Online Healthcare: The Next Big Thing

The sixth session of The Golden Cart Summit was based on the Indian online healthcare industry that is at an inflection point right now and is poised to grow up to $280 billion by 2020. The panelists included Chitrang Dalal, AVP-Product Management, Credihealth; Shuchin Bajaj, Founder Director, Cygnus Hospitals; Ankit Khurana, Founder, Mydermacy; Siddhartha Ahluwalia, CEO & Co-Founder, AddoDoc; Abhishek Sharma, CMO, GOQii Inc; and Mudit Vijayvergiya, Co-founder, Curofy.

Most importantly, almost all of the panelists in this conversation shared personal life changing experiences of being either misdiagnosed or not being treated well. Since they never met the right knowledge source at the right time and instead took the wrong medications, they understand the suffering of a common man themselves. They shared a common thread of thought on the challenges India is facing in Healthcare Sector that is inevitably the trigger for their e-commerce businesses.

Chitrang Dalal (CrediHealth) asked everyone to share details about their venture and what opportunities they are looking in healthcare industry in future.

While talking about their initial days, Shuchin Bajaj (Cygnus Hospitals) said, "I belong to a village and the yardstick I have in my mind is through an incident where people in small districts were very prone to falling and small accidents. Even though doctors are the worst people to work with and it is difficult to convince them, to work in village or small district, we are able to do it because we closely understand their needs."

Ankit Khurana (Mydermacy) shared his entrepreneurial journey and added, "We have shown faith in the county's tertiary sector and launched hospitals in second and third tier cities, where the experience of going to a hospital is very bad. We launched because there has been a big gap of references of good doctors, as it has always been happening through word of mouth. We are also in offline space and help people to find clinics which are providing quality services to gain the trust of the consumers."

Similarly, Siddhartha Ahluwalia (AddoDoc) stated that, "Our platform stems from the knowledge that consumers have enough awareness or at least enough resources to get the information. Not only India is a country where home remedies are also very much in fashion, we need this information to get circulated faster. "

When asked about the root of the motivation in healthcare e-commerce businesses, Abhishek Sharma (GOQii Inc.) mentioned, "When we came in India, we saw very less motivation specially for healthcare but along with time people are opening up and discussing their medical issues out in the open, which they never used to do before."

Commenting on his venture's mission and traction, Mudit Vijayvergiya (Curofy) mentioned, "Our mission is to make doctors very efficient so that they can deliver the best patient care. Around 1,30,000 doctors are using Curofy to discuss different cases. We are a support system for doctors."

Abhishek Sharma concluded the interaction by these words: "All of us are working a smaller and a bigger size and we collectively believe that people of different business who can support each other should come together to build better healthcare systems in India".