With nothing to lose, two Indian college kids solve a medical problem, get Sequoia backing, wow Singapore

I grew up in a small but relatively prosperous, academically oriented south Indian town, where everybody knew everybody else plus their ancestors. That gave me a rather unusual perk. I had not one but several highly qualified family doctors to fall back on whenever something went wrong.

But when I moved to the metropolis of Chennai for higher studies, the prospect of falling ill became scary. Doctors were strangers and a couple of bad experiences at hospitals in Chennai, and later Bangalore, erased whatever traces of faith I had towards unknown doctors in big cities. Even for an allergy, I traveled to the other end of Bangalore from where I stayed, just so I could go to a diagnostician recommended by my close friend.

So when I heard of Practo, a search engine that claims it can help you find the most suitable doctors in your locality, I was more than curious.

A query for a dentist in Jayamahal, Bangalore, got me an astounding 4,184 listings. About 15 of them on the first two pages of the search results were in my neighborhood, and the rest were from other places in Bangalore. I could look up their profiles, book an appointment with any of them in real time, and use the embedded Google Maps to find the clinic.

Dentists are probably easier to find. I keyed in “Pediatric Pulmonologist” and found two.

I clicked on the first name, and it told me the doctor’s educational qualifications, specializations, experience, details of the clinic, and timings. There was a reason why he was ranked first.

Practo has a proprietary algorithm running in the backend, which ranks doctors listed on the site based on relevance – location and specialty, feedback from patients, and appointment experience. The number of appointments booked with a doctor in the last 30 days, doctor’s availability, and patient’s recommendations are key parameters to rank doctors.

In the list my query threw up, some of the doctors had badges for being most revisited, most booked, and recommended. Patients looking for doctors can pick the most suitable ones based on these and other criteria.

“This search engine is more reliable than going to a doctor based on a friend’s recommendation as it takes so many factors into consideration. And the process is entirely transparent as well,” Ashish S Pingle, who manages marketing for Practo, tells Tech in Asia. He was a practicing dentist in Mumbai, who used Practo’s patient management software for doctors, and was impressed enough to seek out the startup founders at a conference and get on board full-time.

With nothing to lose

Cut to 2008. Practo’s story starts when Shashank ND (who spells out only his first name) and Abhinav Lal were studying computer engineering at the National Institute of Technology (NIT), Karnataka.

There was no proverbial startup bug that bit them. Shashank’s father needed a knee surgery, and he wanted a reliable second opinion. He scouted far and wide, shortlisted the best doctors, and zeroed in on a particular specialist in the US. Then came the next hurdle. The doctor wanted to see all the medical records before giving his opinion. But there was no easy, secure, and quick way to get those across.

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