Arpit KothariCEO and Co-founder of Medd Published On: Saturday, October 31, 2015 Views 5149

"Take big swings, don’t bet more than you are prepared to lose and don’t be so afraid to fail."

There is a saying that a perfect founder is one who is fully committed, has the ability to lead a team, demonstrates insight into consumer behavior, and can communicate his vision to others. Arpit has all of these and that makes him the perfect founder. An alumnus of prestigious IIT Bombay, he already has shown his ability to lead from the front when it comes to entreprneurship. According to his peer, he is a fantastic orator and has a firm grip on all all levels of the business.

He can effortlessly switch between explaining his vision of efficiently providing cheap healthcare to the masses and explaining how the various unholy doctor-lab nexus’ work in villages. He is both, a true visionary and a hands-on professional. His latest startup, Medd, is a multiple channel (web, phone, mobile) marketplace, which enables India’s 800 million+ mobile/ internet users to buy high quality, affordable healthcare services near them.

Please provide a brief overview of your product/ service.

Medd is your personal diagnostic app currently available on Play Store. You can book pathology (blood and urine tests – CBC, Lipid Profile, Thyroid), radiology tests (sonography, X-Ray, CT Scan, MRI) and health check-ups from the best of labs and hospitals around you at a 15-50% discount. Our biggest differentiator is that we tie up with only the best of labs and hospitals – preferably NABL accredited, national chains or the best accredited labs in an area.

There is an option of both going to the lab hospital and getting yourself tested and for select tests and select labs getting the sample home collected and report delivered to your via email, app and courier.

What inspired you to build the above product/ service?

I hate corruption and inefficiency in a market. My parents are both doctors and I have background in healthcare (research and running an NGO). Many doctors take significant kickbacks from labs to refer patients to them, thereby increasing the cost of the test, deteriorating quality and at times writing un-necessary investigations. We started Medd to change this – it is not just a start-up but in more ways than one a social revolution.

What is your life mantra?

Take big swings, don’t bet more than you are prepared to lose and don’t be so afraid to fail.

What was the most challenging part of your journey till now?

The major challenge always is to get people who believe in the cause and are passionate about breaking the status quo – be it investors, employees, partner labs or even initial costumers.

How did you overcome those challenges?

It’s continuous process and there are battles won and lost. With experience we win more frequently now than before.

Share some details about the investments that you have been able to fetch for the business till now.

We have raised 150,000 USD from group of angels in October 2015. Before that we had raised a small undisclosed round from Ajeet Khurana, ex-CEO of SINE (IIT Bombay) fin May 2015, before starting the company.

How do you protect yourself from the problem of Brain Drain?

We hire people who are passionate about the cause. Those who are willing to go the extra mile to make it successful and we only care of them. So anyone else who finds themselves is free to go and we are happy if they do.

Which online tools/ services/ apps do you use the most and would like to recommend as well?

We use slack, asana, github a lot as an organization. LinkedIn is great to network and slide share has some really useful stuff on it.

Share any one habit which you think makes you more productive.

Sleeping in the office really increases productivity. Also, showers!

Share any one habit which you wish to change in yourself.

I consciously make efforts to improve so every unwanted habit is work in progress.

Answer in less than 50 words

One tip to success:

Persevere and think win win.

One mistake you believe every individual must avoid:

Thinking short term.

One most important lesson that you have learnt till now: