Mr Vipin is an individual who naturally follows Steve Jobs’ advice to driven people – ‘Stay Hungry, Stay Foolish’. And this is clearly reflected in his prolific career and now in his startup. A product of IIT Kanpur, Vipin started his career as a software engineer at Financial Technologies and quickly moved up in his to become a business consultant at PwC, and later as manager at Ernst & Young. #HealthcareLeader

But he didn’t stop until he did something entirely on his own, which is also helpful for the community. Thus, his startup Care24 was born. Launched in 2014, Care24 is an end-to-end home care service platform that connects different types of care-givers with patients. Vipin Pathak’s motivation to pursue his startup dream in the area of home care was not just his management degree or the rich experience that he earned from multinational knowledge houses such as PwC and EY. It was rather an emotional thought that he and many of his professional friends in the metros shared among each other about their old parents living in small towns who often struggle to travel to far-away places to access better healthcare.

Care 24- a revolution in the home healthcare segment

Care24 is one of the leading home healthcare company and envisions to become the biggest platform for all health services at home. Strongly built on technology and heavily invested in quality and training processes, the platform makes home-healthcare reliable, accessible and affordable for one and all. Their services are currently available in Mumbai and NCR region but they aim to expand the services in 5 more cities soon.  They offer patient services to multiple acute and chronic conditions cases of Post-Hospitalization, Stroke, Cardiac, Neuro, Ortho, Elderly bedridden, Dementia, Cancer etc. The core services offered are Medical Nursing, Physiotherapy, Attendants, ICU & Step down at Home. 

Starting as a personal need to get better care for their own parents, the team of founders decided to start reliable medical services at home in Mumbai and expand to other cities. The need for a nurse for simple blood pressure check or injections is difficult for children who either have to take off from work to visit hospitals or rely on local agencies. The local agencies have no reliability or quality check on services. Care24 started solving this basic need of a qualified medical professional who could provide standard services at home. Research has proven that patients can recover faster (20-30%) due to higher comfort at home and reduce hospital readmission by 27%. Background verification, medical and soft skill training and a very strong technical foundation has helped us deliver quality care at home. They have been able to significantly increase care providers income with more work and higher salaries. 

The challenges and roadblocks

From the outset, Mr Vipin knew there is a need for home healthcare, but the challenging part was to find?  service providers that meet customer needs and requirements. He is trying to overcome the challenge through their own dedicated training, medical team and customer service.

Also, the home care segment is highly fragmented in India unlike the US, Japan and others where the government or insurance coverage has made it is an organized and regulated industry. With increasing nuclear families and the growing elderly population in metros, there is a huge gap between the demand and available solutions. Care 24 is determined to bring quality and standardization in this sector. It now serves 1200 patients every day. Today, they have over 2000 active medical caregivers and the company has helped over 50,000 families recuperate in the comfort of their homes. 

Healthcare is about long term investments and consistent efforts. Their continuous effort in working with customer’s requirements, creating new service lines and empowering supply financially and technologically has helped them to become the trusted brand in Home care. With the addition of new cities, disease specific offerings and more affordable products and services across different verticals, their long term goal is to serve 50,000 patients/day on the platform for all of their healthcare needs.

A brand which symbolizes trust

The quality of delivered services has made Care24 the trusted brand for home healthcare both for the customers and caregivers. The team take pride in the fact that more than 70% of their caregivers are hired through a referral program showing high levels of trust placed in them by their caregivers. Similarly, 50% of their customer comes from a referral from families that have been served in past. The biggest challenge that a customer faces today is the lack of reliable care partner when they need the most. They ensure guaranteed service and faster resolution using technology and trained staff. Through technology and supervision, every patient service and recovery is monitored from the timely start, feedback, recovery, query resolution from the consumer, patients and caregivers. They have achieved this trust by investing in upskilling the caregiver and through effective use of technology. Customer and caregiver have a mobile application to keep track of the services. Every caregiver also gets a bank account and this has brought financial inclusion to more than 5000 providers who were left out of the digital economy. The inhouse technology makes the unit economics profitable and #Care24 is the only home care company in India that will be profitable soon. The processes and systems developed are poised to take 10 more cities without adding a lot of overheads and hence providing affordable care to more families. The company had raised $4 million in its Series A round led by venture capital firm SAIF Partners, and $350,000 from India Quotient in 2016.

As an emerging service industry, the home healthcare segment is quickly picking up steam in India. Care24, which is one of India’s pioneering venture capital-backed startups in this space, could significantly contribute to the expansion of this sector,  and provide the hospital-based healthcare services to patients without having to move them from the comfort of their homes.
 
*This story is published by VOH Team*