How these 10 HealthTech startups can revolutionise the trillion dollar industry

The overall healthcare industry is estimated at Rs 120K crores and is forecasted to grow at a CAGR of 20-22 per cent in the next 5 to 7 years. However, it’s not easy for a HealthTech brand to book a berth, let alone rule hearts, when the market competition is too intense. Thereby, in a bid to disrupt the whole healthcare industry, startups are making optimum use of the digital media and turning the world into a ‘Global Village’.

Here is a list of healthtech startups to look for fresh and innovative ideas that can disrupt the whole ecosystem.

1. eMediNexus

The Delhi-based mobile and web enabled healthcare technology platform, eMediNexus, delivers cutting edge instructional and discussion oriented clinical content to doctors mediated by key opinion leaders. Founded in 2015 by investing, consulting and medical communication professionals Amit Sharma and Nilesh Aggarwal, eMediNexus seamlessly connects over two lakh doctors of all specialties, empowering them to continually sharpen their clinical skills in a structured and interactive manner. Further, by launching relevant physician petitions, eMediNexus has proven the concept of digital advocacy, leading to major policy changes.

2. eKincare

Hyderabad-based HealthTech venture eKincare aims to increase an individual’s life span through technology and analytics. The startup enables its user to monitor critical medical information on the cloud and view it anywhere anytime. The company has recently bagged Pre-series A round of funding from renowned investors like Bitkemy Ventures, Maheshwari Investment Pvt Ltd and various other HNIs. From consumer research, user experience research to defining the 360 degree of products, Kiran Kalakuntla, founder, eKincare, has a decade long work experience that fetched him several career high points.

3. LiveHealth

Bringing a revolutionary wave in the healthcare space, LiveHealth works as a management information system (MIS) for healthcare providers. The platform makes every step of the process smarter, be it sample collection, diagnostics and generating reports by optimising and analysing patient information. Founded in 2013 to create intelligent reports instead of the usual single dimensional ones, the 2-year-old company has recently launched a mobile app - Livehealth Doc - for Android and iOS phones. The app has over 875 downloads whereas the platform records an average of 3200+ monthly active visits among which 2300+ are unique visitors with over 20,000+ page views.

4. DocPlexus

DocPlexus is the brainchild of 37-year-old Phanish Chandra, a seasoned professional with 13 years of experience in building product from the scratch for both enterprise and consumer web. Founded in 2014, Docplexus has registered over 1,25,000 doctors on the platform across 83 specialities from over 1500 cities and is growing by 10,000 new registered doctors every month. The startup focuses on peer-to-peer exchange of patient cases, dialogue and interdisciplinary learning to improve medical outcomes. The Pune-based startup was backed by Unicorn ventures and Austria-based ASP for Rs 4.6 crores.

5. BigChemist

Head-quartered in Delhi, BigChemist is the e-platform for genuine medicines and healthcare products. Puneet Kapoor, a healthcare industry professional with 17 years of experience, started the venture with his fellow colleagues, Arvind Yadav and Anil Asnani in May 2013. The startup is creating an integrated online marketplace for healthcare products and services across value chain with focus on serving B2C and B2B as Omni channel experience. The startup has built a strong online presence of over 5.6 lakh visitors with presence in 191 cities across India and receives 150 to 200 orders a day with a ticket size of Rs700 to Rs750.

6. Medidaili

Akshay Hartalkar started Medidaili with Manish Dashputre with an aim to enable easy facilitation of reliable healthcare services on a single platform. Patients will now have immediate access to multiple medical solutions. The startup has received angel funding of about $100k from a group of angel investors who are senior IIT IIM Alumni and are at senior positions in various IT companies across the globe. Poised to becoming a true companion in managing health by covering all aspects in the patient life cycle management, the startup is currently present in two cities - Bengaluru and Indore. It will be covering 10 cities in the next few months.

7. Curofy

Developed with an objective to create a digital world of doctors, Curofy offers a spam-free, seamless environment for doctors to communicate with each other and provides them a support system with access to knowledge, jobs, devices and various resources. Significantly, in about 15 months of its launch, the startup has been approached by numerous pharmaceutical companies, hospitals, medical equipment manufacturers and other healthcare businesses for partnerships. The company has recently raised Pre-Series A funding from Seattle based Roundglass partners. Prior to this, it got funded under the most dramatic circumstances in a reality show called TIECON 2014, the Shark Tank equivalent in India, to the tunes of Rs 1 crore from a set of reputed investors including Rajul Garg, Alok Mittal, Anand Lunia, Dinesh Agarwal and Dr. Shuchin Bajaj.

8. Pluss

Introducing the concept of timely medicine delivery at your doorstep, Pluss is an on-demand delivery service featuring four primary product categories including baby care, pet care, personal wellness and daily essentials. The startup was incorporated in 2015 by Atit Jain, Madhulika Pandey and Tarun Lawadi after witnessing the country's largely unorganised healthcare industry, which otherwise is worth billions of dollars. The startup delivers the medicines within 60 minutes with the help of its own fleet of 50 delivery workers called Pluss Men.

Boasting of an impressive list of investors including Snapdeal's co-founders Rohit Bansal and Kunal Bahl, Indian Dream Capital and Rajesh Sawhney of GSF, Narendra Singh Rawat, TA Venture Holding Limited, Roshan Abbas, and Anand Chandrasekaran, Pluss has aggressive expansion plans in the country.

9. MphRX

This disruptive idea was born in a drawing room, back in 2008, when one of the key founding members of MphRX was stunned to gather news about a US-child losing life in the struggle to fight cancer. His medical records were couriered through Fedex to a specialist, which took a few days to deliver. The news moved Mahesh Uberoi, President and CEO, MphRx to send out patient data electronically. With over 5 million patient lives managed, 20 million unique records aggregated and over 250k physicians on board, MphRX, a healthcare technology company launched its operations in 2011. Headquartered in New York, with R&D, support and implementation teams based out of New Delhi, the company has acquired some of the largest hospital chains in the US and UK.

MphRX has four marquee products: Forward, Physician Engage, Patient Engage and BizEye that in a nutshell addresses the gaps between patients and physicians by aggregating healthcare data.

10. ePsyclinic

Svieda Ventures led ePsyClinic was incepted in July 2013 and was launched in March 2015. The USP of ePsyClinic lies in its fully online and convenient accessibility and its quality-focused private and safe mental health and emotional wellness services. The company follows Apple Inc like integrated business model wherein it not just provides a technology platform, but hires mental health care providers, trains them extensively, develops specialised mental wellness services and concepts and then markets them directly to a larger customer base.

The digital health startups attracted $5.8 billion in funding in 2015 and the digital health market is expected to grow at an annual rate of 21 per cent until 2020.