Eka Care, a startup that aims to digitize the health records of Indian patients, has raised $15 million in a new funding round as it seeks to hire more engineers and bring additional doctors to its platform, which has gathered more than 30 million and 5,000 users. doctors.
Hummingbird Ventures led Eka Care’s Series A round, with participation from 3one4Capital, Mirae Assets, Verlinvest, Aditya Birla Ventures, Binny Bansal and Rohit MA, among others.
Eka Care, founded in December 2020 by Vikalp Sahni and Deepak Tuli, co-founders of travel booking platform Goibibo, Eka Care allows consumers to manage their digital health records, which doctors can access using a digital hospital management tool.
“I don’t see a future where you’re going to continue to keep a large portion of your health care non-digital,” Sahni said in an interview with TechCrunch.
Today, its platform is helping half a million patients keep their health records electronically.
“When you go to the doctor, and you have a medical record, the doctor has to go through every page of the file, which is impossible for anyone to read and remember,” said Tuli. “But if it’s a graph, it’s easier to remember and see… That’s a big difference for a doctor.”
Vikalp Sahni (left) and Deepak Tuli (right)
Bengaluru-based Eka Care started its journey as a doctor-patient record keeping app. Last year, they received permission from New Delhi’s Ayushman Bharat Digital Mission (ABDM) to allow users to create and use Ayushman Bharat Health Account (ABHA) and integrate the platform into the Unique Health Interface (UHI).
The government looks to ABDM to provide digital healthcare services. At the same time, ABHA functions as an individual account to help consumers easily share their health data with doctors, hospitals, pharmacies and health care companies. UHI, on the other hand, provides an integrated IT network through which people can connect with different health providers using their ABHA credentials.
“The most important thing about UHI and ABDM is that medical care programs will be patient-centered,” Sahni said. “That’s what we want from our users. So, it was a natural combination for us.”
Sahni said that while using ABDM is a user choice, Eka Care encourages consumers to create their own health IDs as it helps them share their health history with the environment.
Eka Care last year also integrated the government’s CoWIN to allow users to find COVID vaccination centers and store their vaccination certificate on the platform.
Going with the government’s plan to digitize health data has helped Eka Care attract recent funding.
“We feel that in any market that is very important to invest in, time is of the essence,” Akshay Mehra, India Lead, Hummingbird Ventures, told TechCrunch. “In this case, with the help or through the government to push ABDM, we thought that the Eka group has the opportunity to do this.”
Mehra also pointed to Sahni’s previous experience working with the government – where he was part of the team working in India to implement the Aarogya Setu program – as one of the reasons for choosing Hummingbird Ventures to invest.
“Outside the competition, we don’t want to name any players, but their initial patience is the most difficult,” he said.
A number of companies have recently embraced the government’s digitization policy and have begun providing solutions to UHI. This includes players such as DRiefcase, Docon and Bajaj Finserv Health.
Without naming his competitors, Sahni told TechCrunch that many players still see fitness as a journey. “We will be, at least, 50x more in terms of MAUs, DAUs, and the number of users using our platform,” he said.
The official said that Eka Care has both patients and doctors on its platform, bringing competition to the same healthcare system. “Partly because of our large technology business, we have been able to control the waves, which are CoWIN, ABDM, the best in the market,” said Sahni.
Eka Care claims to be India’s largest health record database, with 30 million health records and 1.6 million ABHAs.
In addition to supporting the government environment, the company offers Gmail integration to save medical records directly from emails. It also allows users to upload medical documents through WhatsApp or by clicking their photos. The Eka Care mobile app also includes a heart rate monitor that uses the smartphone’s camera to show the heart rate.
Eka Care app for Android
Maintaining health records on a digital platform often raises user security and privacy concerns. Eka Care claims to take care of the safety of its users by carrying several measures.
“We have very good people in our technical team. They have done a great job. Most of these guys have worked with me at Aarogya Setu and Goibibo,” said Sahni. And fortunately, all the training we had is now being put into Eka Care. “
The company also works with external agencies and has an internal and anonymous security team to ensure the safety of users, he said.
“There is an external agency that we hired. They try to break into our systems every month,” said Sahni. “They treat us as hackers like white hat hackers out there and try to warn us of what we’ve done.”
Eka Care also states that it does not rent or sell “information or data to any third party” and does not use or transfer its data “for marketing purposes, including remarketing, personalization, or interest-based marketing.”
Currently, Eka Care works with a subscription system to generate revenue. They sell subscriptions to doctors to allow them to communicate with their patients and keep their records electronically stored on the platform.
“Our goal is for the doctor to be able to write on the EMR in less than 30 seconds. He should always talk to the patient, understand him better and give him confidence,” said Tuli.
Eka Care is planning to expand its revenue stream and explore more revenue streams that it offers. A portion of the money received in this new phase should be used mainly for trying to make money.
“If consumers don’t want to pay, then maybe the insurance companies are willing to pay because they are taking insurance. So, there are many options,” Sahni said.
Eka Care is also planning to expand its workforce, which currently has about 100 people, by hiring more engineers and speeding up the ranks of doctors. It has its own sales force in 14 cities, including two towns and metros, going to top doctors. However, there are plans to expand the reach to new cities.
With the new funding, Eka Care has raised a total of $19.8 million – including $4.8 million prior to this round. The actual valuation of the company after the new investment has not been disclosed. However, Tuli said it will be close to “three million dollars”.
“In Vikalp and Deepak, we are supporting a unique team with the expertise and experience to build and grow digital platforms,” said Ashish Dave, CEO, Mirae Asset Venture Investments (India), in a statement.
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