Can CureBay’s Doorstep Care Model Bridge India’s Rural Health Gap?

What makes the rural-urban divide in India loftier than ever? It is accessibility, more than anything else. If quick commerce brings markets to the doorstep, then artificial intelligence reads the consumer mind to help sellers identify what precisely to offer. But that’s all in the cities. Well, maybe, up to smaller towns at the most. 

But most things still remain largely out of bounds in remote Indian villages. “The lack of accessibility is most painful when it comes to medicines,” said Priyadarshi Mohapatra, who chose to take basic healthcare directly to the doorstep of this underserved population, which hovers on a billion, making up 65% of India’s total manpower strength. 

“In cities, you can get medicines in minutes, but in rural India, people don’t even have access to a doctor. That’s the real problem,” he said. India has outgrown the WHO standard of one doctor per 1,000 people, with a doctor-population ratio of 1:834, but the challenges remain in the uneven distribution of doctors across the country. In rural India, the ratio stands at 1:11,082, far from the global benchmark. 

Sounds paradoxical in the world’s third-largest startup ecosystem with a $6.5 Bn healthtech market that’s zipping up at 28.67% to reach $78.3 Bn by 2033? It also questions the basic foundation of the world’s fourth-largest economy’s rally to enter the elite league of developed economies when it turns 100 in 2047.  

“There’s no scalable model that truly addresses it. Most healthcare startups are urban and convenience-led, but convenience means nothing without access.” That’s where Priyadarshi placed his brainchild CureBay. “While everyone is focussed on 10-minute healthcare delivery in cities, we are focussed on bringing basic healthcare to the doorstep of people in remote areas,” he said. 

CureBay offers services such as medicine delivery, diagnostic tests, doctor consultations, health memberships, and concierge support. The company claims to have reached over 1.1 Lakh villages, serving more than 7.6 Lakh patients, and handles an average of 200 patient interactions daily.

But why is this urban bias among the new-age companies? 

The $638 Bn healthcare market in India is dominated by the private sector, making up more than 70% of the pie. Most of the privately run hospitals and healthcare services are concentrated in metros, while the public healthcare system, driven by the government, primarily delivers basic healthcare in rural areas through a limited network of primary health centres and sub-centres.

Healthtech startups focus more on cities because easier access to funding, talent, infrastructure, and availability of potential customers and healthcare providers create a more conducive environment for their growth and innovation. In fact, more than 75% of India’s healthcare infrastructure is concentrated in urban areas. 

Some startups like PharmEasy, 1mg, and Practo have scaled rapidly beyond cities with their digital solutions, yet their core user base is based in metros. 

If startups are expanding from cities to suburbs, then why go the other way round, starting from the remote? Rural India wasn’t just the beckoning of a huge, untapped market, it also shaped the vision of the entrepreneur. CureBay came up in 2021 when Priyadarshi’s vision was shared with friends Shobhan Mahapatra and Sanjay Swain. 

Healing The Healthcare Woes In Rural India 

For second-time entrepreneur Priyadarshi, it was a bigger challenge to explore the pathetically underserved rural healthcare market than building a startup from scratch.  

Hailing from Bhubaneswar, the capital city of Odisha, one of the most backward states in India, he had witnessed the struggle. He saw the plight of the people living in far-flung areas from close because his mother ran a small private nursing home herself. He had a privileged life later in Delhi NCR, but it wasn’t until he was down with COVID that the realisation unfolded in full swing. 

“Even a city like Gurugram, with all its top-class hospitals, struggled to offer basic care during the pandemic. I wondered if this was the condition in a metro, what could be happening in the rest of the country.”

India’s world-class tertiary healthcare was confined to metro cities and served 514 Mn people with health insurance and nearly 400 Mn with zero access to health cover. Priyadarshi realised that nearly a billion people in rural India remained dependent on an under-resourced public health system. The government has built a multi-layered infrastructure from district hospitals to primary health centres and anganwadis, yet rural India never ceased to suffer from a severe shortage of doctors and lack of care.

“In many rural areas, when people don’t find a doctor, they head straight to the local pharmacy, which is often run by someone without medical training. That’s how dangerous, unprescribed antibiotic use starts,” he said.

Priyadarshi went on research during COVID. He spoke to his mother to get a firsthand idea of the challenges faced by patients in villages. “Then I spoke to multiple doctors, visited villages in and around Bhubaneswar. The conditions were really heartbreaking,” he said. “Despite an increasing number of healthtech startups in the country, most solutions remained urban-centric. All I knew was I would solve this issue.”

With over two decades of experience in technology and consumer brands, Priyadarshi has worked with companies such as Microsoft, Google, SAP, Avaya, and Titan. Before CureBay, he also cofounded a retail startup, Oyzterbay, in 2000.

Moving From Digital-Only To Hybrid Solution  

CureBay started with launching doctor consultations with just a few simple pathological tests and basic medicine delivery in select villages. But lack of awareness was a huge challenge. “Most people in these areas don’t visit a doctor unless their condition is chronic or reaches an acute stage. We had to educate them and convince them that coming in at the primary stage could make a huge difference in early diagnosis and future treatment.”

The founders realised that an app or some clinics weren’t enough to solve the rural healthcare challenges – a hybrid approach was necessary. 

The first part of CureBay’s model involved building a tech platform, designed around the principle of continuity of care. It aggregated the entire physical healthcare ecosystem, doctors, hospitals, labs, and pharmacies, into a single, integrated interface, and enabled real-time collaboration between stakeholders. 

