12 Hyderabad startups that are powering the future of healthcare in India

From government-led policies to ease of doing business, and building an ecosystem that promotes mentorship and development, Hyderabad has been walking the startup talk for a while now. The City of Nizams is also home to T-Hub, one of the most ambitious incubator projects led by a State government.  

From top healthcare specialty labs to hospitals, healthcare has been a focus for Hyderabad. Here are some of the top healthcare startups in the city.

1. Docturnal 

With one-third of the world’s population infected with tuberculosis (TB), the disease is a leading cause of death. Founded in 2016 by Rahul Pathri, Docturnal aims to deal with this disease with its app TimBre. 

An individual coughs into a special microphone attached to a mobile device, which is connected to TimBre. The sound of the cough is recorded (using a microphone array) by a medical practitioner or a healthcare worker along with their demographic and clinical variables. 

The data is then processed in real time, leveraging machine/deep learning to detect if the patient is TB positive or negative. The team is also working on building products to detect other lung disorders and infections. Docturnal has so far raised a seed funding. 

2. Onward Health 

A predictive healthcare analysis platform with a core focus on oncology, Onward Assist is building different automated diagnostic tools that serve as assistants to pathologists. Founded in 2016 by Dinesh Koka, Onward Health's Onward Assist provides valuable insights on one’s health, which are passed on to oncologists. The team is also looking at risk scoring for patients. 

3. Psynapce 

Pregnancy can be a period of heightened stress. Psynapce empowers expectant parents with tools that help them de-stress. It uses conversational artificial intelligence (AI) in building chatbots that help answer common queries on their app. The team aims at enabling a holistic, technology-enabled ecosystem where the spouse, family, friends, doctors, and other expectant couples come together. 

4. Rayd8

Rayd8 is fighting to prevent blindness in low-income countries. The team realised the need for good quality retinal images for eye testing and in detecting blindness. Therefore, they brought to life research work on smartphone-based retinal imaging.  

Still in its early stages, Rayd8 was founded by Abhishek Kaushal, Puneet Raj, Dr Jaitra PG and Krishna Kalyan earlier this year.

5. TalkaDoc

Using natural language processing (NLP) and deep learning, TalkaDoc enables specialty hospitals integrate mental illness as a “prophylactic screening programme” with other chronic illnesses, thus hastening detection time. With their in-built tele-health and offline tele-health centres, the team focuses on taking the care closer to rural areas and making it more accessible and affordable. 

Founded late last year by Chaitanya Josyula, the key aspect of TalkaDoc is the speech-driven “Virtual Conversation Agent” that saves a significant amount of time for a healthcare practitioner, allowing the treatment of more patients and cost reduction. 

6. CallHealth 

CallHealth offers a range of personalised healthcare services, including wellness, prevention, cure, and assisted care through its virtual and physical platform. The idea for CallHealth was born out of a challenge faced by Sandhya Raju, when she damaged a ligament in her leg. The company was founded in 2017. It now partners with 91 hospitals, 94 diagnostic centres, 70 doctors and over 20 speciality and super-speciality centres. This February, CallHealth raised $7.8 million from Bennett, Coleman and Co. Ltd (BCCL).

7. Ekincare

Founded in 2014 by Kiran Kalakuntla and Sunil Motaparti, eKincare helps users encrypt their health records and keep it on the cloud. It enables them to access the dashboard anywhere, using a PC or a mobile device. The startup gathers medical results from various healthcare providers, updates profiles, and provides a single repository for users to store all their medical records. The company has raised two rounds of funding. 

8. StanPlus 

StanPlus is an ‘Uber for private medical transportation’, which aims to provide patients immediate support for emergency and non-emergency care. StanPlus focusses on supporting the patient by helping them reach the hospital, care centre, or home when needed.

It operates across all segments, from simple vehicles for patients with limited mobility, to fully-equipped Advanced Life Support (ASL) vehicles able to handle all type of emergencies, and medical air transportation. 

The team has raised $15,000 by winning the INSEAD Venture Competition. In October 2017, they raised $1.1 million in a round led by KStart, under Kalaari Capital. The company was founded in 2016 by Antoine Poirson, Jose Leon and Prabhdeep Singh.

9. Nephroplus 

NephroPlus is a dialysis service provider. Over the next five years, NephroPlus aims to provide over four million annual treatments and create around 5,000 skilled health services jobs. NephroPlus also plans to open up to 500 centres across India during the same period. The company recently also signed a contract with the Andhra Pradesh government to run 13 such centres in the state.

10. Life Circle Health Services

Life Circle Health Services provides subscription-based professional caregiving and home nursing services to the bed-ridden and chronically ill seniors in India. Founded in September 2013 by Priya Anant, Anant Kumar and Atul Kumar, the startup has had 5000 home visits per month, working with more than 200 nurses and caregivers.

The startup has raised a funding of $150,000 from Groupe SOS, the European senior healthcare service provider. They have raised additional funding of $140,000 from the Numaligarh Refineries Ltd. in 2017 to train school dropouts to become geriatric caregivers. Apart from Hyderabad Life Circle Health Services is also present in Delhi, and is soon starting operations in Guwahati and Chandigarh.

11. Zozz

Started in February 2016, Jayadeep Reddy set up Zozz, an on-demand home health service that provides doctors, physiotherapists and medication to users in their home, in less than an hour. It works as a local health aggregator connecting users with the best doctors who can reach their home in the shortest possible time.

12. eSahai

ESahai began as a platform that could send over ambulances to locations within the vicinity of a hospital or healthcare centre. Having spoken to several hospitals and diagnostic centres in Hyderabad, the team realised its ambulance utilisation was less than 30 percent. eSahai’s pitch to them was simple - it would manage their fleet and increase utilisation to about 75 percent. 

The firm was founded in 2017 by Hari Bharadwaj. In June 2018 alone, nearly 505 ambulance rides were ordered on eSahai. About 2,000 rides, 150 ambulances, six medical-taxis and 10 months later, the model has garnered great interest with 40 hospitals that work with eSahai.