In an insightful interaction for International Men’s Day, Dr. Harshit Jain, Founder and Global CEO of Doceree, speaks with StartupTalky about his inspiring journey from physician to healthcare entrepreneur. Dr. Jain shares how his medical background inspired the creation of Doceree and influenced his approach to healthcare marketing, focusing on the importance of relevant, data-driven solutions for healthcare professionals.
He discusses the challenges of scaling the business, such as addressing data privacy issues and improving ad relevance. Dr. Jain also touched on the importance of work-life balance and mental health, urging men in demanding roles to prioritise self-care and open discussions about their well-being.
StartupTalky: What inspired you to transition from being a physician to a healthcare entrepreneur?
Dr. Jain: Growing up, I vaguely remember my parents talking about my curiosity and knack for coming up with ideas to collaborate with others and help them. As I matured, I thought, what better way to channel that passion than by becoming a doctor? After earning my medical degree from Northwestern University in Chicago in 2006, I practiced medicine for over eight years as a physician.
During this time, I began noticing unaddressed gaps in the healthcare industry—issues that required creative problem-solving. This inspired me to step beyond the traditional boundaries of a physician’s role and explore the ‘creative’ side of the healthcare industry.
Despite scepticism from some industry peers, I trusted my instincts and pursued my transition into healthcare advertising, eventually giving me opportunities to hold leadership roles at McCann Health across Asia, Europe, and the United States. Along the way, I thankfully earned some of the industry’s most prestigious awards, including the Cannes Lions Grand Prix for Good, for my marketing campaigns.
However, my journey didn’t end there. My instincts pushed me further, inspiring me to combine my expertise in medicine and marketing through entrepreneurship, leading to the launch of Doceree in 2020. This transition to entrepreneurship was driven by my aspiration to reduce the rising healthcare costs and improve HCP-patient engagement.
StartupTalky: How did your medical background influence the creation of Doceree’s ‘smart nudges’ in healthcare marketing?
Dr. Jain: As a practicing physician for over eight years, I witnessed firsthand the frustration caused by irrelevant advertisements, which disrupt care delivery and doctor-patient engagement, ultimately impacting overall health outcomes. However, my subsequent transition into marketing and entrepreneurship inspired me to turn this challenge into an opportunity to ‘smartly nudge’ the concept of ‘purposeful ads’ in global healthcare advertising.
By delivering only relevant ads tailored to doctors’ medical backgrounds and patient data—within strict regulatory compliance— we are able to minimize distractions for HCPs and parallelly also help marketers achieve higher returns on advertising spend (ROAS). This move ultimately helped us address two critical issues of the industry: reducing rising healthcare costs and alleviating the mental clutter in a field where life-altering decisions are made daily.
StartupTalky: What were your biggest challenges in scaling Doceree, and how did you overcome them?
Dr. Jain: Given that the global healthcare industry is the world’s third-largest producer of data, there were not many solutions capable of systematically harnessing these datasets to make them more marketing and healthcare business-friendly. This is the gap where Doceree sought to differentiate itself by developing data solutions that are not only optimized for marketing but also capable of tracking business outcomes for pharmaceutical marketers.
As a result, we became the world’s first and only programmatic marketing network exclusively for HCP-only platforms, enabling marketers to directly target the key decision-makers impacting their business outcomes, eliminating unnecessary marketing expenses.
Once we overcame this challenge, the next hurdle was addressing data privacy concerns. With the rise in data breaches and cases of data misuse, the industry grew increasingly sceptical about digital solutions. To address this, we leveraged our extensive HCP and patient data responsibly, utilizing only the datasets that were relevant and precise for specific moments of care for HCPs. This approach enabled our technology to achieve certification under the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) and secure a patent from the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), earning the trust of key stakeholders in the process.
After addressing privacy concerns, the next and perhaps the most significant challenge was tackling inefficient messaging to HCPs. With many solution providers capitalizing on the limited awareness of programmatic marketing in healthcare and claiming to be ‘experts’ in delivering the right ads at the right time, HCPs started to receive a flood of ineffective advertisements, further burdening HCPs and complicating their already demanding work schedules.