The next big step was setting up the satellite clinics (e-clinics), and building a team to run them. CureBay began by hiring nurses and pharmacists, training them on its tech platform, and onboarding a network of doctors for digital consultations.

It now runs a full-stack hybrid healthcare model that brings affordable, high-quality care right to the doorstep of people living in rural areas. It avoids dependence on internet access or smartphones. Instead, trained local healthcare staff use assisted digital platforms, supported by a reliable logistics and partner network. This ensures that diagnostics, consultations, and medicines reach even the most remote areas with dignity, trust, and consistency.

When a patient visits a CureBay clinic, a trained nurse or pharmacist is there to help. Following an initial check-up and recording vital signs using connected medical devices, the patient meets a doctor on a video call. All doctors are available digitally, while the clinic deploys staff to help the patient with the devices, guiding them, and capturing the test results.

Once the consultation is done, the doctor shares a digital prescription. Medicines are either handed out at the clinic or delivered to the patient’s home. Basic diagnostic tests can be done at the clinic and, if needed, samples are collected and sent to partner labs. Test reports are uploaded to the system and sent directly to the patient’s phone.

If the doctor recommends further treatment, CureBay refers the patient to one of its partner hospitals, coordinating appointments and even making sure someone from the brand is there to assist the patient.

“We’ve eliminated information asymmetry, removed middlemen or healthcare brokers, and created a transparent system that delivers up to 80% of a patient’s healthcare journey at their doorstep,” Priyadarshi claimed.

CureBay now operates over 150 clinics with over 240 doctors across 32 districts in Odisha and Chhattisgarh. It has partnered with more than 170 hospitals and 35 diagnostic laboratories. The Bhubaneswar-based healthtech startup follows a hybrid approach and fulfillment model that combines digital services with physical care through a growing network of satellite e-clinics. 

It generates its revenue through paid consultations, medicine sales, diagnostic services (both pathology and radiology), and referral fees from partner hospitals. “Every service we offer has a commercial value, but we make sure it’s always accessible and affordable,” the founder said.

Gaining Investor Confidence On Growth Track

Despite being a younger player in the healthtech space, CureBay has shown strong growth, particularly on the funding front. In just under three years, the startup has mopped up over INR 300 Cr from investors like Bertelsmann India Investments, Elevar Equity, Stride Ventures, InCred Capital, and Hemani Industries. 

Recently, in May, it raised INR 179.6 Cr (around $21 Mn) from a Series B round led by Bertelsmann India Investments, with participation from British International Investment and Elevar. 

For CureBay, the journey from an idea to a scaled rural healthtech network has been one of steady validation, rather than of fundamental shifts. “Nothing major changed in terms of the model itself, from seed round to Series B, it was more about proving that this model works, and works at scale,” said the founder.

“When you’re backed by marquee names, hospitals, diagnostic labs, and other stakeholders begin to see you as a long-term partner. That external validation gives them the confidence to collaborate deeply.” 

Betting Big On AI In Healthtech Services 

A key focus for CureBay after Series B has been leveraging technology to scale both access and accuracy in rural healthcare. The startup is making major investments in building an AI-powered care engine and a rural-first workflow automation platform. 

Instead of depending solely on prebuilt models or synthetic datasets, it is training its AI systems using real-world data collected directly from its own clinics and patients on the ground. 

The company has developed AI-assisted screening models for dental, skin, and lung treatment. These tools are not intended to replace doctors or provide definitive diagnoses. Instead, they serve as early-stage screening systems used by on-ground health workers, known as Swasthya Mitras, to assess patient risk levels.

The brand’s tech stack is a modular, multi-app system to support healthcare delivery in underserved regions. The platform comprises a central application that connects the full healthcare ecosystem, including doctors, hospitals, diagnostic labs, and pharmacies, each with their own dedicated partner-facing interfaces. Each CureBay clinic is equipped with a dedicated app that captures patient data at the point of care, including symptoms, vitals, and device-generated health metrics.

All modules are integrated in real time, ensuring seamless data flow across stakeholders while maintaining strict compliance with global data privacy and healthcare standards like HIPAA and ISO. Every interaction on the platform takes place with consent from the patients. 

The startup also aims to expand into Jharkhand, Bihar, Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh over the next two years through 16 circles with a cluster of 50 clinics in each of them. This expansion will add approximately 800 clinics and, at full scale, these circles are expected to provide healthcare access to 100–120 Mn people, according to the founder.

With the existing circles, it claims to have created healthcare access for over 18 Mn people and aims to reach 30 Mn within the next 12 months. As per the founder, the company’s GMV was INR 1.9 Cr in FY23 and it leaped 18 times to INR 22 Cr a year later. The company crossed INR 100 Cr in GMV in FY25. 

The company’s losses reached INR 14.08 Cr in FY23 and increased 22.6% next year to INR 17.26 Cr. The founder attributed the rise in losses to geographical expansion, enhancement in tech infrastructure and addition of skilled workforce.

CureBay finds established players like PharmEasy and Tata 1mg, which dominate urban and semi-urban markets with digital-first models, on the rural healthcare turf too. It also faces competition from smaller healthtech startups and telemedicine initiatives, including those supported by NGOs and government programmes.

What would be the key challenge on the way ahead? 

It’ll be maintaining the advantage it enjoyed as an early mover in the domain and resolving two aspects of scaling the operations and building a lasting trust in areas where digital adoption remains limited.

[Edited by Kumar Chatterjee]