By Jyoti Pande Lavakare
We’ve all been there. If not for ourselves, for a loved one. Sitting at a doctor’s clinic, finding out we need a specialist for further treatment or a reliable radiology or diagnostic test lab for further tests — and asking who we should go to. It can be challenging for the doctor to recommend other doctors off-the-cuff — unless he has studied or worked with them or they are colleagues in the same hospital chain or are linked to each other through an alumnus or other network. Most doctors work on their own home-grown networks — beginning with their immediate environment, if they are attached to a hospital.
Now imagine a specialised online network that isn’t confined to one hospital. Or one chain of hospitals. Or even one city. A professional network that is pan-Indian — maybe even global — so that regardless of where the specialist is located, the patient can find him, through his own doctor’s links. Well, if a local startup has its way, this could become a reality.
Connecting the Dots
Three young Indian Institute of Technology graduates — Nipun Goyal, Pawan Gupta and Mudit Vijayvergiya — have co-founded a startup that focuses on networking healthcare professionals. Called Curofy, the tangible form of which is a website and app that instantly connects the medical fraternity, the personalised platform enables secure communication — from sharing contact information, to collaborating on patient cases, or getting early information on new drugs and research. “With Curofy, doctors can easily find other doctors, call them with a single tap, and connect to collaborate on patient cases,” says the Curofy website. Doctors can also “search for colleagues, old classmates on the basis of filters and connect with them instantly” as well as “share case information and specifics with relevant doctors,” and “stay aware of the latest happenings”.
To understand Curofy better, imagine a cross between a LinkedIn on mobile smartphones and a WhatsApp with a directory and calling feature — only for doctors — where you can communicate one-to-one or one-to-many.
In such a situation, the biggest worry for doctors would be privacy — and Team Curofy is confident that they can attend to those challenges.
“We’ve spent a lot of time understanding the behaviour of doctors and have designed the user interface accordingly. We’re highly sensitive to data security and encrypt all the patient data shared by doctors on the network to protect privacy of content,” says Pawan Gupta, a co-founder of Curofy. “We are also building technology to auto-hide face and identification marks of patients to enable easier sharing of images.”
Personal Touch
Curofy launched its beta version on Android this week, and will come out with an iOS version by end-March.
“Doctors form a community, which has historically lagged in communicating via online media as most of it has been web based. Also, being a reserved community, it has specific requirements. An exclusive medical networking app perfectly fills this gap,” says Nipun Goyal, another co-founder.
It wasn’t clear whether, down the road, other stakeholders like medical representatives will be allowed to register, but if so, doctors will have the option of connecting or not connecting with them. “Doctors can personalise what they want to receive,” says Goyal.
Since the time they got funded, in a dramatic, reality television-type formatted live event called TiE the Knot at TiEcon 2014, a conference organised by The Indus Entrepreneurs in October, the team has hired 17 people — and is still hiring.
“Our rate of growth has been strong. We have about 2,000 doctors on our platform from 10 cities in and around Delhi. Small town physicians are finding it a very useful tool to connect with a super-specialist — like a paediatric oncologist — with just a click. We are associating with various medical entities and aim to have 50,000 doctors in the next six months,” says Mudit Vijayvergiya, a co-founder of Curofy.
“The market is large enough,” the team had said in an answer to a potential investor’s question at the Tie the Knot event. At that time, three investors — Rajul Garg of Sunstone Business School, Vikram Gupta of IvyCap Venture Advisors and Hemant Kohli, who recently sold his academic books e-tailing brands, including Bookadda, in an all-cash deal — had agreed to buy 15% of Curofy for Rs 75 lakh, negotiating the founders down from 10%.
However, sources say investors as well as the financial numbers have changed since October and although the valuation remains roughly the same, the amount has gone up to $150,000 (around Rs 92.6 lakh) for 18% of equity and investors Dinesh Aggarwal (of IndiaMart) and Alok Mittal have come in instead of Kohli and Gupta.
The Curofy website also lists healthcare company Cygnus Medicare, along with Medanta and Saket City Hospital as partners. (Garg is also an investor in Cygnus.) The founders declined to comment on specific financial details, citing nondisclosure agreements.
“It’s a strong team and this is a good space,” says Garg, an investor and mentor for Team Curofy. “I already see doctors using WhatsApp groups in hospitals. This [Curofy] is a tool that can add more value. It will be more secure, focussed on doctors’ interests and needs. It is definitely needed,” said Garg. However, the investors and founders sound more upbeat about this venture than the doctors, the potential users, who were more circumspect in their response.
Content Counts
“Most of us [doctors] have our own fixed referral patterns,” says Dr Vidya Gupta, senior consultant neonatologist at Apollo Hospital. “We need to have faith in the referred doctor, need to feel comfortable with him.”
She said she would be more interested in the medical-specific content Curofy could potentially provide to her. “That would save me time. That would be useful,” she said, referring to searching, filtering, aggregating and streaming of the latest medical news and information or research in her field.
Recognizing this, Curofy has set up a team that will help the company deepen its content aggregation in the field of medical research, breaking medical news, drug discovery and related medical content. “Our content team searches the web for specialised and authentic content and aggregates and customises it for specific areas. For example, a cardiac surgeon will only get content related to his speciality,” says Goyal.
Apart from privacy issues, they have created a verification process for doctors so that the app remains spam-free.“We are currently doing phone verifications, but plan to deepen the process to physical verification, too. Until the verification process isn’t complete, we give only limited access to users [doctors],” adds Goyal.
