With over five lakh data points, eKincare aims to build India-specific preventive health calculators
Imagine if you had to check the medical history of an old injury to treat a health condition today. The amount of hunting, tracking, and work you would need to put in can be a harrowing experience. Though platforms like Practo have made finding a doctor in your locality and even medical records, to a certain extent, easy, many believe that critical medical information should be easily accessible.
It was with this idea in mind that Kiran Kalakuntla, a Duke University graduate with over a decade experience launching over 30 technology products in the US, decided to start eKincare. It is a digital platform that enables users to monitor their medical information and history and view it anywhere at any time.
The workings of the platform
The technology that the team has built, which is still in the process of being patented, 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, and provides a personalised health plan to beat those risks.
Free for the user, the eKincare platform has no limits on the data stored and allows for multiple profile setting and managements. However, Kiran adds that there were multiple challenges of scale.
“Consolidating one’s medical records as a preventive measure requires a significant behavioural change and doesn’t happen overnight. It takes time to transition from a reactive to a preventive thought process when it comes to health,” adds 33-year-old Kiran.
Working the pivot
eKincare was initially started in 2014 for NRIs to keep track of their parents’ health and for those who wanted to leverage the past healthcare data to aid them in their decision-making process.
Kiran adds that they wanted to focus on services and use existing technologies. When they actually scouted for one, they saw that most were just creating another document repository system, which wasn’t conducive for analytics or providing personalised healthcare information.
“After a lot of primary research in understanding the consumer pain points with consolidating their medical history, we pivoted and decided to build our own platform with analytics at the core,” says Kiran.
The rest of the core team comprises Dinesh Koka, COO, Co-Founder, an IIM graduate with 12 years’ experience at GE healthcare; Srikanth Samudrala, CTO, an IIT graduate with eight years’ experience in building scalable and secure enterprise applications for HSBC and Barclays;
Ganesh Voona, Data Science, an IIT graduate with four years’ experience in data modeling and business strategy; Dr. Unnikrishnan, Medical Advisor, who has 19 years’ experience in wellness, imaging and healthcare devices; and Dr. Pooja Singhania, who has seven years’ experience in designing and executing chronic disease management programs.
The team claims that they’re growing at an average of 150 per cent every quarter, and have more than five lakh data points with a continuity of several years of medical history. Kiran says that this enables them to start building India-specific preventive calculators for better prediction of various disorders before their onset. Currently the team has tied up with Partha Dental, Apollo White Dental, Vasan Eyecare, Maxi Vision, and Thyrocare among others.
The company aims to leverage both online and offline services across its 2,000 locations in India. Last month, the team raised a pre-Series A funding round of Rs.4.4 crore from Bitkemy Ventures (re-invested); Maheshwari Investment. Pvt. Ltd.; and from other HNIs like Anshoo Gaur (Indian Angel network, Amdocs), RamaKrishna Reddy, and Sandeep Seerapu. The investment will be used to strengthen product development, IP, and talent acquisition.
The team aims to add several value-added services to drive engagement with the users. They are even working to patent their technologies and getting ISO 27001-certified for information security management.
The healthtech space
According to an IBEF report, the Indian healthcare market will touch $280 billion by 2020, growing at 22.9 per cent. Data for 2000-2015 from the Department of Industry Policy and Promotion shows FDI investment in hospitals and diagnostic centres totalled $3.21 billion.
The healthcare delivery sub-segment accounts for 65 per cent of the space. In 2015, the healthcare space saw a funding of $277 million over 57 deals. This year itself, 1mg raised a Series B investment of Rs.100 crore. The Sequoia-backed e-pharmacy startup is also entering aggressively into the health record and medical space. Practo as mentioned earlier has already got a certain break into the segment. Other big players in the space include Lybrate.