Care24 - One Point Solution For Patient Care Services At Home

Care24 was founded in December 2014 by Vipin Pathak, Abhishek Tiwari & Garima Tripathi.

The startup is the leading healthcare services provider in Mumbai. It is available online via website and on mobile via android app. Care24 offer services for Nursing care, Physiotherapy treatment and Attendants for elderly care and bedridden at home. The services for Pregnancy and Infant Care, Nutrition advice and Medical equipments for purchase and renting are also offered.

The company has a dedicated team of 1200+ medical professionals serving across Mumbai - Western, Central and Harbour lines, including Navi Mumbai. CareGivers - i.e. Nurses, attendants and physiotherapists use the Care 24 mobile app which helps in customer profiling and track services being provided. They are trained for soft skills and documenting patient's recordings.

The customers can book the services offered online via the Care24 website, mobile app and the toll free number. Once the service is booked, the sessions for the required services are booked as per the customer convenience.

Abhishek Agrawal Interacts With Vipin Pathak, Co-Founder, Care24 And Spoke To Him

Genesis

We all have been living away from our family. The thought of taking care of our ageing parents always concerned us day in and day out. Also the need for home health care was rising, especially for physiotherapy cases and infant care for nuclear families. We then discussed the same amongst our friends and found out everyone is facing similar situation and similar problems. Thus, we thought of coming up with mechanism which not only will help us but also the society at large. This is how we came up with Care24.

Unique Key Points

Our startup focuses on providing home healthcare services. It’s not only about making money from a business venture but about serving that part of society which is in the dire need of help. The pain of a person, who has been on bed from past 4-8 months, completely disconnected from the outer world, is not only physical but also mental. Serving that person, being with that person for 8-12 hours every day, is not only complex but also a tiresome job. But we, here, at Care24 are happy to be by the side of the patient/person in need, however, crucial or laborious the job is. It is about our commitment to our work and vast pool of medical experts supporting us to serve in this arena.

Differentiation

CareGivers - i.e. Nurses, attendants and physiotherapists use the Care 24 mobile app which helps in customer profiling and track services being provided. Nurses and Attendants are 100% background verified with 5+ years of experience. CareGivers undergo professional training before serving the patients. Highly qualified Physiotherapists (BPTh,MPTh) and Nutritionists with 3+ years of experience are available for advice and treatment. We also launched premium caregiver’s service to cater to special needs of the patients - Stroke Care, Kidney Care, Dementia care and Infant Care. They are trained for soft skills and documenting patient's recordings.
Funding

Till now we have received in total $5 million. $1 million from India quotient and then later $4 million from Saif Partners and India Quotient.

Monetization

We take commission on the services rendered. Due to our innovative model we are able to give higher payouts to service provider and at the time earn reasonable commission where we look forward to breakeven in 18-24 months.

Challenges Faced

Our first and foremost challenge was to break the monotony of home healthcare services available for the patients in our society. Let alone unknown patients, our own friends were not positive towards the idea of home healthcare. But problems faced by families for finding good medical care were immense. Even our friends were uncomfortable leaving their parents/loved ones alone with a stranger when they aren’t home. So we set out having faith in our idea. Later, when we invested time, put the cycle in place, started streamlining things then, gradually, we gained trust and faith of the people we served and the affected families of the patients. Word of mouth has always been kind to us and was one of our biggest promoters.

Traction Details

We service more than 500 patients a day. Given the huge market demand and market size, we are hopeful of increasing our bandwidth soon; expand our services to other cities as well.

Market Size & Opportunity

There is huge market and demand for the health care services in our country. The industry size in India is around $3 billion. In Mumbai, it is close to Rs. 1600 crore. The CAGR (Cumulative Annual Growth Rate) is 25%. Around 1 million population need health care in Mumbai only. Importantly, in Mumbai only, there are 1 L bedridden people who need health care services and care. 62, 000 people need oncology support/care, 36,000 Alzheimer patients are in need of help and hope and nearly 1 L people get discharged every day from hospitals that need constant monitoring by someone reliable and expert in medics. As per this data, this is evident, that not only the market is large but also there is huge opportunity to serve patients not only for us but for everyone who is dedicated and determined to serve the one’s in need.

Advice For New Players

The space you are going to enter is really large and will give you ample opportunities to nurture others and yourself. Do your homework thoroughly, pull up your socks and be prepared, this segment is going to give you some tough goals to achieve.