Company Profile is an initiative by StartupTalky to publish verified information on different startups and organizations. The content in this post has been approved by the organization it is based on.
Gone are the days when one had to rely on word of mouth to find a good doctor, or when one had to stand in queues to book an appointment with the doctor. Thanks to the online appointment booking platforms, finding the best doctors is now easier than never before. Through these platforms, one can find doctors specific to one’s health problem and book appointment in clicks.
One such platform that is simplifying the process of booking an appointment with the doctor and diagnostic centers is Docttocare. Moving a step forward this Bangalore based startup even arranges for transportation of the patient to the clinic if required, thus making good quality health care services more accessible.
StartupTalky interviewed Docttocare founder Sugandha to learn further about this startup.
Docttocare – Company Highlights
| Startup Name | Docttocare |
|---|---|
| Headquarter | Bangalore |
| Founder | Sugandha Agarwal |
| Sector | Healthcare |
| Founded | 2016 |
| Parent Organization | Doctto Online Healthcare Innovation Pvt. Ltd. |
| Website | www.docttocare.com |
About Docttocare and How it Works
Global Appointment Scheduling Software Market
Docttocare – Founder and Team
Docttocare – Name and Logo
Docttocare – USP and Innovation
Docttocare – Revenue Model
Docttocare – Funding and Investors
Docttocare – User Acquisition
Docttocare – Startup Challenges
Docttocare – Advisors and Mentors
Docttocare – Growth
Docttocare – Future Plans
Sarika Anand
About Docttocare and How it Works
Docttocare is an online healthcare service provider. Docttocare provides its users information about the best doctors, clinics, hospitals and diagnostic centers. The platform also offers virtual walkthroughs of the ambiance to showcase hospitality and their facilities. It makes booking appointments super easy and assures the confirmation of online appointment through call, SMS or email. Docttocare launched its services in 2018 at NASSCOM Bangalore.
Docttocare is one of the leading healthcare online portals that enable users from non-metro cities to access and book an appointment with doctors and hospitals located in major cities. Docttocare app handholds the users through the entire process of identifying the right doctors/hospitals and scheduling appointments on the desired date. Docttocare covers everything from dentist, gynecologist, dermatologist, ENT, ayurvedic and homeopathy.
Docttocare is making lives easy for doctors too. Docttocare helps the doctors increase the visibility of the services provided by them, and also provides facilities such as seamless integration with online payment. It also lets the doctors view patient records from anywhere, remind the patients about the appointment and manage the clinic through Docttocare dashboard.
Global Appointment Scheduling Software Market
The global appointment scheduling market was valued at 160 million USD in 2017 and is expected to surpass 360 million USD by the end of 2023. Again, the doctor’s appointment booking software market alone is expected to grow at a rate of 16.56% for the next five years, i.e. till 2023.
PV Vyshnavi
Docttocare Founder, CEO and Team
Sugandha Agarwal is the founder and CEO of Docttocare
Docttocare is a single female founder company. Sugandha Agarwal is the founder and CEO of Docttocare. An electrical, electronics & communication engineer by qualification, Sugandha worked with reputed organizations like Infosys, Oracle and Google Maps before starting Docttocare.
I do everything except writing codes. Jokes apart, driving partnerships with hospital brands, building end-user acquisition strategies, spending time with product positioning, etc are key responsibilities, says Sugandha Agarwal.
Docttocare has 15 members of team right now and looking for expanding in a couple of months.
Docttocare – Name and Logo
The name Docttocare has been derived from ‘Doctor to care’.
Lakshya Singh
Docttocare – USP and Innovation
Some USPs of Docttocare are-
- Instant online ambulance booking – This feature allows the users to book an ambulance online instantly. Once booked, the user can track the live status of the fleet, the arrival time of the ambulance the expected time it will take to travel.
- Blood Bank Facility – Lets users track the availability of bold groups with the hospital.
- Manages health reports – Docttocare lets the users search, compare, evaluate and also share health record and prescription with doctors, thus making the platform user-friendly.
