Practo Technologies has set its sight on a global foray to tap the healthcare market which currently mandates digitisation of medical information and patient history. The company has two software as a service (SAAS) products: Practo Ray for doctors and Practo.com for patients. Its flagship product, Practo Ray is now the market leader in its segment in India and Singapore.
The company stated that it has been receiving an overwhelming response from patients going by the number of appointments booked through the platform. In fact, Practo.com is the market leader by far, almost four times ahead of the closest competitor in terms of page-views. In Singapore, it overtook the market leader in less than five months of its launch.
Currently, Practo Ray has over 10,000 doctors adopting its services for digitisation of medical information and patient history. Over 10 million electronic patient records which are seen to double annually have been created. There are 7.5 million patients accessing services to connect with doctors and seven million appointments are being made every year.
“In Singapore, Practo Ray is the largest online clinic management software provider in terms of market share. “We are looking at entering one more country by early next year. It could be Philippines, Malaysia or Middle East,” Shashank ND, co-founder, Practo Technologies told Pharmabiz in an email.
Apart from targeting new segments and releasing more products, Practo is looking to grow its domestic and overseas presence. In India, Practo has a presence in the six cities and plans to expand its presence in tier II cities. “We are aggressively looking to expand to around 12-18 tier II cities like Ahmedabad, Chandigarh, Jaipur & Cochin in the next 6-12 months,” he added.
The six-year old healthcare technology start- up with its co-founders Shashank ND & Abhinav Lal was kicked off operations in 2008 with a seed amount from family and friends. In 2012, Sequoia Capital chipped in Series A funding of around $4 million.
The effort is to ensure every patient has access to his medical records in a seamless manner, select a doctor and be able to pass on the medical history related records at a click, he said.
It has recently started offering a marketing solution for doctors through Practo.com and Practo Tab. Practo Ray is offered at two price points: Rs.999 & Rs.1999 per month which is the company’s bestseller.
“We are confident to register a turnover of Rs.20-crore in fiscal 2015 driven by the consumer traction and trust on our technology products. The expansion plans also include having 2 million visitors per month on Practo.com, with 5,000 appointments a day 2014 end. We are seeing a 50-100 per cent QoQ revenue growth. Doctors have recognised the quality and ease-of-use of our products, and patients immediately realise the value we offer. Thus, high usage on both ends of the spectrum will help us grow exponentially,” said Shashank.
Currently, Big Data and SaaS are booming in the healthcare sector. Start-ups dealing with these products are seeing great demand, with companies like Cloud Nine, Glocal, GVK Biosciences, SCIO Health Analytics attracting investor interest.