How a Wipro veteran started Instahealth and made a global product selling to 300+ hospitals

Tuesday March 18, 2014 , 3 min Read

Ramesh Emani has spent close to 25 years with Wipro as the President of Telecom and Product Engineering Solutions. “I've had a very fruitful and challenging career but thought that it wouldn't be complete without having started up,” says Ramesh. Looking out for opportunities, Ramesh zeroed in on the Healthcare vertical as it is one vertical which had not been impacted by IT. “I was also looking for an industry where there were no clear front runners,” says Ramesh. And this is how Insta Health Solutions, a hospital management system software company, came into existence in 2008.Bootstrapped in the beginning, the clear goal was to improve productivity and efficiency of doctors and hospitals across the world. Based out of Bangalore, Insta Health initially marketed the product in southern states of India. Working with the aim of helping hospitals move to paperless clinical operations, Insta Health customizes the solution to specific needs of hospitals or clinics. “We began with a SaaS model but soon realized that completely online solutions are still some time away. We hence shifted to an on-premise model,” says Ramesh. With wider acceptance for cloud based solutions, today Insta Health offers solutions in both on-premises and cloud based options. Insta Health reduced total cost of ownership through usage of Linux OS and license free databases.

Insta Health got some solid feedback and Inventus showed faith in the company and the team behind it when they invested in 2009. This investment gave them the necessary push to flourish and go global. After consolidating in India for a good three years, “We decided to go international and target the emerging markets,” says Ramesh. Growing in the Middle East, South East Asia and Africa, Insta Health has 300+ hospitals and clinics using the solution as of now. The next phase of growth would be in Latin America.“The beginning was tough but being able to customize to the client’s need and providing an on-premise solution worked in our favour,” says Ramesh. Offerings for multi-centre hospitals and clinic chains has also helped the company to grow. A team of 44 at the moment, Insta Health has a good head start against its younger counterparts but does face competition from the bigger firms. A focus on emerging markets and going deeper will be critical for further growth. Insta Health is also looking to raise a follow up round of funding.