These 8 startups are out to change home healthcare in India

Over the past few months health-tech has been buzzing with startups helping in hospital management systems, doctor discovery, delivery of medicines, and now more importantly home healthcare services.

Last year, 57 deals were made with a total funding amount of $277 million.

Towards the end of 2015, the home healthcare market started growing further when Portea raised a Series B funding amount of $37.5 million led by existing investors – Accel and International Finance Corporation (IFC), a member of the World Bank Group; Qualcomm Ventures, and Ventureast. There also is the Delhi based Pramati Care that offers services like assistive care, adult nursing care, and rehabilitation available at the home of the patient.

Some of the key home healthcare providers, besides Portea, are:

Health Care at Home

A joint venture backed by the promoters of Dabur India, Healthcare at Home provides several services like home chemotherapy, home ICU services, post-surgical care, physiotherapy, psychological counselling, maternity, pre and post-natal care, and generic care. The team plans to touch 15 Tier I and Tier II cities across India in the next two years. Health Care at Home also works towards providing home pulmonology services and even setting up an ICU at home.

Zoctr

Zoctr is a home healthcare aggregator platform that integrates several health services like doctor appointments, home health services, remote monitoring services, laboratory, pharmacy, medical equipment, telehealth, and ambulatory support. Founded by Nidhi Saxena, Zoctr raised a funding of $1 million from Founder of SPA Capital Sandeep Parwal, Founder of Organic Wellness Krishnan Gupta, and a few other angel investors. The platform offers supportive and palliative care, and is present in Pune, Mumbai, Bengaluru, Delhi, Ahmedabad, and Kolkata.

Vatsalya

Vatsalya is a centre for oral healthcare and recently launched its 24/7 emergency home dental care services. The team had recently acquired a pre-series A round of funding of Rs 11 crore from S-Squared Captial Investments, USA. Founded in 2003 by Dr Srivats Bharadwaj, Vatsalya provides end-to-end dental treatment at your doorstep. The home healthcare company focuses on special needs dentistry and preventive dentistry. The team at Vatsalya also provides services like surgical removal of teeth, laser surgeries, complete or partial denture prosthesis, root canal therapy and fixed and bridge crown prosthesis.

Care24

The Mumbai-based home healthcare platform was founded in 2014 by IIT Mumbai alumni Garima Tripathi, Vipin Pathak, Abhishek Tiwari, and Pranshu Sharma. The startup raised a series A funding of $4 million led by SAIF Partners and seed investor India Quotient. Care24 offers verified caregiver services across Mumbai. As of February this year, the startup had clocked 600 transactions in a day. They have a network 24×7 nurses, attendants, and certified physiotherapists, who help individuals through the rehabilitation process.

Zozz

Zozzis is a Hyderbad-based home healthcare startup that works as a local health aggregator connecting users with the best doctors who can reach their home in the shortest possible time. Started in February this year, the team has doctors doing 30 to 40 house calls in Hyderabad. (Read more)

Life Circle Health Services

The Hyderabad-based home nursing and professional care giving service provider Life Circle provides subscription-based professional caregiving and home nursing services specifically to the bed-ridden and chronically ill seniors in India. The startup recently raised a funding of $150,000 from GROUP SOS, the European senior healthcare service provider.

Healers at Home

This home healthcare startup provides yoga and physiotherapy services. The startup was founded by Kshitij Garg, who had personally suffered severe back pain and was looking for good physiotherapy services. The idea of the startup is to provide services that are convenient, top of the line, and effective. They provide nursing, attendant, and mother and child care services at home. Healers at Home raised an undisclosed round of funding from Daljit Singh, the President of Fortis Healthcare, Hyderabad Angels, and Dr Pramath Raj Sinha, Founder ISB. They have so far claim to have completed over 30,000 home visits and are present in Delhi NCR and Chandigarh.

Nightingales

Bengaluru-based Nightingales was acquired by Medwell Ventures last year. The Nightingales team numbers more than 300 medical and paramedic professionals comprising doctors, nurses, physiotherapists, speech therapists, bedside paramedical caregivers specialising in chronic care disease management.

The market of home healthcare

The home healthcare market is believed to be growing at a CAGR of nine percent and is estimated at $349 billion. Apart from Portea and the eight mentioned startups, there is also Unique Home Care started by Apollo Hospitals. Many reports suggest that the growing need for home healthcare is because of double income households, social structural changes, and an increased need for geriatric care.

An additional mention of a startup in the space would be Kolkata based Tribeca Care. Founded in 2013, Tribeca Care focuses on non-medical support, home nursing, rehabilitation care, doctor home visits, 24/7 emergency response and medical devices for home care.