The AlternaCare storyline — highlighting entrepreneurial lessons of 2016

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Today, high-tech healthcare is the new sexy, and AlternaCare, with its high quality remote consultations for patients over multiple platforms, including phone, web and app, is all set to take the driver’s seat to bring about this change. Founded in 2016 by Abhishek Dwivedi and Karan Bedi, the startup seems to be fit and well prepared to take this long and challenging journey.   

2016, year-in-review:

Starting with Homeopathy in April this year, AlternaCare is trying to be one of the best telemedicine platforms for Homeopathy available in India. While they were touching 250 homeopathy patients a day, the company also started seeing substantial inquiries for allopathy doctors.

This year, they observed that a lot of organic referrals have started to come in via word-of-mouth. Their CAC went down by 50 percent and consultations went up by 30 percent month-on-month.

Revenue generation streams have also diversified now. Their revenue is not just limited to teleconsultations, but is also substantially attributed to medicine delivery, diagnostic lab tests and hospital referrals.

Abhishek Dwivedi, co-founder, Alternacare, told YourStory, ”With over a lakh of trusted and satisfied users, we have touched every nook and corner of India with the best consultations on the diverse set of medical problems. In today's time, most consumer healthcare platforms boast about the total number of doctors they have on their platform, but if you go and talk to those doctors, their satisfaction with the platform turns out to be very low. It is our achievement in maintaining a trusted panel of curated set top doctors who are ready to walk the extra mile for the betterment of the patients dropping on Alternacare. Our survey says that the doctors are happy with the quality of operations on our platform as well as the monetary gains they have through us.”

Learnings from 2016:

Abhishek said, “While this year has seen a fall in the valuations of mainstream e-commerce players, we, on the other hand, have learned to satisfy the customers with unmatchable services, and revenue has been a byproduct. We were surprised to see our patients calling as well as emailing us back to know how they could deposit the consultation fees they took a few minutes back. Even today, 55 percent of our payments come after the consultations have happened.”

He further added, ”This year also taught us that it is very important to handhold the doctors on a tech platform. Unless the doctors are confident about using the platform, they can never imbibe the confidence in the patients they are consulting over the call. And once the qualified doctor has consulted the patient on our platform in a remote-friendly manner, that patient automatically trusts the platform and becomes a loyal user of ours.”

Key Milestones till 2016:

• The possibilities of PPP model with various state governments.
• Partnered apps have also given them a substantial traffic of relevant users.
• CPA has fallen down by over 50 percent, and their customer base has grown at a rate of 30 percent month-on-month. Organic growth has been good so far. Users are now referring their relatives and peers for top medical advice on this platform.
• Strategic tie-ups with the likes of Uber, Givo and Aspiring Minds are in place and are doing well.
• Their medicine delivery and diagnostic lab tests service has picked up well, and they are delivering in more than 4,000 pin codes across India.

AlternaCare Storyline

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