How a Marathi festival in Indore gave birth to this healthcare startup
Had Akshay Hartalkar and Manish Dashputre not been a part of Jatra Event in Indore, their e-healthcare platform Medidaili wouldn’t have been able to draw the attention of 1,700 people. Jatra is a Marathi festival conducted by the Marathi Social Group, Indore. Medidaili arranges Q & A with doctors and hires consultants during the events so that the users get expert advice on solving healthcare problems.
More than 200 people installed the app though our Bluetooth server. The overwhelming response from the users has encouraged us to take Medidaili to the next level by expanding to more cities,” says Akshay.
Founded in November 2015, Medidaili is an online marketplace for healthcare services that offers specialised medical support services, including diagnostics, healthcare packages and emergency services.
An idea born from neighbourhood
Born and brought up in Indore, both Manish and Akshay are neighbours. One day, a casual conversation on the health issues of their parents took the shape of a business idea. A deep analysis of the healthcare industry sparked the idea of creating a hassle-free platform for regular medical checkups and healthcare services.
We provide convenient, affordable, transparent and reliable medical services and solutions to you through our easy-to-use mobile app and website,” says Manish.
Having co-founded a successful startup in the past, Akshay (42) is no newbie in the ecosystem, and possesses hands-on experience in tackling challenges to scale up. He has done engineering from Amravati University.
Before Medidaili, Manish (43) was the Finance Director in Airtel T/A Celtel Zambia PLC. He has also worked with Warid Telecom Uganda Limited, Bharti Airtel Limited, GE Capital International Services and Bridgestone.
Prioritising quality over quantity
The startup follows a stringent process while on-boarding diagnostic test centres. Medidaili’s team meets with them, creates a questionnaire (to be filled by the owner of diagnostic centre), organises a trial run, and then on-boards them.
With the Medidaili app, one can avail services from any of the 100 National Accreditation Board for Testing and Calibration (NABL)-affiliated diagnostic centres across Bengaluru and Indore, and 2,500 tests and 100 health checkup packages. A team of MD pathologists have been hired to create diagnostic tests. The Android app has 3,000 downloads so far.
Users can compare offers based on discounts and delivery time, from list of diagnostic centres/pathology labs and home-care service providers.
Role of a team
Medidaili has a team of 30 people for operations, labs and suppliers acquisitions, digital marketing, technology, event management (camps and roadshows) and financing.
The app receives seven to eight orders per day from both Bengaluru and Indore for diagnostic tests and health packages. It has served more than 500 service requests in a span of two months and has also started working with 41 corporates to offer services.
We receive commissions of five to eight percent from per transaction,” says Akshay.
Medidaili received angel funding of about $100,000 from a group of angel investors.
Spreading the services
Currently present in Bengaluru and Indore, Medidaili aims to cover upto 10 cities in the next six months and 15 by March next year. It also plans to deepen consumer offerings and become the aggregator of healthcare services, by offering home-care services, ambulance, doctor consultation and appointments, to complete the cycle of healthcare requirement in future.
Going forward, Medidaili will launch products for doorstep diabetics management. Akshay also wishes to offer non-profit healthcare services by tying up with National Health Group.
According to IBEF, the healthcare market in India was worth close to $100 billion as of 2015 and is expected to touch $280 billion by 2020, clocking a CAGR of 22.9 percent. Of the overall market, the healthcare delivery sub-segment accounts for 65 percent.
Data for 2000-15 from the Department of Industry Policy and Promotion shows FDI investment in hospitals and diagnostic centres totalled $3.21 billion. Investors in 2015 have poured significant amount of capital to diagnostic test aggregators, wellness marketplaces, home healthcare services including Practo, Lybrate and Portea.
The objective behind starting this venture was to unify the highly fragmented and disrupted healthcare sector in India which is presently facing varied problems such as availability of quality services, comparison of two service providers and more,” says Akshay.
