Doctor directory and clinic management system Lybrate has raised $10.2 million in a series A round of funding from Tiger Global Management, Ratan Tata and existing investor Nexus Venture Partners. The company will use the funds for product development, hiring and to scale its operations to other cities. The company had previously raised $1.23 million in funding from Nexus Venture Partners in August last year.
Lybrate was founded in 2013 by Saurabh Arora and Rahul Narang. The service is free for patients, who can identify doctors based on specialty and location. Search results provided to patients are sorted by the most recommended doctors. Each result displays the doctor’s specialty, address, experience, consultation fee, recommendations by verified users and a small clickable chart displaying the date and timings available for an appointment. Other than this, users can also ask a question on the platform (publicly), which is answered by the doctors.
Lybrate also provides doctors with a clinic management system. The system features a calendar specifically designed for doctors, a treatment ‘diary’ to capture prescription, billing, payment and scheduling information, reminder for appointment creation, modification, cancellation, daily appointments summary and payment reminders and a dashboard with clinic performance data.
The clinic management system lets doctors accept or reject appointments in real time, generate prescriptions to print them, add follow ups for patients and sends SMS/e-mail alerts when appointments are made on the website among other things. Sign up is free for all doctors which includes website listing and a ‘starter’ pack of its clinic management system.
App launch: In September, the company launched an app version of its services for Android. This included two heach care apps, Practice Management for doctors, and Find Best Doctors for patients. Since then, the company has also launched similar apps for the iOS platform.
Competition:
– Last week, online pharmacy marketplace 1mg (formerly HealthKartPlus) launched a doctor discovery and appointment booking Android app called Doctors by 1mg. The app lists around 15,000 doctors from Delhi, Gurgaon, Noida, Faridabad, and Ghaziabad, across 230 specialties and 10,000 clinics.
– In February, Practo raised $30 million in investment led by existing investor Sequoia Capital and with participation from Matrix Partners. The startup planned to use the funds to expand to 35 more cities in India over the next six months and for hiring.
– Doctor search & appointment booking platform Qikwell had raised Rs 18 crore in Series A funding from SAIF Partners in November last year. The platform had also secured Rs 1.2 crore in angel funding from a group of investors, including Amit Somani, Sunil Kalra and Alok Mittal.
– Last year, directory services company Justdial had revealed that it had developed a new vendor application targeted at doctors that will allow doctors to schedule appointments with their patients as well as save patient records on the cloud. Using this app, doctors would be able to save a patient’s basic information, patient symptoms, prescribed medications and family medical history among others. The company had also rolled out doctor appointments on its site last year as part of its transition to a services-focused transaction platform.
– In September last year, healthcare services company DocSuggest had expanded beyond doctor appointment service to a health and personal care search and appointments service called Ziffi. Post this rebranding, the company has also raised Rs 15 crore Series A investment from the recently formed Orios Venture Partners. DocSuggest had also raised an undisclosed amount from Google India MD Rajan Anandan and other existing investors in April 2013.
– Delhi-based healthcare venture HelpingDoc had raised Rs 10 crore funding from Singapore-based Senior Marketing Systems (SMS). The company had said then, it would aim to enroll over 20,000 doctors in the next two years.
– Healthcare startup eVaidya had raised Rs 3.5 crore from existing investors in February last year. eVaidya also offers some kind of management system for doctors which stores patient health records and offers remote consultation.
Also read:
– IPA’s letter to DCGI: Online pharmacies in contravention of the Pharmacy Act
Corrigendum: The article previously incorrectly named Vispi Daver and Sandeep Singhal as co-founders. This version represents the correct information.
