This Reliance-funded startup is aimed at digitally transforming one lakh hospitals by 2026

Digitisation has resulted in a paradigm shift in several sectors such as education, healthcare, foodtech, logistics, and ecommerce, among others. While the digital shift was already underway, it got accelerated due to the pandemic. 

Amid the COVID-19 crisis, healthcare, starting from doctor consultation and diagnostics tests to getting medicines, shifted online almost overnight. This service was uncommon back in 2014-15 when Nidhi Jain, IIT Roorkee alumnus, began her entrepreneurial journey.

Nidhi, who has always drawn inspiration from entrepreneurs, comes from a family of people working in the healthcare sector. She began her work by providing video doctor consultation solutions to patients. Prior to starting up, Nidhi held product management responsibilities with popular companies such as Transera and Mahindra Comviva.

After realising the lack of digital services for doctors, she pivoted to focus on building B2B solutions. In 2018, Nidhi launched KareXpert, which is aimed at digitalising hospitals by providing a SaaS-based digital healthcare platform.

The Gurugram-based startup provides artificial intelligence and cloud-based digital healthcare platform for hospitals. The startup raised Rs 30 crore from Reliance in 2018 to fulfill its mission of digitally transforming 100,000 hospitals in India and across the world in the next five years.

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Revolutionising hospital IT infrastructure

Speaking about the SaaS platform, Nidhi explains that KareXpert is aimed at solving the clinical and billing problems of hospitals.

“Hospitals generally purchase digital solutions from third party providers and integrate them in the hospital. For example, with the covid breakout, one may need telemedicine software or mobile applications so they might need to reach out to different vendors to get the solutions. Hospitals might not have pre-integrated solutions, which can result in a broken experience for the patients,” she explains.

KareXpert, however, offers an integrated solution with over 50 applications such as Advanced HIMS, EMR/EHR, LIMS, RIS/PACS, pharmacy, connected ambulance, e-Claim & insurance, inventory & SCM, queue management, MIS Reports, business intelligence, and hospital branded mobile apps.

Speaking about the COVID-19 impact, Nidhi says, “We are living in a healthcare transformational era right now. Before COVID-19, we had to go and sell our platforms to the hospitals, but now they are coming to us.”

The KareXpert SaaS platform helps hospitals to streamline patient data flow across geographies and devices. It also helps them achieve a higher degree of collaboration between all stakeholders in the healthcare system. 

She adds that the KareXpert team also trains the hospital staff on how they can use the platform for streamlining their operations.

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Business and more

Speaking about the business model, Nidhi explains that the SaaS startup operates on a monthly subscription basis, where it charges the hospital per bed or patient. Apart from this, the cost also depends on the features or applications the hospital opts for.

According to a report by MarketsandMarkets, the global healthcare IT market is projected to reach $390.7 billion by 2024, growing at a CAGR of 15.8 percent. Companies such as MocDoc, Canvas Medical, Attune Technologies, and itDOSE Info Systems are also working in the hospital management software segment.

Currently, KareXpert works with about 100 hospitals, including Reliance Foundation Hospitals, Center for Sight, MD City Hospital, and Paras Hospitals, among others. It had raised seed funding from Reliance back in 2018 and is now looking to raise its next round of funding this year.

Speaking about future plans, Nidhi says, “We are looking to onboard 1,000 hospitals at least this year, and our long-term vision is to digitise 100,000 hospitals across the globe in the next five years. In terms of product, we are looking to add more applications into our platform.”