- Simplifies the process of shortlisting a doctor or medical center – Docttocare allows the users to choose the best of doctors and clinics or hospitals based on ratings and helps the users in making an informed decision. It also provides a virtual 3D panoramic tour of the hospital thus making the users get a fair idea of the hospital or clinic even before visiting the place.
- Docttocare also offers free cancellation and re-scheduling of appointments.
Shubham Kumar
Docttocare – Revenue Model
Docttocare has a simple commission – based revenue model. While the services are free for the patients, it charges a 10% commission from the hospitals.
Docttocare – Funding and Investors
Docttocare raised seed funding worth INR 4 Crore in May 2019.
| Funding Date | Funding Stage | Funding Amount | Investor |
|---|---|---|---|
| May 2019 | Seed | INR 4 Crore | Krishna Kumar Devnally |
Docttocare – User Acquisition
Getting the initial set of customers required great effort. The Docttocare team roamed around Bangalore and enrolled the small clinics.
“We used to visit at least 20 clinics per day. After some time when we started getting revenue from appointments then we realized Tier 2 cities people are more keen to get treated by reputed doctors, and they need transport as well, which we tried to solve”, recalls Sugandha.
Currently, Docttocare is focusing on tier 2 and tier 3 cities to provide access to prime hospitals and connecting them with ambulance service and proving stay also.
Docttocare – Startup Challenges
“Startup journeys are full of challenges, which to be honest, I didn’t realize before taking the plunge. Thanks to the media, who always show the shiny side of it. Keeping professional and personal life separate & fulfilling is one of the biggest challenges and I had to let one of them go for a few years.” said Sugandha.
Building the team, acquiring an initial set of customers/partners, honing her selling skills were part of the early days’ challenges for Sugandha. Besides, though she had a brief coding background and was able to keep up with the engineering/product team but being in sync with them fully took her some time.
Challenges like customer acquisition, revenue were there since day one, but Docttocare now has a qualified team to take care of these aspects. Another major problem was raising funds.
“Raising funds was the other (good) problem we solved. While starting up, I did not realize that I’d have the inherent disadvantage of being a solo female founder. I got my reality check, when one of the prominent angel investors with a massive following on social media, mentioned this fact bluntly to me. They didn’t even delve into business and rejected the deal outright. But being a female founder gives you additional strength (in terms of team management and creativity), which not many investors realize. Incidentally, I met with our investor/mentor a year ago and he decided to support us” narrates Sugandha.
Shubham Kumar
Docttocare – Advisors and Mentors
Along with being the investor of Docttocare, Krishnakumar also plays the role of a mentor for the company. He is the Director of M-Power Solutions.
Docttocare – Growth
Through its excellent services, Docttocare has been successful to slowly gain trust from doctors and patients alike.
- The company has enrolled all the major hospitals like Apollo, Manipal, Medanta and many more.
- Docttocare is now getting around 300 + appointments per day.
- 4000+ medical tests have been done through Docttocare.
- 500+ clinics, 100+ hospitals and 2000+ doctors are registered with it.
Docttocare – Future Plans
Docttocare is planning to bring many positive changes in the healthcare scenario of India.
Emphasizing on Docttocare’s future plans, Sugandha said “I want to take healthcare in India to a much higher level. We have a dearth of doctors in this country and the patient count is undoubtedly increasing. People often ignore their minor health-issues, either due to lack of healthcare service or because of effort/cost that may go into addressing it.”
Awareness of health issues would be their next goal. How can they help you to be healthy without investing much? Something as simple as cutting refined sugar & unhealthy fat from the diet, eating your dinner early in the day, etc can go a long way in improving the fitness standard.
Making quality healthcare accessible to masses has been the company’s dream and they are very early in solving it. Currently, they have to move people to let them enjoy the benefits of high-quality services, but the eventual goal would be to send services wherever they are. Training local people on healthcare services, equipping them with the right tools and making them work under the supervision of qualified practitioners is the way forward.