and Android mobile application which helps users locate the nearest doctors and hospitals for their everyday check-ups. The application also offers a rich collection of blogs written by qualified professionals on a variety of health & lifestyle topics.

The platform monetises in multiple ways including banner advertisements, hyperlocal ads, healthcare analytics solutions to enterprises and more.

As stated by Ravi, Medinfi aims to become a trusted healthcare partner for its users and help them make informed healthcare decisions. “Through our blogs and articles, Medinfi drives awareness on various health related issues across topics on women’s health, child health, nutrition and diet, health conditions, healthy living, and trending topics in healthcare,” he added.

Also, in case the user wants to consult a doctor, the website offers information on nearby doctors and clinics in 31 Indian cities.

Medinfi is also partnering with government to help drive healthcare analytics in the country. In the past, it has worked with Insurance Information Bureau of India, promoted by Insurance Regulatory Development of India (IRDAI), for the Registry of Hospitals in Network of Insurance (ROHINI) project which has given Unique Identification to 32,000+ hospitals located across India.

“Medinfi recently crossed 2 Mn user mark in just five months as compared to 12 months taken to reach 1 Mn users. We are proud to have scaled our user base while also growing user engagement consistently. This is a clear validation of the fact that we are solving the right problem of “trust deficit” in Indian healthcare ecosystem,” shared Ravi.

Medinfi And The Associated Consortium Of Angel Investors

With this round from angel investors, the healthcare startup has so far raised $0.85 Mn in funding altogether.

According to CrunchBase, in March 2017, Medinfi raised $50K from undisclosed angel investors. Also, earlier this year in January, Medinfi raised $100K from a group of angel investors. This included angel investors such as Vinod Martin, Chief Operating Officer of a Singapore-based IT services company; Singapore-based angel investor Evan Lim; Kanchan Ghoshal, a Qatar-based alumnus of management school XLRI; and Ram Kumar Kakani.

The other funding rounds led by angel investors in Medinfi included:

• $200K from angel investors Mudit Saxena, Senior Vice President at Genpact, and Lim, in July 2016.
• An undisclosed amount raised from three angel investors, including Rajnish Sinha, Senior Vice President at Genpact, India in February 2016.
• $301.95K from Gurmeet Chahal, Hemant Kaul, Pradeep K Jai Singh, Ram Kumar Kakani, Sunil TV, and Vijay Ghadge In November 2015.

As per Inc42 DataLabs, 183 healthcare startups have been funded in the period of 2014-2016 (till October 2016), with the sector seeing an infusion of around $600 Mn investment. And, as per the 2016 Healthtech funding report, Accel Partners is a major investor in the healthtech space with nine deals being struck in the timeline.

This year, one of the major healthcare investments happened in April 2017, with Credihealth bagging $1.5 Mn in Pre-Series A funding from Mountain Pine Capital and Tolaram Inc. and a few angel investors. Other healthtech startups that have attracted investor attention in the past few quarters are Oxa Medical, SigTuple, Healthians, AlternaCare, CureFit, Celes Care and more.

The Indian healthcare market, which is worth $100 Bn, is likely to grow at a 23% CAGR to reach $280 Bn by 2020, as per a Deloitte 2016 report. To date, the prominent names in this domain include Practo, Portea Medical, MedGenome, Lybrate, Medwell Ventures and more. All these are primarily booking platforms or healthcare research and analytics startups. How the support from its consortium of angel investors will help the Medinfi healthcare content platform gain traction among users is something that will only get unfolded with time.