This startup bets video will become the way we consult doctors, raises funding

Photo credit: Ilmicrofono Oggiono.

There’s one cardiologist for every quarter of a million people in India, compared to one cardiologist for every 10,000 people in the US. It’s roughly the same with dermatologists, ophthalmologists, radiologists – think of any medical specialist, and you will find huge shortages in India, and it gets even more acute in the small towns and rural areas. There’s no quick fix to solve the supply problem for a population of 1.3 billion. But the existing specialists could be seeing a lot more people.

This is where medtech plays a part. For example, remote diagnosis suddenly increases access to specialists, who in turn become far more productive compared to fixing up face-to-face consultations.

Bangalore-based JustDoc, for instance, is a web portal enabling patients to have video consultations with specialists from their homes using mobile phones or PCs. Earlier this month, it also launched a mobile app. So far, 100 doctors from premier hospitals like Fortis, Apollo, Manipal, and AIIMS have signed up.

Today, JustDoc announced an undisclosed amount of seed funding from TracxnLabs, Singapore Angel Network, and individual investors, including Infosys co-founder T. V. Mohandas Pai, InMobi co-founder Mohit Saxena, and TaxiForSure co-founder Raghunandan G. The funding will help JustDoc widen its reach by signing up more doctors from the country’s top hospitals.

100 consultations a day

Photo credit: Pixabay.

JustDoc offers access to five specializations currently – general medicine, psychology, gynaecology, dermatology, and pediatrics. These are believed to be the areas where over two-thirds of problems can be addressed in video consultations. JustDoc claims to facilitate 100 video consultations a day.

“Service quality in hospitals is not very exciting today – so there is a good opportunity to disrupt it and move it to a digital medium,” points out Abhishek Goyal, co-founder of Tracxn. “Along with primary consultation, a large fraction of second opinion and casual health queries are significantly underserved.”

JustDoc co-founders Jugal Anchalia and Abhishek Kumar are both graduates of the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Kharagpur. They both worked earlier at Akosha, a platform for handling customer complaints. They quit their jobs and founded JustDoc five months ago.

“This can change the way we provide healthcare in non-metro cities. Even in metros, hospitals are overburdened with patients, and video consultation can make the whole process more efficient. I feel passionate about the space and look forward to contributing to JustDoc’s success,” says InMobi co-founder Mohit Saxena, one of the investors.

See: This man uses tech to bring doctors to India’s remotest villages