Yebhi Co-founder Danish Ahmed's latest venture Hospals raises $1.5 M

Danish is no new entrant in the startup world: he co-founded fashion ecommerce site Yebhi.com, and also served as a VP at Paytm.

Danish Ahmed's new medical tourism venture Hospals on Thursday announced the conclusion of its first round of $1.5 millon led by Spiral Ventures and Venture Catalysts. In a statement, the company said that the funds will be used to accelerate its growth towards $10 million GMV by the year end. Danish is no new entrant in the startup world: he co-founded fashion ecommerce site Yebhi.com, and also served as a VP at Paytm.

The funds will also help Hospals to expand its presence within India, as well as to scale its operations in lucrative international medical tourism markets such as the Middle East and Africa. The team has till date served over 6,000 patients from 14 countries, and with its unique, marketplace platform model, is growing rapidly to take a significant market share in this space.

Hospals is managing over 200 patients per month currently

On the reason behind starting Hospals, Danish, who is the CEO, stated,

“Cross-border healthcare is a $100-billion market globally, and India, the fastest-growing country in this space, is expected to generate $9 billion in revenues by 2020. But the market is still very unorganised and disconnected. At Hospals, we’re combining technology and operations to build a one-stop shop for international patients, connecting them to the best hospitals, providing long-stay accommodations and other services, to ensure a great experience.”

Danish started Yebhi when he was just 21 years old, and went on to raise $40 million in investments, before selling operations to Flipkart. In 2014, he started his second venture, Shopsity, which was later acquired by Paytm in 2016.

Apart from Danish, the two co-founders include Obaid and Alok, who were the CEO & COO at Al-Shifa, one of India's largest medical tourism company, respectively. Prior to building Al-Shifa, Obaid was at Apollo Hospitals, while Alok was at Fortis.

How does the platform work?

The platform enables medical tourists visiting India to not only choose hospitals, book consultations, surgeries, and buy medicines, but also allows them to manage their various travel and accommodation requirements such as cabs, hotels, and flights etc.

It also provides auxiliary services such as estimates of medical procedures, visa service, and translators to deliver a seamless experience to its customers in their preferred language. The company was incubated at Technology9labs, and has rapidly expanded across CIS countries, building on its strong reputation for transparency and its dedicated focus on ensuring high customer satisfaction.

On the investment, Apoorv Ranjan Sharma, Co-founder & President – Venture Catalysts, said,

“We took our bet on Hospals because of the team it brings together. While Danish has proven experience on product and user experience, Obaid and Alok bring 15 years of leadership experience in the medical tourism space. We’re confident that within the next 12 months, Hospals will reach $20 million in revenues, making it the front-runner to emerge as Asia’s largest medical tourism company.”

Yasuhiro Seo - Partner at Spiral Ventures, said,

“Healthcare is poised to emerge as one of the most promising sectors in India and SEA over the next 10 years. While the demand is huge, there are still a lot of inefficiencies in this space. Medical tourism is one of most important pieces of the Indian healthcare domain and the Hospals’ team has made significant headway here, by connecting doctors in the Middle East, Africa, former CIS countries, China and SE Asia to Indian surgeons and hospitals for their patients in their respective countries. With a multilingual, tailored mobile-technology based platform.”.