Bengaluru: Thanks to intrepid entrepreneurs and angel investors willing to fund their dreams, the IT city is now also turning out to be a boomtown for healthcare start-ups.
“The startup environment has become conducive and now people are open to the idea of starting something new and are willing to give up their high-paying jobs,” said Balasubramanian Venkatachalam, co-founder BabyBerry, an app that was officially launched in November last year.
BabyBerry is an all-inclusive informed pregnancy and parenting platform for expecting parents and those with children up to 12 years of age. The platform offers tools and content that caters to the Indian parent. The app can vary based on the geolocation of the parent, thereby making it very effective for them.
“Since the launch, the app has been downloaded 100,000 times and the people are connecting to the experts, be it neonatologist, gynaecologist, pediatricians and posting various questions as well,” said Balasubramanian, who had earlier worked at various corporates houses.
“We left our jobs and decided to take the risk, which probably seven years ago would have been a difficult decision to make. A lot of people are taking this risk and funding is also easy to go by. Angel investors and seed investors in the market are willing to hear the idea which is making it easier for us,” he added.
In 2009, Practo, a city-based healthcare platform, has also a success story to share. “We get more than ten million searches worldwide and 40 million appointments in a month. Bengaluru is a great place for startups and the IT city has a high density of people with computer background, hence there is a lot of people skill available. There is a lot of innovation coming out and there is this belief in the ecosystem that these things are possible,” said Varun Dubey, AVP of Marketing Practo.
Another healthcare start-up Address Health recently won the prestigious ‘Stars in Global Health’ grant competition from Grand Challenges Canada (which includes a grant of Canadian $112,000) for piloting the concept of delivering comprehensive healthcare to children among the low-income, but tele-enabled, groups. Address Health founder and CEO Dr Anand said, “The future of the city with such growing number of healthcare startups is more informed service seekers. Better healthcare delivery at best price.”
