Abhinav Krishna, Co-founder of OurHealthM ate

B Y L A X M I I Y E R O N S E P T E M B E R 2 , 2 0 1 5 • ( L E A V E A C O M M E N T )

OurHealthMate-Providing the Giftof Health to loved ones

Keeping expat Indians in touch with their f amily’s medical conditions!

OurHealthMate was co-founded by Abhinav Krishna and

Dr. Akash Kumar in 2013. Abhinav has worked with several

start-ups in Singapore and California, as well as been a

part of Equity and Electronic Trading teams at CitiBank

and Merrill Lynch. Specialist in algorithms, Abhinav is now

leading business development. We spoke to the CEO of

OurHealthMate Abhinav Krishna about his company and

what it has to offer!

What is OurHealthMate about?

OurHealthMate is a web portal catering to Indian expats

around the world with loved ones in India. It allows users to remit funds that go directly to healthcare clinics. This improves

compliance for beneficiaries to keep the appointment and improves their healthcare. The payers get feedback from the doctors,

letting them have a better understanding of their families’ health status.

Till date, OurHealthMate has partnered with more than 15,000 doctors in over 1,200 hospitals and clinics in 350 cities across

India. This includes top hospitals such as Apollo hospitals, Fortis Healthcare, West Bank to name a few. There are several

diagnostic labs which are partnered as well.

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Could you tell us more about how OurHealthMate began?

OurHealthMate wanted to solve a very basic problem. Many a times, expats who have moved out of their country have their

families back home and want to stay well-connected with them and take care of their health needs.

The whole concept started due to some personal experiences of Dr. Akash Kumar and I, who are the co-founders of this

company. Whenever we called our parents, they would assure us that they were fine, while in reality there were healthcare

issues to be taken care of. They would only inform us if it was serious, since they did not want to “bother” us.

Many expat Indians shared similar views with us, and said they would persuade their parents to go for regular check-ups to

detect problems at an early stage. However, they o en postponed or cancelled appointments, and money sent for their

medical check-up would simply be saved.

So, we thought why not give them the Gi of Health? Rather than paying money to the family to take care of their healthcare

needs, we worked on a concept where we were able to pay to the doctor directly .

We built OurHealthMate as a web portal to connect patients, physicians and payers. We wanted to improve both the

communication and convenience involved in remitting money home, for our families’ medical bills. This is a significant market.

Every year, 22 million non-resident Indians remit some US$65 billion to India, with approximately US$10 billion intended for

healthcare expenses.

Initially, we worked with various small clinics and saw huge traction coming out of this, as many started using these services.

Once we were able to validate this concept, we signed up with various hospitals, doctors and clinics and got a lot of data like

the facilities offered by doctors, hospitals and got the upfront cost for every medical service.

What were some of the insights you gleaned?

Pricing was the most sensitive issue and people pay medical bills without knowing how much it will be and what they are

paying it for. We worked on that too and found that many a times, people repeated tests even a er having recent reports. This

way we could help them reduce the healthcare costs and it became more transparent. Slowly corporates started approaching

us – they wanted to give their employees pre-employment/annual checkups and get their vaccinations done during their

overseas trips. So, we started developing several services.

We started as a company which could help individuals, but now it is a marketplace for healthcare services and packages. We

started with preventive care and are now moving towards emergency healthcare, where hospitals can provide emergency

healthcare through our platform- whether an ambulance is available, how much time it will take for the ambulance to be

despatched, are specialists such as cardiologists available at that time in the hospital?

What are the benef its of using your platf orm?

Simple confirmation process – A er logging into OurHealthMate’s portal, payers first indicate the city, patient details and

required speciality. Next they choose the doctor and procedure. Finally they select the appointment date/ time and make

payment. This means appointments can be booked conveniently, at any time, using devices such as computer, tablet or

mobile phones.

Transparency – Doctor’s profiles are displayed on OurHealthMate’s portal along with their consultation fees, so the payer

understands the doctors’ speciality and the cost before an appointment is made.

