Tencent-backed Practo takes a leaf out of WeChat’s playbook

Shashank ND, founder and CEO of Practo. Photo credit: Practo.

Shashank ND, founder and CEO of India’s leading healthcare startup, Practo, makes no bones about drawing inspiration from neighboring China.

“Tencent is truly an inspiration for any platform company coming up,” he tells Tech in Asia in a candid conversation. “Their WeChat platform has changed the way the country works.”

Tencent is truly an inspiration for any platform company coming up. Their WeChat platform has changed the way the country works.

It’s refreshing to hear acknowledgement of Chinese innovation, given its usual characterization as copying the West. Shashank goes on to explain how Practo is inspired by it.

“The ability of a platform to be multi-purposeful is very important, as WeChat has done by bringing communication, banking, commerce, and other things to its platform. Similarly, Practo wants to take care of all your health requirements.”

WeChat’s parent company Tencent is the largest investor in Practo, having led both its series C round of US$90 million in 2015 and its series D round of US$55 million earlier this year. That helps Practo’s drive to be a WeChat for healthcare, while at the same time helping the Chinese company get a deeper understanding on how its model works in markets outside China.

See: What Tencent, Google Capital, Yuri Milner bring to the operating table for Practo

All-in-one

Practo started out with a SaaS (software-as-a-service) product called Ray to help doctors and clinics with appointments, billing, and records. That was eight years ago, and selling such a product meant going out on the street. It led to launching the Practo portal to connect consumers with doctors.

Backing from Sequoia helped it to scale up and expand across the country before going global. Today it has a presence in 15 countries, including Singapore, Indonesia, and the Philippines in Southeast Asia, Saudi Arabia and the UAE in the Middle East, and Brazil in South America.

Photo credit: rmarmion / 123RF.

It was a couple of years ago that Practo began to pursue the idea of a one-stop shop. That was when Tencent came on board after leading a US$90 million series C funding, one of the biggest rounds for a healthcare startup anywhere in the world, and not just in India.

A series of acquisitions followed to rapidly expand Practo’s portfolio of products. It acquired Genii for software product development, Insta Health to deploy hospital information management systems, Qikwell for scheduling appointments, and Enlightiks for analytics. These expanded its suite of enterprise software, which began with Ray. At the same time, it added diagnostic labs and wellness centers as well as home delivery of medicines from drugstores on the consumer-facing side of its business.

Repositioning

Money, money, money