With lifestyle diseases exploding in India, Zoctr raises seed funding to provide home healthcare

Lifestyle diseases are exploding in India. The World Health Organization says the country will incur an accumulated loss of US$236 billion this year on account of unhealthy lifestyles and faulty diets, which lead to chronic ailments like heart disease, stroke, cancer, diabetes, and respiratory infection.

These have to be mostly managed at home, with occasional visits to hospital. Not only the patients, but their families have to agonize over finding homecare equipment and a doctor for regular check-ups.

The market to serve this segment of healthcare was estimated to be US$215 billion in 2013 and expected to grow 8 percent per year until 2020.

So when Nidhi Saxena’s contract research firm Karmic Lifesciences got acquired by a multinational company Cliantha Research in January this year, she jumped into the home healthcare industry. And within months, her startup Zoctr has now raised seed funding from a group of angels including Rajeev Agrawal, partner at Ambit Pragma Ventures.

Zoctr allows users to book an appointment with a doctor or diagnostic centre, call for an ambulance, get personal care attendants, digitise treatment procedures, buy drugs, and rent medical equipment for home care. The firm also trains doctors to provide supplementary treatment to patients suffering from neurology diseases, cancer, or cardiovascular disease.

“With the advent of superior medical technology, including home monitoring devices and point of care diagnostics, good home care is no longer a distant dream,” says the Zoctr founder.

The company claims to have served 10,000 patients by onboarding 100 doctors. It has tied up with vendors for other services, and makes an average margin of 30 percent on each transaction.

Zoctr is currently available only in Mumbai and aims to expand into other cities with this round of funding. “We will expand to major metros including Pune, Delhi, Hyderabad, and Bangalore this year,” says Saxena.

It has built cloud-based features like remote monitoring of health and an electronic health record system. The firm is also investing in developing features like a routing algorithm to find the best suited doctor in the vicinity, building a risk profile engine, and making a proprietary diagnostic system.

Home healthcare is an emerging space in India. Another funded startup is Portea Medical, which has raised US$8 million from Accel Partners and Ventureast, and has a presence in Bangalore, Delhi, Chennai, and Mumbai.