“We faced over 12 rejections solely because this market is driven by doctors and we want to offer services directly to the patients. There is almost no one who thinks that preventive healthcare will exist and people will buy health check-ups of their own.” While the startup does not disclose any growth numbers it’s safe to say they have made great efforts to change preconceived notions about the industry.
We speak to Mr Deepak Sahni, cofounder,
Healthians.comWhen was Healthians founded? Healthians was founded in April, 2014, and commenced its market operations in February 2015. Healthians was cofounded by Anuj Mittal and me (Deepak Sahni).
How does Healthians work? Healthians.com works with its tightly controlled network of branded labs to offer high quality diagnostics at honest pricing through its technology led platform and service solution.
Once the test or package is selected, the customer chooses a preferable day and time for sample collection as per his/her convenience and can choose to pay online or at the time of sample collection. Healthians offers free home collection from its vetted, certified and trained network of phlebotomists that ensure on time, hygienic and high quality sample collection.
The company has the largest fleet on street in India for sample collection services.
Most of the results are generates the same day and a soft copy is shared over email or app with the customers. If the customer opts for a hard copy report the same is couriered the same day for next day delivery. All Healthians customers are offered free of cost report consultation and analysis by a doctor and nutritionist followed by a wellness plan for diet and exercise to improve any abnormalities in the reports. The tech solution ensures complete tracking and monitoring by sending alerts and content time to time.
How did the idea for Healthians come about? The core insight was no one takes care of their own health and need a reliable support system with convenience, transparency and trust. So we built one.
Having spent 8 years in Healthcare marketing, I realized that everything in healthcare is focused on treatments and illness and over 50% of the healthcare cost is incurred by the patient suffering from lifestyle diseases. This inspired me to create a brand that promotes prevention, monitoring and management of these diseases and help people live healthier and happier by regular monitoring and testing of their basic health parameters.
What are the special key features of your start up?Deepak informs us that Healthians has several key features such as:
- Easy and simple tech-driven process to take the lab tests
- Search for any combination of tests at lowest package price
- Lowest price guarantee
- Innovative sample collection process: Coolsure™ and Smartprick ™
- Pro-active wellness: Free doctor consultation and dietician consultation
- Digital report storage of oneself as well as family members
- Complete lifestyle disease management by way of subscription, content and monitoring
How much funding has Healthians raised till now? We have raised multiple rounds and funding has been undisclosed. Overall we have raised USD $1.3M and will soon be raising our Series A round.
How are you monetizing?Healthians.com offers standardization in pricing for its customers and makes margins by optimizing lab cost by offering higher volumes.
What are the challenges your startup faced while setting up the business?Healthians.com was one of the very first ideas in the diagnostics space and the foremost challenge was to make everyone understand why this model will work.
We faced over 12 rejections solely because this market is driven by doctors and we want to offer services directly to the patients. There is almost no one who thinks that preventive healthcare will exist and people will buy health check-ups on their own.
We have only one healthcare focused incubator in India and very few VCs who understood the healthcare space.
Another challenging task was to understand a lot of new terms such as ESOP, Vesting, Drag along and Tag alongs'.
It’s a hard fact that most of the traditional chartered accountant firms do not understand startup compliance so much of it is guesswork.
As a startup you always grow with an unexpected pace and you don't realize that the office space you took just a month back is already full so you now need a PF/ESI compliance, you need to do everything very quickly and you are the only one responsible for doing it right.
What is the market size and market opportunity?Diagnostic market in India is worth $5B and growing at 15% CAGR. There is a huge opportunity in the space as a large part of the market is unorganized and due to the growing number of lifestyle diseases owing to a sedentary lifestyle.
What advice would you give the new entrants in this space?We have spent 2 years in the space apart from 8 years of founders’ experience in healthcare and we are still learning. It’s a vast segment and one has to master supply and demand balance along with ensuring high quality.
Healthcare is very different to e-commerce so it is important you choose investors who understand healthcare. As a healthcare startup, you will need to focus more on strong unit economics, quality and experience than just scaling numbers.
And a final quote about Healthians…Healthians.com wants to add 10 healthy years to every customer’s life by way of continuous screening, monitoring and improving health conditions.
BW Reporters
Regina is a reporter for BW Businessworld. In her previous assignments, she has worked with Independent television Network as a news anchor and reporter in Sri Lanka
