Stanplus is a pioneer in private ambulance services and one of the leaders in ambulance services in Hyderabad. It is backed by a fleet of over 900 ambulances that work 24x7, thereby guaranteeing medical transport within 15 minutes. These ambulances are packed with top-of-the-line equipment.
Stanplus is led by Prabhdeep Singh who is the Co-Founder and CEO. Born in Chandigarh, Singh is a trained pharmacist and finished his first MBA from NMIMS, Mumbai.
After his MBA, Singh worked for five years in Glenmark Pharmaceuticals. He did his second MBA from INSEAD, France and graduated with an offer to join Boston Consulting Group in Brazil. However, the call for entrepreneurship brought him to Hyderabad where he co-founded Stanplus with two of his INSEAD batchmates.
Cost-basis Only: During April to June this year when India was witnessing its dark days due to the second and more deadly wave of coronavirus attack, Singh took a stand of providing medical response at cost-basis only. There were no extra or exorbitant charges.
Apart from their core competency of ambulance services, the team at Stanplus under the leadership of Singh is enabling technology, hardware and skillsets of people and machines to respond better to emergency medical situations.
We think of us as the first name that people should recall when they find their loved ones under emergency medical duress,†says Singh.
Stanplus has made a difference in cities like Hyderabad and Bangalore and are further looking to scale their operations in other cities.
Quick Response Time: Singh describes the Covid period as a phase of learning. During the first wave, the team at Stanplus learnt the protocols of lifting a Covid patient and transporting them across the city. As the second wave hit India, the team was better prepared. But as it turned out, nothing could have prepared any medical response team to manage the scale and volume of demand that came in the April-May-June period.
“The second wave showed the weakness of our healthcare infrastructure. In the last six months we have made investments in improving our response time and are now better prepared for any possible third wave or any other pandemic. It has humbled us as well because we know, no matter how much we prepare, we can still fall short,†adds Singh.
Partnerships: Singh says that hospitals that have partnered with Stanplus were able to answer 85 per cent of their emergency calls during the pandemic, compared to five per cent with hospitals that have not partnered with Stanplus. Also, their success rate on the trips was 93 per cent compared to 30 per cent of other hospitals.
The team is now working on other medical response technologies such as ‘Triage’ which would be able to estimate the panic score of a patient through their voice. On the ‘Excess Technology side, a smoke alarm, for example, would be able to send hospitals a signal about a potential fire without anybody calling. Singh believes that entrepreneurship is a thankless job. But encouragement via Young Entrepreneur Awards does give a boost to entrepreneurs like him.