eKincare is Indian healthcare technology startup that enables users to monitor their critical medical information and view it anywhere anytime. The startup’s patent pending technology also gathers medical results from various healthcare providers, updates profiles, and provides a single repository for users to store all their healthcare episodes. It then identifies potential health risks from the data, provides a personalized health plan to beat those risks.
The company was started in October 2014 by Kiran Kalakuntla and Dinesh Koka.
Below are the 3 core areas where the startup focus to make medical data meaningful.Personal health recordNow consolidating your and family’s medical history with eKincare is as easy as taking a selfie and it's free! Access them anywhere, anytime or share with a doctor with a simple click
Personalized health assessmenteKincare’s proprietary algorithm and process extracts the info from those medical records to assess an individual’s medical condition, spot health risks early and provide a personalized health score
Connecting to the right service providereKincare intelligence provides personalized recommendations for follow ups – whether be a health check, vaccination, medication etc. and connects the right service provider at the right time
Team BWDisrupt Interacts With Kiran Kalakuntla, Founder & CEO, eKincare and Spoke To HimWhat were the challenges eKincare faced while setting up the business? It was a challenge in terms of scaling up, as consolidating one’s medical records as a preventive measure requires a significant behavioral change and does not happen overnight. It takes time to make transition from reactive to preventive thought process when it comes to health; also the reason why health insurance penetration is only 5-6% in India. Healthcare is not an impulse buying process as it requires building a brand and slowly building the trust with the end user. Online banking, buying product online, using credit cards for online purchases were also unheard of several years ago.
We at eKincare are committed and confident of our long term strategy in adding value to the Indian Healthcare ecosystem by continuously innovating and providing a solution to the health related concerns of people in India. One such example of our commitment is, in the early days when we were researching the market and experimenting various services to offer up to NRIs, the health check included a cab pick up and drop as part of the offer. For one such appointment, the cab driver backed out and I drove the couple for their appointments.
Who are your competitors?Today there are multiple Healthcare IT modules like LIMS (laboratory information management system), HIS (hospital information system or healthcare information system), EHR etc. which have their own standards and protocols. For example: The standard reference lab ranges vary from lab to lab. We believe this is going to evolve in the coming years, where there would be a single standard and protocols like in the west for capturing, storing the data (like ICD10, LOINC Codes, HL7 etc.) which helps for better population analysis.
EHRs are going to evolve into PHRs for the above mentioned reasons, as today I might go into multispeciality hospital that has a EHR where my information is captured, but tomorrow if I go to a clinic close by house the continuity of information in Apollo’s EHR is lost since the information from the clinic is not flowing back.
Unlike EHRs (electronic health record) that are built for hospitals and doctors, PHRs (personal health record) are built for consumers. Just like consumers today use Youtube for videos, Flickr for pictures, iTunes for music, we see eKincare’s cloud platform to consolidate medical history to be leveraged by every Indian.
How is your business model different from the existing ones? We are not just a medical record company. We are a healthcare technology and analytics company that aims to increase an individual’s life span through personalized healthcare information. Our approach of combining digitization with deep analytics and healthcare has the potential to offer tremendous value to end consumers and change the rules of the game. Be it digitization of your medical history and early detection of health risks based on strong technology driven data analytics to providing a personalized health plan, we, helps you lead a smarter way to your healthier future.
eKincare’s health risk prediction models and wellness index are being used by healthcare providers, large corporations for population risk analysis and to define effective disease management programs to lower their healthcare costs. The platform is free for the user with no limits on the data stored and allows multiple family members’ profile management. eKincare is currently partnered with some of the pioneers in Indian healthcare to bring an intelligent & comprehensive approach to preventive medicine using its patent pending technology and takes commission from the sales
Who are your clients? How do you look at expanding?We believe in building a strong personal health records foundation which is heavy on technology and preventive analytics. We will be adding several value add services to drive engagement with the users. We are taking necessary steps in that direction through patenting our technologies and receiving a ISO 27001 certification for information security management which is a huge feat for a young startup like ours.
