1) Traditionally doctors and patients have not been very IT savvy; how did you acquire the initial set of users (during 2009-10)?

I think this is a little unfair. It is not that doctors are averse to adopting technology; I think it is technology that has hitherto failed to solve their problems in any meaningful way. When we launched Practo Ray in 2009, there was virtually no solution available that would help them manage their practice in an efficient way. Doctors who were brave enough to use software had to put up with clunky, buggy software that was made in the proverbial dark ages. They had to manage their IT too, with hardware, software updates, data backups – the works. And the brave ones who put up with all this got to use pretty crappy software that was badly designed and was not very helpful. This obviously put them off.

It was this insight that led to us to build Practo Ray as a cloud based SAAS offering as that allowed the doctor to focus on running his practice while we took care of all the IT complexity. And of course, Ray was beautifully designed from the ground up to enable them to embrace digital healthcare. We are seeing great adoption with over 40,000 doctors already using Practo Ray to manage 10-12M patients and generating over 30M healthcare records a year!

2) How did Practo Ray (SAAS solution for Doctors / Healthcare Providers) build up a business case for Practo.com: Consumer facing doctor discovery portal? As an organisation how do you balance the two?

Actually, we never look at products from a business case perspective. I firmly believe that first you must solve a meaningful problem. The monetisation can always be figured out. Our mission is to help mankind live healthier, longer lives and we want to build products that help us achieve that. Practo.com was a natural fit here as healthier living starts with making more informed healthcare decisions. Currently, we offer consumers the ability to find the best doctors, read their details including degrees, years of experience etc. as well as read patient feedback before selecting a doctor and booking an instant appointment with him.

Practo launched the diagnostic segment and at present, it has onboarded nearly 5,000 labs across eight cities. The new feature will allow users to check the quality of the lab by reading through the accreditation information, see real high-quality photographs and filter results by proximity, home-pickup facility as well as price. Consumers can also filter to see which labs offer a digital report. In the near future, Practo will enable consumers to get their reports on the Practo app automatically instead of having to collect it from the center or get it via email.

Practo is currently the largest doctor search engine in Asia and this launch is a part of Practo’s strategy to become the single health window for consumers across curative, preventive, fitness and wellness segments. We will also be launching the patient health account that will aggregate all your healthcare data into a secure place accessible only to the patient. Going forward, having both Practo Ray and Practo.com enables us to build a set of products that no one else can offer. For example, a consumer could go to a doctor using Practo Ray. When the doctor creates a digital prescription, we can send the consumer automated alerts at the time he has to take his medication. Another service we could offer is that when you get a diagnostic test done, the report from the lab automatically flows into your health account and you could share it with your doctor with one click and get his opinion on the phone. These are all game-changing services that we could offer since we have Practo Ray and Practo.com. We believe the interplay of the two is where the magic will happen to truly transform digital health as we know it.

3) After initial success in India, you launched Practo in Singapore and then many other countries. What have been your key learnings in doing overseas launches and building traction there?

Launching in Singapore was one of the best decisions we made. It really helped us benchmark our product at a global level and helped us understand the demands that some of the more advanced markets could place on our systems. In many ways this helped us improve the product for everyone. The other really surprising thing we learnt was just how badly underserved these markets are in terms of doctor discovery as well as a great homegrown clinic management solution. So, we are excited about going to many more markets this year across South East Asia, Middle East, Africa and Latin America.

4) What were the main technology and operational challenges faced by Practo and how did you overcome them?

When disrupting an industry, the challenges are many. But therein lies the fun! When we started building Practo Ray, the biggest challenge (apart from gathering insights about what would be useful to doctors) was how to build a hyper responsive product in a market where internet penetration was low and speeds not as good as what we see in many other markets. We literally counted (and still do) our performance in milliseconds to see how responsive and fast our product is and how quickly it can provide the relevant information to the user. When building Practo.com, the biggest challenge was how do you get reliable information about doctors and clinics.

We want information to be 100% reliable and accurate so we decided to build our own healthcare map of the world. We have an on-ground team that literally goes street by street, city by city, to capture doctor and clinic information which is then put through a rigorous verification system to ensure we only have genuine doctors with absolutely accurate details. Scaling this to traverse all of India and of course globally is complex but we believe the effort is worth it because we want our customers to be able to trust and rely on the information we provide. Third challenge we face is building the right infrastructure to scale our product. We’re growing at an extremely fast pace, in fact we’re still growing 50-100% a quarter. We currently list over 2,00,000 healthcare practitioners across 35 cities in 3 countries including Singapore and Philippines. So obviously, the infrastructure, servers etc. have to keep up while at the same time maintaining the highest levels of security and encryption. So we keep a dedicated team that ensures our service is always available and is hyper responsive.

