Since the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic there has been a surge in the number of healthcare-focused startups. There also has been an increasing interest from VCs – healthcare startups improved their position from fifth in 2021 to fourth in 2022 and 2023 in terms of fundraising, according to data compiled by Fintrackr.
Hexahealth, a Gurugram-based startup that digitizes in-patient care, was also among the firms to benefit from the funding boom phase between 2021 and 2022. Since then, the company has shifted its focus on churning revenue rather than looking for more venture capital money to sustain.
Entrackr spoke to Hexahealth co-founder and CEO Ankur Gigras to understand how the company plans to maintain and expand revenue streams, business model, competition landscape, and future plans, among other topics.
Founded in 2021, Hexahealth works for hospitalisation and in-patient department care. It provides consultation, affordable surgeon, and post-care discharging eliminating hectic insurance and admission paperworks.
Gigras explains, “If a patient is prescribed for gallstone surgery or any other specific surgery, then platform provides services ranging from a ‘Hexa buddy’, care coordinator or BMS or BBS doctor, to OPD consultation.”
“We suggest a person with high insurance to go to Fortis or Max or one without high insurance then we suggest to go to a mid-tier hospital and the platform remains in contact with patients after discharge. We also provide diagnostic, medicine, physiotherapy and other services,” he added.
The startup earns revenue through charging platform fees from hospitals. It has tied up with hospital chains like Fortis, Artemis, CK Birla, and Apollo, among others.
The company boasts of having a network of more than 250 hospitals on its platform across Delhi, Mumbai and Bengaluru. It also aims to reach other parts of the country, like Hyderabad, Chennai, and Kolkata. As of now, it claims to have facilitated more than 10,000 surgeries and gets around over 1,000 queries from patients per day.
“The average price of each surgery varies across the country based on specific medical, patient or hospital factors, including the extent and the severity of the disease, the type of surgery, equipment and implant used during the surgery, post-surgery care and recovery, and type of the hospital, respectively,” said Gigras.
In India, Credihealth is one of the players in this space while Transparent Surgery in the USA and So Young in China are its global peers.
On the future fundraising plan, Gigras said, “Our burn is not high as our model is capital efficient and whatever we raised has been keeping us till now but we might go for fund raising in the next 3 to 6 months depending on how the market behaves as well. We are basically after marketing operationally positive.”
Founded by Gigras, Vikas Chauhan and Dr Aman Priya Khanna, HexaHealth scooped up $4.5 million in a seed round from the likes of Omidyar Network, Chiratae Ventures and 3one4 Capital in September 2021. Nearly a year later, the company raised another $7 million in its pre-Series A round from the same investors, according to its filings with RoC.
Hexahealth operated only for a few months in 2021 and recorded Rs 1.21 crore in revenue from operations in fiscal year FY22. The company claims to be growing at around 10% month-on-month, and is expected to close FY23 with Rs 30-40 crore in revenue. It is also targeting to cross Rs 50-60 crore revenue in FY24.
