Practo makes yet another acquisition

Buys Bengaluru-based Qikwell, its 4th such buy in 5 months

Practo, the platform connecting doctors and patients online, has made its fourth acquisition in five months.

It has acquired Qikwell, a Bengaluru-based start-up that does online appointments at hospitals and clinics. Practo declined to reveal the value of the cash and stock deal.

This acquisition helps Practo to consolidate its presence, by bringing more hospitals to its platform. It will now be managing about 40 million appointments across the world in a year. The deal was in the works since August, when Practo raised $90 million (Rs 574 crore) in Series-C funding.

"One challenge we were constantly dealing with was to integrate enterprises on to the Practo platform?on how to build value from the supply perspective. With Qikwell coming in, we are marrying the good demand we have with the top supply they are bringing in," said Shashank N D, founder and chief executive officer of Practo.

Qikwell says its solution helps customers get instant and assured bookings, plus real-time updates on delays or schedule changes. It has a hyper-local working model and will help Practo take its solutions to the country's interiors.

Practo has two solutions, Practo Ray, a software as a service (SaaS) platform that helps doctors to track and manage their appointments, and Practo.com, a marketplace for doctors that helps patients to search and book doctors? appointments. Practo has about 200,000 listed doctors on its platform.

Qikwell was started in 2011 by Krishna Prasad Chitrapura and Raghavendra Prasad T S. The company has grown to about 100 employees, with about 250 hospitals in 19 cities in its kitty. These include Manipal, Fortis, Cloudnine and Narayana Hrudayalaya. The company had secured $3 million from Saif Partners in November 2014 and Rs 1.2 crore in angel funding prior to that.

Both the co-founders will join Practo's leadership team and the combined entity will have 2,100 employees. "Though, right now, we will work as two different companies, we're working out ways for the integration to happen soon," said Chitrapura.

After its Series-C funding, Practo has been on aggressive expansion, with two acquisitions in two weeks. Less than a fortnight earlier, it had acquired Insta Health in a cash plus stock deal of $12 mn (Rs 80 crore). In April, Practo acquired fitness technology start-up FitHo; in July, technology design firm Genii.

One of the earliest entrants in the health care technology start-up space, it has been on a steady growth track since inception. It has raised $125 mn from Sequioa India, Matrix Partners India, Chinese online major Tencent, Belgian investment firm Sofina, Google Capital, Sequoia Capital Global Equities and Russian billionaire Yuri Milner. It is valued at $500 mn (Rs 3,250 crore).

It is present in 35 Indian cities and four countries and aims to scale up to 100 Indian cities and 10 countries across Southeast Asia, Latin America, West Asia and Eastern Europe. It recently launched services in Indonesia.