PractoConnecting Patients & Doctors Published On: Monday, February 16, 2015 Views 4890

“Necessity Is The Mother Of All Inventions.” Someone has very rightly said that the most successful businesses are created out of personal pain points. When we face a problem and we are not able to find a solution to it, in desperation we Create One!

That is exactly what this young boy – Shashank ND studying B.Tech in IT from the National Institute of Technology in Karnataka did! He went through a difficult situation in his life wherein he felt nothing but helpless and to make sure no one else has to go through such a situation, he with the help of his friend Abhinav Lal created the ultimate solution.

He Created Practo!!!

It all began in the year 2008, when Shashank’s father had to go through a knee replacement surgery. He was getting together his father’s medical records to take a second opinion of an American Physician about the operation that his father was advised. But to his unfortunate luck, he was unable to access enough information about the doctor, to make an informed decision before putting his father’s life in the doctor’s hands.

This incident left a huge impact in his head, so with the help of his friend / classmate Abhinav, the duo set up Practo Technologies Pvt. Ltd. in their college hostel dorm room in the year 2008.

Practo, a product of Naabo medical solutions, was nothing but online practice management software that helped doctors, clinics, etc. to manage their practice from any and everywhere. It helped to provide better services to their patients. It also automatically reminded patients about their appointments, doctors to store and manage their patient records, photos related to treatments, accounting and billing. In the most simplified terms; it brought doctors and patients together on the same platform so that patients know where to go when they need to find the best doctor, and doctors can manage their patients better.

This worked in their favor and soon in July 2009, they got selected for the Start-Up Acceleration Program initiated by Morpheus Venture Partners. This was a big boost to their confidence and with complete training and mentorship from the accelerator program; they expanded to their second and third offices in Chennai & Mumbai in October & November 2009 respectively.

Their pace, strategy & concept were perfect and with time success was bound to come. Their only focus at that time was to spread the awareness amongst the doctors and the patients.

In the year 2011, after setting their base well & getting decent business from the first two cities they with a team strength of just 9 people then expanded their reach to Hyderabad, Delhi & Pune as well. They knew that the world was now moving to mobiles and it was very important for them to be on it too, so by the end of the year Practo launched their first ever Practo Ray Android App.

The year 2012 was the golden year for them; they managed to achieve a lot all year round. They began the year with the launch of their Unique IVR Service- Practo Hello which helped the doctors to be connected to patients followed by a fund raiser of USD 4 Million in July, form Sequoia Capital. The whole intention of raising these funds was to improve their product and make sure their consumers (doctors & patients) are satisfied by every bit. And so they did!

To increase their range and to make it more user-friendly they launched their website called Practo.com with almost similar features, followed by a ‘Unique Appointment Booking System’ that allowed patients to book instantly confirmed appointments with doctors. And finally they ended the year by launching a Practo Ray App for iPhone users.

At the same time their growth was equally commendable, by now they had reached to become a 120-employee organization which catered to approximately 8000 doctors, the cloud-based service managed approximately 10,000 appointments a day and the same cloud-based service managed the records of nearly three million patients. – reported on livemint

If 2012 was a golden year for them then 2013 was diamond! It was time for them to go global and with this thought in mind they launched their first ever office in Singapore. But they didn’t stop with this jump, as a matter of fact in march; Practo presented themselves to the European market at the IDS Conference in Cologne, Germany as an initiative to soon mark their presence there too!

And if that wasn’t enough then let’s see a glimpse of the present year, 2014! Practo is in preparations of raising over USD 20 million (around Rs.120 crores) in its second round of funding from its previous investor Sequoia Capital and one other investor (not confirmed yet) with intentions to expand into new markets, launch new services and to double its workforce.

If we look at their current statistics; Practo currently lists almost 95,000 doctors on its platform who are spread across 100 cities with close to 5 lakh unique visitors a month, with nearly 1,500 unique appointments a day. They also have expectations to touch 20 lakh visitors a month, with about 5,000 appointments made in a day and INR 20 crore in revenue by the end of the year.

Looking at these spectacular statistics and future plans, we see a company here to stay long.