Pune-based Docplexus raises funding of Rs 4.6 cr from Unicorn ventures & Austria-based ASP Consulting

Pune-based Docplexus, an online community for doctors, has raised funding of Rs 4.6 crore from Unicorn ventures and Austria-based ASP Consulting. The platform will deploy the funding to improve the product, team building and expansion.

Launched in June 2014 by Phanish Chandra, Docplexus is an online community where doctors connect with other healthcare professionals, securely collaborate on patient treatment, grow their practices and discover new career opportunities.

“The Indian healthcare space is evolving rapidly with a large number of digital start-ups emerging in the segment. This platform enables doctors to reach out to their peers to interact and exchange ideas. With more than 100,000 doctors on the platform, DocPlexus is a medical professional network that empowers doctors to connect, communicate and collaborate towards better medical outcomes and discipline,” says Phanish.

He adds that the funding will help in the overall growth of the platform.

Equipped with both a web and mobile based platform, DocPlexus allows doctors to connect with experts across specialties to gather views and feedback for medical cases. It also provides opportunities for doctors to share their analysis with others in a medical dilemma. Focused on doctors only, the platform provides a great value add in terms of the connections that users can make within the doctor community. Access to recent news in the medical field enables doctors to stay updated about the day to day events in the industry.

With a focus on getting only doctors on board, there is a strict verification process that is employed. No access is provided to doctors until they provide their medical registration numbers. The stringent verification process enables the platform to maintain the quality of engagement and interactions.

Phanish positioned the platform as a Quora & LinkedIn for doctors, which aims to unlock the knowledge repositories with doctors that develop with experience.

“In the rapidly evolving and growing health-tech ecosystem, the fragmented doctor community are relatively unattended. Understanding this market niche, DocPlexus has built an extremely strong platform for doctors to connect and collaborate with each other and made better healthcare decisions,” Shiraz Bugwadia, Managing Partner, Uniqorn Ventures.

Growth story

Since its launch, the platform has witnessed more than 100,000 doctor registrations (till September 2015) from more than 1500 cities & towns across 83 specialties. Along with the smaller institutions, physicians from established hospitals like Apollo, MAX, Fortis, AIIMS, PGIMER, JIPMER and CMC VELLORE are also active in the community.

Revenue model

Currently, the revenue model of the platform based on Pharmaceuticals marketing and event marketing. However, in near future, it’s planning to adopt new models such online job posting, monetizing doctors and other modes of marketing.

Competition

In digital healthcare, Practo is the biggest startup success from India. Although there are quite a few platforms that facilitate doctor-patient interactions, doctor networking space is relatively unexplored.

In this segment, Daily Rounds, Curofy and PlexusMD are the direct competitors. Daily Rounds has raised a seed round of $500,000 from Kae Capital, Teruhide Sato and GSF. Curofy raised angel funding to the tune of $150,000 to $200,000. PlexusMD focuses on the jobs part and the networking platform is secondary to maintain and engage a community.

On competition, Phanish says that around 15 percent of the Indian doctor population are already using the platform. DocPlexus intends to become the solitary platform for the medical community to connect and engage with each other towards a better healthcare practice.

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