AlternaCare, a leading Indian technology-driven healthcare platform has raised $500K of seed funding from Eros Labs. AlternaCare provides simple, efficient and high quality remote consultations to patients through both instant and scheduled options over multiple platforms. The company started operations in January and launched its product in April 2016 and is already revenue positive.
AlternaCare is unique in its multi-platform approach. Patients can access consultation services through a number of mediums including voice calls (no internet required), mobile & desktop web (video), SMS and even through various chat platforms including Whatsapp. The proprietary AlternaAssist technology platform allows for an almost instant and seamless connection between doctors and patients, as well as a number of value added services like secure electronic health records, frictionless payments, data access and more.
With this round of funding, Alternacare intends to invest extensively in Product Development, building out its team, branding within its relevant target audience, and geographic expansion into key language markets.
“Unlike other industries, in healthcare, majority of the people require personal handholding right from the diagnosis at the primary care level to the best treatment at the tertiary care level. Using cloud telephony technology and developing a world class and highly secure tech product, we are India's first health-tech startup that has removed the dependency on the internet for doctor consultations as well as facilitating medicine delivery, lab tests, etc. Video call consultations with doctors are also supported on AlternaCare. The service also offers the feature to share their prescriptions' or affected area's images which reach the doctors for their opinion instantly.” – Abhishek Dwivedi, Co-founder, AlternaCare
Currently, Eros labs is incubating early stage startups in several fields like fashion, spirituality, technology and digital healthcare. Look At Me, a fashion ecommerce startup, and House of God are other two leading products Eros Labs has funded.
Karan Bedi, CEO of Eros Labs quotes “Access to high-quality health care is a very significant challenge in India. AlternaCare presents a huge opportunity to address this underserved market. This is a fantastic team and a unique model because of its ability to tap into all segments of the population, not limited by access to the internet. Growth has been great over the last 3 months.”
The healthcare market in India is expected to grow at a CAGR of 22.9% and market size is expected to reach $280 billion by the year 2020. The digital healthcare market in India is valued at more than $1 billion as is set to cross the $2 billion mark by 2020. Some major factors driving this growth include increasing smartphone and internet penetration, higher acceptance of telehealth products, increased incidence of chronic diseases that require hands on management, and major supply demand mismatch in availability of high quality doctors to the common man.
