myCOL, a start-up that offers personalised assistance during hospitalisation, aims to garner Rs 18-20 crore in revenues by March 2017 as it expands its operations across major metros and international markets like South East Asia and Middle East.
Founded in 2014 by former Indian School of Business (ISB) professor Mudit Kapoor and his student Vaibhav Singh, the myCOL app assigns a personal assistant, who helps the user from hospitalisation till discharge with documentation and insurance paperwork for free.
"While there are apps to help patients discover doctors, there are none to help people with the process of hospitalisation.
"In our research, we found that the documentation hassles often spoils the experience of the patient and their caretakers, who end up blaming the hospital for lack of quality service," Singh told PTI.
MyCOL app assigns a personal assistant to take care of the
documentation process, so that the patient or their caretaker does not go through any hassles, thereby improving the hospital's customer rating as well, he added.
"We have already partnered hospital chains like Fortis, Max, Apollo and Medicity, giving us access to about 4,500 beds. By March 2017, we are confident of garnering Rs 18-20 crore in revenues," he said.
The company currently has 30 assistants and plans to aggressively hire to take the total number to over 1,000 to meet the demand, Singh said.
He added that though the in-patient care is an over USD 100 billion opportunity in India, it remains largely untapped.
Explaining the business model, Singh said the app is free for the end-user.
"The hospital pays us a fee because of two benefits - better customer experience and enhanced management of facilities. We are also looking at other models like selling insurance and partnering medicine delivery players," he added.
Singh said the company is looking at expanding to other Indian cities like Bengaluru, Chennai and Hyderabad by January and Mumbai, Kolkata and Pune by April next year.
"We are also exploring expansion to international markets like in South East Asia, Middle East and Africa. These markets are similar to India and we feel our model will work well there," Singh said.
He added that the company is in discussions to raise USD 3-5 million in the next 2-3 months to fund expansion plans.