In fact, we have seen tremendous excitement and interest from corporates to leverage our platform for their employees, keep track of the overall organization's wellness metrics and maximize the ROI out of their wellness budgets. The current round of funding was raised to bring in few strategic investors on board and will be utilized to further improve the B2B offering, expand to other cities and hiring for operations in new cities.
The best and worst memories while setting up … Very early on when developing the product and experimenting, a couple had booked a health check though eKincare. One of the first 10 customers. The package included free cab pick and drop off for the health check. This was back in mid 2014 where Ola and Uber were just rising. With all the work, I forgot to schedule the cab for their check. I decided to drive the couple around for body, dental and vision checks to our service partners. Thought also would be a great way to speak to customers and watch their first hand experience. Learnt a ton in that one single trip which helped shape our early process and operations at eKincare.
Couple thought I was a cab driver and sat in the back. Later when the husband realized I was the founder and moved from US to startup he came and sat in the front and gave a lot of good information on customer expectation.
This is one of the most fond early memories of starting up.
Your marketing plans so that world know you Marketing our platform is a challenge, as consolidating one’s medical records as a preventive measure requires a significant behavioral change and does not happen overnight. It takes time to make transition from reactive to preventive thought process when it comes to health; also the reason why health insurance penetration is only 5-6% in India. Healthcare is not an impulse buying process as it requires building a brand and slowly building the trust with the end user. Online banking, buying product online, using credit cards for online purchases were also unheard of several years ago.
We at eKincare believe that continuous and committed drive towards education and awareness of the benefits of harnessing medical data as a critical step to staying healthy would help people adopt our platform.
As a long term strategy we look at adding value to the Indian Healthcare ecosystem by continuously innovating our product offerings, collaborating with like minded healthcare companies and providing a solution to the health related concerns of people in India.
What’s your plans for funding?
Till date, we have raised Rs. 4.4 crore, as part of Pre-series A round of funding. The investors include Bitkemy Ventures (re-invested), Maheshwari Investment. Pvt. Ltd., and from other HNIs like Anshoo Gaur (Indian Angel network, Amdocs), RamaKrishna Reddy and Sandeep Seerapu. The current round of funding that happened in the month of March 2016 will be used to strengthen product development, IP and tap the right talent to foster company’s growth in the tech led healthcare space.
How do you monetize?We are growing at an average of 150% each quarter and have statistically valid data of more than 5 lakh data points with continuity of several years of medical history which enables us to start building Indian specific preventive calculators for better prediction of NCDs before their onset. One such step in the direction is the launch of a wellness index which takes several data points to quantify an individual’s health on a scale of 1 to 100.
eKincare has tied up with the largest service providers such as Vasan eyecare, Maxi vision, Apollo White Dental, Partha Dental, Thyrocare etc and is proud of having one of the largest body of dental and vision networks.
The company aims to leverage both online and offline services across its 2000+ locations in India. In fact, we are also seeing tremendous excitement and interest from corporates to leverage our platform for their employees, keep track of the overall organization's wellness metrics and maximize the ROI out of their wellness budgets.
What is the next big thing in pipeline?eKincare has seen tremendous excitement and interest from corporates to leverage the platform for their employees, keep track of the overall organization’s wellness metrics and maximize the ROI out of their wellness budgets.
As part of our future plan, the current round of funding was raised to bring in few strategic investors on board and will be utilized to further improve the B2B offering, expand to other cities and hiring for operations in new cities and they will be looking for Series A in the coming 6 months.
What is the market size and market opportunity? According to a survey by Willis Towers Watson, 70% of Indians considering managing their health a top priority and the first step towards that is consolidating one’s medical history. According to India Brand Equity Foundation, the total healthcare industry is expected to touch $160 billion by 2017 and currently has 400 million Internet users.
While everyone is creating just another document repository systems and are not conducive for analytics, the need of the hour is to provide users with personalized healthcare information for early detection of health risks and better prediction of NCDs. This is where eKincare has an edge over others and believes that the future of healthcare lies in developing health risk prediction models and wellness index for the population and to define effective disease management programs to lower the healthcare costs.
