Former Paytm VP Danish Ahmed supported medical tourism startup Hospals has raised $1.5 million from Spiral Ventures and Venture Catalysts. The company said that the fresh funds will be used for growth and expansion. Currently it is managing over 200 patients per month.
Through its online platform, Hospals enables medical tourists visiting India to choose hospitals, book consultations, surgeries, and buy medicines and manage their various travel and accommodation requirements such as cabs, hotels, and flights among others.
Hospals also provides auxiliary services such as estimates of medical procedures, visa service, and translators to deliver a seamless experience to its customers in their preferred language. The company was incubated at Technology9labs, and has rapidly expanded across CIS countries, building on its strong reputation for transparency and its dedicated focus on ensuring high customer satisfaction.
“At VCats, we’ve been evaluating various start-ups in the medical tourism space, and we took our bet on Hospals because of the team it brings together. While Danish has proven experience on product & user experience, Obaid & Alok bring 15 years of leadership experience in the medical tourism space. We’re confident that within the next 12 months, Hospals will reach USD 20 million in revenues, making it the front-runner to emerge as Asia’s largest medical tourism company,” said Apoorv Ranjan Sharma, Co-founder & President – Venture Catalysts.
“Healthcare is poised to emerge as one of the most promising sectors in India and SE Asia over the next 10 years. While the demand is huge, there are still a lot of inefficiencies in this space. This is why Spiral Ventures has identified healthcare technology as one of the top focus areas in our investment strategy and we are looking to support local startups tackling the unorganized healthcare environment. Medical tourism is one of most important pieces of the Indian healthcare domain and the Hospals’ team has made significant headway here, by connecting doctors in the Middle East, Africa, former CIS countries, China and SE Asia to Indian surgeons and hospitals for their patients in their respective countries. With a multilingual, tailored mobile-technology based platform, Hospals has successfully created the solution which addresses the pain points in this ecosystem. Japanese corporates too, are extremely bullish for partnering with healthcare companies in India and Spiral Ventures can be the vital facilitator for building possible partnerships bringing immense value to Hospals,” said Yasuhiro Seo – Partner at Spiral Ventures.
The investment from VCats and Spiral Ventures will help Hospals to expand its presence within India, as well as to scale its operations in lucrative international medical tourism markets such as the Middle-East and Africa. The team has till date served over 6000 patients from 14 countries, and with Hospals unique, marketplace atform model, they are growing rapidly to take a significant market share in this space.
“Cross-border healthcare is a USD 100 billion market globally, and India, the fastest-growing country in this space, is expected to generate USD 9 billion in revenues by 2020. That’s a huge opportunity, but the market is still very unorganised & disconnected. At Hospals, we’re combining technology & operations to build a one-stop shop for international patients, connecting them to the best hospitals, providing long stay accommodations and other services, to ensure a great experience. This capital infusion will enable us to accelerate our expansion plans and ensure we’re able to deliver top quality experiences to all patients,” said Ahmed.