To solve this concern, Doceree introduced its ‘AI-powered smart nudges’ which allowed only relevant ads to be delivered to HCPs in real-time during critical points of care, allowing them to make informed decisions within the limited time available. This allowed HCPs’ engagement to become more targeted and quality-driven, empowering both – HCPs in their care delivery and pharma marketers in achieving better script lift outcomes beyond campaign impressions.
Subham Kumar
StartupTalky: How does Doceree’s data-driven approach to healthcare marketing differentiate it from traditional marketing methods?
Dr. Jain: While programmatic advertising isn’t new to healthcare and has been leveraged by brands across sectors for many years, the healthcare industry needed to realize how the lack of relevance and effective messaging led to only half of its true potential, contributing to no tangible healthcare outcomes.
Understanding the cause behind this gap, I attempted to reshape it into an extraordinary framework by integrating real-time context relevance to improve patient outcomes—a solution that went unnoticed at the time. By making the best use of HCP data and clinical data with our HIPAA-certified and patented technology, our data-driven approach to healthcare marketing clearly suggests how technology can create the biggest healthcare impact – if employed wisely.
Doceree takes a responsible approach by utilizing patient data only at critical moments of care, eliminating the risk of misuse. This precise and conscientious use of HCP and patient data enables us to nudge HCPs toward informed decision-making and enhance HCP-patient engagement.
What sets us apart is our commitment to delivering meaningful context for impactful outcomes, all while maintaining strict data compliance. Furthermore, as the world’s first and only ‘HCP-only data’ marketplace, we have a reputation for the extensive focus on data safety and integrity.
StartupTalky: What role does collaboration with pharmaceutical brands play in Doceree’s growth, and how do you maintain strong relationships with them?
Dr. Jain: We currently collaborate with over 600 pharmaceutical brands worldwide, including the top eight global players, who have been pivotal to Doceree’s growth. What began in 2020 as a modest three-member team has now grown into a thriving organization with over 200 talented professionals spanning Asia, America, and Europe.
As an entrepreneur and marketer, my vision is straightforward: focus on adding value to your customers’ growth with purpose, and profits will naturally follow. Through our highly precise and real-time context-relevant messaging, our clients save significantly, leveraging solutions like Doceree Insights to optimize campaign performance. This allows them to reinvest those savings into more strategic campaigns. This approach not only enhances value for our clients but also plays a critical role in retaining and renewing partnerships with brands across the globe.
Ashwini
StartupTalky: With Doceree expanding globally, what future innovations or products are you most excited about?
Dr. Jain: There’s much more in store for the global healthcare advertising industry and the broader healthcare business ecosystem from Doceree. As we recently entered Australia in association with WARD 6 and are looking to secure more global partnerships and mergers to offer our clients solutions that are high on innovation with safer and smarter integration of AI. Overall, we plan to add 5 cutting-edge solutions to our offerings in 2025, that will give new heights to an efficient healthcare marketing ecosystem.
Further, with the core purpose of elevating HCP-patient conversations Doceree will continue to deliver innovative pharmaceutical marketing solutions, while also exploring opportunities for broader business collaboration and growth. Perhaps something transformative is on the horizon– stay tuned!
StartupTalky: On International Men’s Day, how do you maintain work-life balance, and what advice would you give to men in demanding roles to protect their mental health?
Dr. Jain: Working across three time zones, I’ve come to realize that maintaining work-life balance in today’s fast-paced world is no easy feat. Yet, setting boundaries and prioritizing time for yourself and your loved ones is vital for recharging and staying productive. Whether it’s regular exercise, mindful breaks, or occasionally unplugging from work, find what helps you feel your best.
This International Men’s Day, I urge everyone to challenge the stereotype that men must always appear strong, embrace open conversations about mental health, seek support when needed, and remember that self-care is as crucial as professional success.
Sayantan Mondal
