eKincare, the health-tech start-up has conducted a study indicating that while India’s population in the metros grapple with lifestyle diseases, with increase in spending power and change in food patterns, people in the non-metros are not too far behind.
The data was based on BMI, BP and random blood sugar samples collected across Hyderabad, Vijayawada and Vizag for select 5,000 respondents. In one such outcome, a whopping 26 per cent of Vizag showed high level of blood pressure as opposed to Hyderabad which stood at 18 per cent and Vijayawada at 15 per cent. In fact, with 19 per cent, Vijayawada has highest number of obese measured by BMI whereas Vizag is at par with Hyderabad with 11 per cent. Vijayawada topped the number of people who are diabetics with 7 per cent, while Hyderabad stood at 4 per cent and Vizag at 2 per cent.
“Sedentary lifestyle and unhealthy eating habits are not just limited to urban pockets, smaller towns are fast imbibing the values of big cities. With increase in spending power, people in smaller towns too have been exposed to junk food and an ecosystem that is not healthy. As we continue to find ways to contain the ramifications of this health disorder, it is critical that we reach out to different segments of the society and address their concerns at the grass-root level,” said Dr. Thrivikram S, senior clinical cardiologist and diabetologist, HOD Diabetes and Metabolism, Oakridge Hospitals.
eKincare’s objective is to ‘take charge of your health’ through personalized healthcare information. The company’s approach of combining digitization with deep analytics and healthcare has the potential to offer tremendous value to end consumers and change the rules of the game.
“We want to help improve the average life span of an individual by harnessing their medical data and predict future diseases before their onset. We desire to be seen as a technology led healthcare company that is transforming the way healthcare is perceived in India. Awareness, education and regular monitoring of your vitals is a key step towards preventing and controlling chronic conditions like diabetes, hypertension and CVD,” said Kiran Kalakuntla, founder, eKincare.
The company enables users to monitor their critical medical information on the cloud and view it anywhere anytime. In addition, its patent pending technology also gathers medical results from various healthcare providers, updates profiles, and provides a single repository for users to store all their healthcare episodes. It then identifies potential health risks from the data, provides a personalized health plan to beat those risks. The company has also been voted as “Global Digital Health 100 companies” by the prestigious journal of mHealth, and was recently also acknowledged as one of the seven rising start-ups in India by TechInAsia.
eKincare went through two rounds of pre- series A funding from investors include Bitkemy Ventures, Maheshwari Investment. Pvt. Ltd., and other HNIs. It will also introduce a wellness index which takes several data points to quantify an individual’s health on a scale of 1 to 100.