5) You have been willing to try new ideas like Practo Tab. Please share more about it.

Practo Tab brings the clinic experience to the 21st century. It helps doctors and patients interact seamlessly by allowing patients to easily register/check-in when they arrive at the clinic – it links that information to the patient records already available with the clinic and provides a comprehensive view to the doctor before the patient even walks into his chamber. Further, it also allows the patient to provide feedback on his experience right there before he even leaves the clinic. This creates a healthy feedback loop in the system that helps improve healthcare delivery overall.

Practo Tab also has a secondary role as it helps doctors view records in offline mode as well so their work doesn’t need to stop even if their internet does!

6) How would healthcare providers engage with patients in future? What further role can technology play in this interaction?

Healthcare is one of the last industries to be completely transformed by technology. In an era where I can book movie tickets without getting out of bed, I have to jump through hoops to find myself a doctor. In the age of the internet, I have billions of spam emails but getting my health records digitally is a task worthy of Hercules. All this is going to change as technology permeates every aspect of healthcare and makes it digital.

I imagine a world where all your health records are digital, where test reports and fitness stats flow into this account automatically. You can consult with a doctor, any doctor, anywhere in the world by sharing your records with one click. A world where you live healthier, and longer because technology helps you make better healthcare decisions. That is the world we’re trying to build at Practo.

7) What advice would you like to give others who are starting to either build an online business ground up or taking their brick and mortar businesses online?

Over the last 7 years that I have been building Practo, there are a few things I’ve learned. First, always optimise for the vision. Articulate the vision continuously and ensure each step you take is towards this. Vision helps align the entire team behind a common purpose.

Second, usage is king. Focus more on the usage of the product than how much the users are paying for it. Usage is the single most important metric to determine product value. Pay close attention to what your customers tell you. Product insights will come through interpretation of customer feedback.

Third, solve hard problems. At the start, try picking the tough problems to solve. These are usually the ones no one else would have tried solving. Ask yourself, ‘Why hasn’t anyone done this before?’ Logically, due to technology advancements, problems that were harder to solve so far, would become easier now.

Fourth, hire A players only. That should be one of your top priorities. Only get the best of the best. They can give you exponential growth. Ensure they buy into the vision of the company and focus equally hard on retaining them. One of the keys to retention is to build a great culture from day one. It will remain through the life of the company.

Fifth, think global. One of the best things we did was launch in Singapore. The market there really stress-tested our product and helped us improve by leaps and bounds which was instrumental in us getting such a high market share so quickly.

Sixth, get advisors & consultants. There are many industry experts out there. Take advantage of their expertise, it’s faster. Don’t try to do everything on your own.

Seventh, growth is the only oxygen for a startup. Continuously focus on the growth %. Take risks and do everything possible to grow fast.

Eighth, build great products. Never ever ship a subpar product. Customers have an innate sense to detect carelessness. They will penalise you by moving away.

Ninth, choose the right investors. Don’t optimise for valuations, optimise for building a great product or service that people love. Investors will see value in that. Optimise more for who is investing in you than how much. Investors can be great partners in helping you grow so they must share your medium and long term vision and their goals should be aligned to that.

Tenth, focus. You have limited resources and time. Don’t spend too much time attending conferences, networking events etc. Focus all energy on ensuring there is progress. In our earlier days, we used the mantra of ‘Code & Sell’, everything else is useless. And finally, have fun. You will spend long hours doing this so make sure you love doing it and are excited by it. There is no room for half-heartedness.

8) List of Funding Received and Acquisitions so far

$4M Series A (Sequoia Capital, July 2012)
$30M Series B (Sequoia Capital, Matrix Partners, February 2015)
$90M Series C (Tencent, Sofina, Sequoia India, Google Capital, Altimeter Capital, Matrix Partners, Sequoia Capital Global Equities and Yuri Milner, August 2015)
Acquisitions: Fitho and Genii.

Note: This interview was taken before Practo acquired Qikwell.

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