Forty-year-old Sheela used Practo’s digital physician session service for the primary time in the course of the COVID-19 lockdown in 2020. Her mom was ailing and wanted medical consideration. She hopped on to the web site, chosen the earliest accessible physician, and had an appointment over an audio name. The method was fast and handy.
However Sheela hasn’t used the platform ever since in-person consultations resumed upon the lifting of restrictions. She finds it simpler to go to her household physician who lives close by, and isn’t the one one.
With the lockdowns now previously, individuals not discover it essential to make use of teleconsultation platforms. This poses the most important problem for telemedicine startups centered on video session as they relied on client preferences transferring in direction of digital even after the pandemic—which hasn’t occurred.
Many telehealth startups now realise that it hardly is sensible to maintain teleconsultation as an remoted service amid skyrocketing buyer acquisition prices and quickly evolving client preferences. They’re now trying to find methods to revamp the stagnant enterprise.
The rise and fall
The teleconsultation area grew tremendously in the course of the pandemic. A complete of $52 million was invested in teleconsultation startups in 2020—up from $5.8 million two years prior, in response to knowledge by market intelligence agency .
The demand grew by as a lot as 500% in India, with greater than 85% of customers being first-timers, in response to a 2020 report by Practo. Folks from throughout age teams took to their smartphones to talk to physicians, order medicines, and ebook diagnostic checks.
Naturally, a number of gamers thrived—with , Tata , , and among the many largest gainers. Even hospital chains like Apollo Hospitals and Fortis allowed sufferers to talk to docs from the consolation of their houses.
However whereas sufferers briefly made good use of those providers, companies have been preventing onerous to make sense of the enterprise.
For one, constructing a teleconsultation-focused enterprise comes with excessive prices. The price of buying a buyer may be as excessive as Rs 3,000—owing to digital and offline advertising, together with deep discounting, in response to Dr Preet Pal Thakur, Founding father of Glamyo Well being. With each session fetching solely as much as Rs 600, companies discovered it troublesome to recuperate the fee.
Two, retaining clients is troublesome. “Most individuals might not even wish to retain the cellular app after a session so it turns into troublesome to persuade them to maintain utilizing the service,” Mithun Patange, Director of Advertising at telemedicine platform , tells YourStory.
Medical doctors share an analogous sentiment. A number of of them took to those platforms in March 2020, however now with offline providers having resumed, they too are preferring in-person consultations.
In response to Dr Lalmal Sawma Ralte, a surgeon primarily based out of Assam, analysis of illnesses occurs precisely solely when the physician assesses the affected person themselves. He not finds worth in utilizing a teleconsultation platform and believes that docs should be the place the sufferers are.
Revising the playbook
The apparent answer lies in diversifying choices.
5-year-old MyHealthcare Applied sciences, a Bengaluru-based telehealth agency, gives quite a lot of providers, together with reserving physician consultations, diagnostic checks, ordering medicines on-line, and buying medical units.
“The concept is to create a holistic hospital expertise. Similar to in a hospital, all services should be accessible as a bundle when a buyer (affected person) visits the platform in order that they don’t must take care of completely different necessities individually,” says Shyatto Raha, Founding father of MyHealthcare.
Since its founding over 10 years in the past, Practo made teleconsultation a core a part of its choices. It launched subscription plans to retain each sufferers and docs in response to the pandemic and extra not too long ago, forayed into the surgical procedure area by its Practo Surgical procedures vertical. Thus far, the corporate has raised upwards of $200 million from marquee traders comparable to Sequoia Capital India, Matrix Companions, and RTP International.
Even five-year-old created its personal end-to-end workflow—proper from session and lab testing to on-line drugs supply and follow-up evaluation.
“The economics are viable this fashion,” says a healthcare investor from a outstanding enterprise capital agency who didn’t wish to be named. “Our portfolio corporations have learnt the onerous means that the growth in demand for teleconsultation was a fad similar to e-pharmacy.”