Feedback – Once the appointment has been completed, the payer will receive feedback including information on whether

the beneficiary turned up for the check-up, whether further medical intervention is required and if so, what are the next

steps suggested steps and estimated cost. The beneficiaries’ medical records are not shared with the payer, due to patient

confidentiality. This will only be shared once the patient consents.

We do a thorough background verification of every Doctor or hospital we sign up, so that the payers do not have to worry

about unverified doctors. We want the payers to have control over the Doctor they choose, based on their location,

experience, and even on the language they can speak, as some patients are more comfortable speaking in their mother

tongue.

Timely reminders – Reminders on upcoming appointments are sent to both the beneficiary and the payer, to improve

compliance levels.

Follow-up visits – Should further medical intervention be required, the reference from OurHealthMate allows quicker

service.

What happens once someone books a health package using your platf orm?

Whenever a service is booked, we send an SMS, email and there is a portal where you can log into and it will give the details

about appointment timings, doctor etc. The hospital where you have been registered also gives you a call and clearly gives

instructions on how to come prepared for the test- fasting or not and gives other details. On the day of the test, you can show

the voucher code and get the health checkup done without any payment asked.

Can people in India use this service to gif t a health package?

Yes, and many are doing it. We started with NRIs but a huge amount of our traffic comes from India too.

Dr. Akash Kumar (left), Director and Co-founder; M r. Abhinav Krishna (r ight), CEO

and Co-founder

Team OurHealthM ate at the Singapore HQ

How many staf f do you have currently?

The team currently consists of some 22 sta , who are based in the Singapore HQ and in India and we will be expanding

further. OurHealthMate has it’s operations, sales and support o ice in Bangalore with satellite o ices in New Delhi and

Lucknow. We also have a panel of advisors, including experts with several decades of experience from pharma, surgery and

health technology.

What is the USP of your portal?

Payments and feedback are the biggest features. Transparency in payment is another big plus point.

What is your revenue model?

We charge doctors/hospitals for every transaction and we get a percentage of the transaction fees for every payment that has

been made.

So how has your entrepreneurial journeybeen?

OurHealthMate was set up in mid-2013 by Dr Akash

Kumar and me. We launched a pre-beta version in

late 2013 and by September 2014 launched the full

version with automated and integrated services.

Over the past year, OurHealthMate has seen strong

growth figures with 66% of the payers returning to

book medical services for another beneficiary and

25% patients returning for follow up check-ups.

How much f unding have you raised till now?

The company has raised some S$ 900,000 in funding, including financing from Angel investors, business plan competitions and

the i.JAM grant. OurHealthMate is incubated by NUS Enterprise, and we have leveraged upon fundraising assistance,

mentorship support, legal consultation, access to business clinics and office space.

Any tips f or youngsters who are wishing to do a startup?

The trend I see these days is that people say, “I will do a startup part-time”. That never works. Passion and hard work are

extremely important. In the past we have even cleaned our o ices as we did not have the necessary support system. It is

very hard to do it when you have something else, because when the hard times will come, which comes a lot in startups,

you think “Hey the other job pays me more, so why am I doing this!

If you work hard for four months, you can raise funds and funding doesn’t mean you cannot pay yourselves. But if you try

to handle both, instead of completing substantial work in four months time, you might end up getting it done in 12

months. And in those 12 months, twenty other people might be competing and working on the same idea.

Also a basic question from an investors point of view is ‘if you cannot convince yourself to do it, then how can you convince

me to invest in you?’ When you are not sure that it will succeed, then how will I be sure that it will succeed?

Another concern of investors is, Where is your co-founder? If you are unable to convince someone else to quit a job and

work with you, then how do I as the investor trust you alone with the job and invest money on you.

Mentors o en provide conflicting advice, like Go a er big accounts! Go a er small accounts! Go B2C! Go B2B! Mentors

provide a point of view based on their professional experiences and limited perspective into our market and customer

base. While mentor feedback is extremely valuable, entrepreneurs ultimately need to make key decisions themselves.

S H A R ET H I S :

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