The writer is an independent columnist and writer
We’ve all been there. If not for ourselves, for a loved one. Sitting at a doctor’s clinic, finding out we need a specialist for further treatment or a reliable radiology or diagnostic test lab for further tests — and asking who we should go to. It can be challenging for the doctor to recommend other doctors off-the-cuff — unless he has studied or worked with them or they are colleagues in the same hospital chain or are linked to each other through an alumnus or other network. Most doctors work on their own home-grown networks — beginning with their immediate environment, if they are attached to a hospital.
Now imagine a specialised online network that isn’t confined to one hospital. Or one chain of hospitals. Or even one city. A professional network that is pan-Indian — maybe even global — so that regardless of where the specialist is located, the patient can find him, through his own doctor’s links. Well, if a local startup has its way, this could become a reality.
Connecting the Dots
Three young Indian Institute of Technology graduates — Nipun Goyal, Pawan Gupta and Mudit Vijayvergiya — have co-founded a startup that focuses on networking healthcare professionals. Called Curofy, the tangible form of which is a website and app that instantly connects the medical fraternity, the personalised platform enables secure communication — from sharing contact information, to collaborating on patient cases, or getting early information on new drugs and research. “With Curofy, doctors can easily find other doctors, call them with a single tap, and connect to collaborate on patient cases,” says the Curofy website. Doctors can also “search for colleagues, old classmates on the basis of filters and connect with them instantly” as well as “share case information and specifics with relevant doctors,” and “stay aware of the latest happenings”.
To understand Curofy better, imagine a cross between a LinkedIn on mobile smartphones and a WhatsApp with a directory and calling feature — only for doctors — where you can communicate one-to-one or one-to-many.
In such a situation, the biggest worry for doctors would be privacy — and Team Curofy is confident that they can attend to those challenges.
“We’ve spent a lot of time understanding the behaviour of doctors and have designed the user interface accordingly. We’re highly sensitive to data security and encrypt all the patient data shared by doctors on the network to protect privacy of content,” says Pawan Gupta, a co-founder of Curofy. “We are also building technology to auto-hide face and identification marks of patients to enable easier sharing of images.”
Personal Touch
Curofy launched its beta version on Android this week, and will come out with an iOS version by end-March.
“Doctors form a community, which has historically lagged in communicating via online media as most of it has been web based. Also, being a reserved community, it has specific requirements. An exclusive medical networking app perfectly fills this gap,” says Nipun Goyal, another co-founder.
It wasn’t clear whether, down the road, other stakeholders like medical representatives will be allowed to register, but if so, doctors will have the option of connecting or not connecting with them. “Doctors can personalise what they want to receive,” says Goyal.
Since the time they got funded, in a dramatic, reality television-type formatted live event called TiE the Knot at TiEcon 2014, a conference organised by The Indus Entrepreneurs in October, the team has hired 17 people — and is still hiring.
“Our rate of growth has been strong. We have about 2,000 doctors on our platform from 10 cities in and around Delhi. Small town physicians are finding it a very useful tool to connect with a super-specialist — like a paediatric oncologist — with just a click. We are associating with various medical entities and aim to have 50,000 doctors in the next six months,” says Mudit Vijayvergiya, a co-founder of Curofy.
“The market is large enough,” the team had said in an answer to a potential investor’s question at the Tie the Knot event. At that time, three investors — Rajul Garg of Sunstone Business School, Vikram Gupta of IvyCap Venture Advisors and Hemant Kohli, who recently sold his academic books e-tailing brands, including Bookadda, in an all-cash deal — had agreed to buy 15% of Curofy for Rs 75 lakh, negotiating the founders down from 10%.
However, sources say investors as well as the financial numbers have changed since October and although the valuation remains roughly the same, the amount has gone up to $150,000 (around Rs 92.6 lakh) for 18% of equity and investors Dinesh Aggarwal (of IndiaMart) and Alok Mittal have come in instead of Kohli and Gupta.
The Curofy website also lists healthcare company Cygnus Medicare, along with Medanta and Saket City Hospital as partners. (Garg is also an investor in Cygnus.) The founders declined to comment on specific financial details, citing nondisclosure agreements.
“It’s a strong team and this is a good space,” says Garg, an investor and mentor for Team Curofy. “I already see doctors using WhatsApp groups in hospitals. This [Curofy] is a tool that can add more value. It will be more secure, focussed on doctors’ interests and needs. It is definitely needed,” said Garg. However, the investors and founders sound more upbeat about this venture than the doctors, the potential users, who were more circumspect in their response.
Content Counts
“Most of us [doctors] have our own fixed referral patterns,” says Dr Vidya Gupta, senior consultant neonatologist at Apollo Hospital. “We need to have faith in the referred doctor, need to feel comfortable with him.”
She said she would be more interested in the medical-specific content Curofy could potentially provide to her. “That would save me time. That would be useful,” she said, referring to searching, filtering, aggregating and streaming of the latest medical news and information or research in her field.
Recognizing this, Curofy has set up a team that will help the company deepen its content aggregation in the field of medical research, breaking medical news, drug discovery and related medical content. “Our content team searches the web for specialised and authentic content and aggregates and customises it for specific areas. For example, a cardiac surgeon will only get content related to his speciality,” says Goyal.
Apart from privacy issues, they have created a verification process for doctors so that the app remains spam-free.“We are currently doing phone verifications, but plan to deepen the process to physical verification, too. Until the verification process isn’t complete, we give only limited access to users [doctors],” adds Goyal.
The writer is an independent columnist and writer
