Visit Health proves that multiple innovations in service offerings can attract marquee investors and customers

In this digital world, consumers are immensely spoilt for choice. Several digital products target users with a slew of services, but what finally impresses upon the user is the tangible feel of the long-lasting wholesome service element that is gained. When I say wholesome here, I mean the portal providing a one-stop destination service within a mobile phone that fulfils most needs through few gentle taps on the screen.

With Indians growing more tech-savvy by the day, there is a conscious inclination to exploit digitally-driven solutions that can provide good healthcare. While the generation wants to be in the pink of the health, digital access to quality healthcare services must also be less cumbersome for them.

Making the healthcare service more digital and less cumbersome are four engineers from BITS Pilani – Anurag Prasad, Shashvat Tripathi, Vaibhav Singh and Chetan Anand. These four young innovators have conceived and launched a digital healthcare ecosystem called Visit Health Pvt Ltd. 

Visit Health is a Delhi-based artificial intelligence-based health tech app platform that aims to solve the problems faced by Indians in accessing quality healthcare viz. inconvenience, confusion and high costs. As my title says multiple innovations in one product is the mantra for retaining as well as garnering users and winning marquee investors’ trust, these young engineers support that statement by indicating that Visit Health has close to half a million users.

Marquee investors and clients - the high potential selling model that impressed them

As a conventional health tech provider, Visit Health started off in 2016 providing on-the-call doctor services digitally bridging the practitioners and the patients. As the initial months went by, Visit Health accomplished in closing the gap between the provider and consumer in the healthcare space. Using cutting edge Artificial Intelligence-based technology Visit Health facilitated timely, accurate and cost-effective primary healthcare – preventive as well as curative.

But this conventional model is not what appeals big-name investors to get the money and to move the business forward? Between 2016 and 2018, the founders managed to get marquee investors and clients under their belt. “This was not easily accomplished! We integrated several niche first-of-the-kind services that no other healthtech platform provided!” averred Anurag Prasad, co-Founder, Visit Health, as he began the interaction with Voice&Data.

“Several innovative services integrated with the conventional offerings got Visit Health the backing of some of the leading corporates, angels and VCs like MapmyIndia, Biz Stone (co-Founder, Twitter), Richard Socher (Chief Scientist, Salesforce), Murali Krishna (Director, Hetero Drugs Ltd), Karthee Madasamy (Founder & Managing Partner, MFV Partners) & Kunal Bahl & Rohit Bansal (Co-Founders, Snapdeal) among few others. The company boasts of an impressive list of leading corporates as its customers like IBM India, Apollo Munich Health Insurance, HDFC, Times of India, Wipro, Mediassist Healthcare Private Limited, Avery Dennison, Yes Bank, Tata Metaliks, Kohler India, JCB India etc,” conveyed Prasad.

Prasad says that in 11-12 months, Visit Health has grown 10x times counting on half a million users and 30 corporate clients to whom they have partnered with in serving the healthcare needs of their employees.

So, what are those innovations that got Visit Health to set them apart from other similar healthtech providers? Well on one side the platform helps users connect with a practitioner over video/call at the push of a button; allows for a doctor/therapist/coach to visit in 30 minutes, anytime, anywhere; allows you to book a face-to-face appointment with the doctor of your preference; and allows access to its vast network of doctors, pathlabs, pharmacies and leading hospitals – i.e. 1200+ hospitals, 35,000 doctors across 70+ cities.

On the other side, Visit Health offers several innovative features like earning rewards in the form of FITcoins, which are financial incentives for the consumers. For maintaining good health, Visit Health allows incentivizing the user’s own health in the form of payback rewards. The coins earned can be redeemed at major e-commerce portals like BookMyshow, Amazon, Shoppers Stop, Starbucks and many more.

Another prominent feature of Visit Health that ignited the investors’ interest is the integration of the OPD Insurance with the consumer-facing apps/portals. Visit Health is integrated into the consumer-facing apps/portals of Apollo Munich Health Insurance and Religare. This was the one service that set the company apart from all the other healthtech providers. Prasad attributes the success of the company’s 10x spurt in growth because of partnering with two of the largest health insurers in the country.

“A deeper relationship with insurers helps Visit Health to scale very quickly without burning cash compared to the competition which is focused on direct to consumer. The insurance integration was an immediate success model that worked well for us in getting a large user base. The on-boarding of consumers from large corporate clients and FITcoins was a pioneering effort that targeted the next 100 million users,” shares Prasad.

In its endeavour to expand its reach and go beyond defined urban boundaries, Visit Health also had another best-selling feature. The integration with Reliance JioHealth Hub paid off in big time. Visit Health scooped a large user base with this integration. The integration immediately gave access to many thousand users from the Tier 2 and 3 cities, i.e. users who owned not only smartphones but also feature phones. Through Jio Hub, Anurag Prasad and his team made it possible for remote users, at the touch of a button, to access quality healthcare services.

Another worthy integration for Visit Health is its association with enabling cashless payment possibilities with the aid of PhonePe. This too has significantly helped drive consumer traffic towards Visit Health. Rolling telemedicine-based doctor services combined with OPD insurance, FIT coins as incentives, and cashless payments, therefore, gave a wholesome experience the consumer wanted. While all these integrated services helped boost the customer experience, an increased sense of trust was built within Visit Health’s investors compelling them to fund an amount close to USD 1.4 million.

Recently, the founders have got into talks with the investors to raise Series-A funding of around USD 10 million. Answering to my question on how those funds are intended to be deployed, Prasad says, “We are looking to aggressively enhance delivery by expanding the network of empanelled doctors, hospitals, pharmacies and pathological labs and reach by appointing new distributors network, partnering with top digital platforms.”

The team at Visit Health guided by its four founders is now working hard with an aim to capture a leadership position in India’s burgeoning $2.2 billion primary healthcare market. The company wants to expand further its innovative insurance products and cashless payment systems to tier 2/3 cities.

“As we grow our user base, we will be investing heavily in AI to upgrade the Visit platform and continue to offer seamless and hassle-free user experience and speedy access to our various offerings. A concerted outreach to increase retail subscriber base is already underway. Visit Health is also increasing penetration into the institution market where it already has a strong presence. With 460 million Internet users in India, and counting, the future for healthtech platforms like Visit Health sure looks very bright!” concludes Prasad with an affirmation.