Japan’s M3 now acquires a majority share in Bengaluru-based DailyRounds

Japanese healthcare venture M3 Inc on Monday said that it has acquired a majority stake in Bengaluru-based DailyRounds, a mobile and web-based applications for doctors and medical students in India.

According to the company, this move marks M3’s foray into case-based problem-solving community platform and medical test preparation business in India.

Neuroglia Health Private Limited (NHPL) owns and operates ‘DailyRounds’ mobile app, a case-based problem-solving community platform for doctors in India, as well as ‘Marrow’, a test-preparation platform to enter post-graduate specialty courses in medical schools in India.

M3 India at present operates Health Impetus Private Limited (HIPL), which runs online portals that help Indian doctors stay abreast with the latest in research, medical news, evidence-based medicine, practice guidelines, and expert articles etc. HIPL is a joint venture, announced in association with HealthCare at HOME India, in August 2016.

Founded by Dr Deepu Sebin, Priyaank Choubey, and Nimmi Cherian in 2015, DailyRounds is backed by investors, including Accel Partners, Kae Capita, Powerhouse Ventures, and Japanese VC Beenext.

Commenting on the acquisition, Dr Deepu Sebin, CEO of DailyRounds, said,

“We are very excited with this development. The Indian doctor community is very active on DailyRounds and Marrow. With the support of M3, we will offer better services to the existing doctors. We hope to bring in new doctors as well. The goal is to be the largest doctor network in India, not just by registered numbers, but in terms of active users as well.”

At present, DailyRounds has a network of around 450,000 doctors in India. Through this acquisition, M3 also intends to import services and technologies developed in Japan and in international markets to India.

These includes services such as job placement support services and AI applications with an aim to build next generation healthcare technologies.

Commenting on the deal, Amit Singh, CEO of HIPL (M3 India), said,

“With this majority acquisition, M3 will now be able to reach out to DailyRounds’ doctor network in India on a consolidated basis, while enhancing the utility and satisfaction levels among doctors by leveraging the strengths of both platforms. It will also enable M3 to escalate its marketing support and market research businesses to pharmaceutical and medical devices companies through expansion of doctor membership and enhancement of medical education contents.”  

M3 is a specialised web portal for medical professionals that delivers healthcare-related information to its over 270,000 physician members in Japan and over 4.5 million physician members globally across multiple websites to offer marketing, clinical trial, and various other services in healthcare and pharmaceutical industries.

Also read: 'Facebook for doctors', DailyRounds raises funding led by Accel Partners

Bengaluru-based Daily Rounds raises $500k seed funding from Kae Capital, Teruhide Sato and GSF