The investor highlights that diversification permits companies to cut back dependence on a single income, which was pretty much as good as nil for a number of gamers to start with.
Many startups are additionally curating inexpensive subscription plans to create a loyal pool of shoppers. Practo’s subscription plan for sufferers begins at Rs 1,200 for one grownup per 30 days, whereas MyHealthcare’s plan begins at Rs 2,400.
For , teleconsultation not contributes to the topline however helps in lead era for its allied providers. Dr Preet Pal says that whereas the corporate’s core space of focus has at all times been elective surgical procedures like proctology and cosmetology, digital session helps docs conduct preliminary assessments. “Whereas not all sufferers might convert for surgical procedure, it helps us perceive the wants of sufferers. We don’t have a look at teleconsultation from a income standpoint,” he notes.
Smaller startups are additionally following within the footsteps of larger gamers to strike a steadiness between teleconsultation and addendums.
Delhi-based can be taking a look at strategic partnerships with corporates like Flipkart and with insurance coverage gamers for seamless claims. The one-year-old agency at present focuses on full-stack healthcare providers, together with video session with docs and lab testing. Co-founder Eshaan Singh says that within the coming years, diagnostics and e-pharmacy are anticipated to be its largest income mills.
One other Delhi-based healthcare service supplier, vHealth by Aetna, is trying to streamline the affected person journey primarily based on their analysis. It plans to combine with the Ayushman Bharat Digital Mission platform to make sure all medical data are saved beneath the Nationwide Well being ID of the affected person, who may have full management of viewing, sharing, or granting entry to their knowledge. It at present gives a number of healthcare providers—from teleconsultation and follow-up checks—in over eight regional languages
“The target is to make sure last-mile connectivity with sufferers for remedy continuity throughout hospitalisation in addition to post-hospitalisation care—all beneath one digital platform,” says CEO Anurag Khosla.
Shifting to B2B mannequin
Many healthtech founders had their eureka second simply in the previous few months. They haven’t solely recognized ache factors within the fundamentals of operating a telemedicine startup however have additionally realised that they could have misjudged their audience.
“A direct-to-consumer (D2C) strategy works however provides to the issue of repeat clients,” Mithun from Join and Heal explains. The platform has now doubled down on its deal with company shoppers—one thing Practo did a couple of years in the past when it began tying up with organisations and their workers a bundle of healthcare providers.
“This fashion, luring a single shopper received’t be troublesome as a result of organisational partnerships give the platform to all its workers directly and helps the enterprise preserve a finger on the heartbeat of the market,” he provides.
The shift to B2B is widespread in different sectors as nicely. As an illustration, meals supply platforms like and have begun doubling down on their tie-ups with restaurant companions to present an extra cushion for income.
, a platform that makes use of synthetic intelligence for all its providers together with telemedicine, e-pharmacy, and vaccinations, additionally targets organisations and says it helps employers save as much as 90% on their healthcare prices. Dr Noel Coutinho, Chief Enterprise Officer of the corporate, says that the corporate recognized the troubles of operating a telemedicine platform early on and centered on concentrating on corporates.
Nevertheless, Practo appears to be an outlier. The Sequoia-backed startup derives 80% of its enterprise from the B2C mannequin and expects the income to extend over the following few years, in response to Dr. Alexander Kuruvilla, Chief Healthcare Technique Officer of Practo.
“With the attain of teleconsultations, and as we additional penetrate into Tier II and III markets, particularly with the provision of docs who converse the identical language because the sufferers, the options we are going to present throughout specialities is immense. We additionally plan to develop and broaden our choices by rising the variety of docs on our platform by 4X within the subsequent few years,” he provides.
The teleconsultation growth could also be slowly dying down, however founders within the ecosystem are definitely discovering their option to keep afloat. Whereas it could be too early to say how the shift in gears will pan out for the startups, healthtech startups are keen to check new waters.
