Technology plays a crucial role in the success of any business model impacting not just the product or service providers but all associated stakeholders including the beneficiaries of the business services. The healthcare sector is no exception to that. Increasing patient demands, lifestyle-related diseases, costs of providing healthcare and the volume of data involved in the healthcare sector leads to a greater need for innovating and the use of better and robust technology.
Data is at the helm of any preventive health care solution and there is a tremendous amount of health data that is being generated every second, but there is no means of structuring that data. This is where ekincare helps organizations in digitization and structuring the data, thus making it possible for them to create a preventive, predictive and highly personalized healthcare journey for their employees. This will in-turn nudge employees towards a healthier lifestyle resulting in overall savings in healthcare costs for the organization.
ekincare (Product of Aayuv Technologies Pvt. Ltd.) is an AI-powered integrated health benefits platform helping organizations monitor the health and wellness of the employees. The integrated platform provides access to a multitude of offline healthcare services such as 24*7 chat with doctor, health check-ups, purchase and delivery of medicines including fitness club sign ups and managing the schedules. In addition to this, the platform generates a personalized journey for each employee based on their health risk assessment and past medical records. The data generated provides valuable inputs for insurance companies and helps them with a proper risk assessment which results in reduced insurance premiums.
A great leadership and vision at the core
ekincare was found based out of personal experience by Kiran Kalakuntla, the current CEO of the company, who envisioned the need of many NRIs (Non-Resident Indians) who were not able to contribute towards the healthcare of their families back home. With a clear vision and experience of building and marketing 30+ technology products, Kiran raised a 120 members strong company. The executive members of the company also include Srikanth Samudrala – CTO who has 11+ years of experience in building large scale web and mobile applications for Barclays, HSBC, and Dr Noel Coutinho – SVP Business Development who has 15+ years of domain experience in healthcare and life insurance.
The core of ekincare’s early success was extensive testing of all their products with a sample group and taking feedback from the group and working on the products for continuous improvements.
ekincare’s vision is to create a preventive, predictive and highly personalized healthcare journey for individuals to help them adopt a healthier lifestyle and empower the corporates with data and technology to reduce the overall health risks.
Today, ekincare is admired and known for being the fastest-growing health benefits platform in India. Some of the top fortune 500 companies have trusted ekincare and use this platform. ekincare is today the Health Benefits partner for global giants like Unilever, Barclays, Optum Global, FedEx, and Disney.
Challenges in the market and overcoming them
ekincare is now in the 5th year of its successful journey and the major challenge has been to ensure that the product resonates the best with the beat of the problem statement. The company started as a B2C product but it didn’t take too long for the founders to understand that the best way to approach HealthTech in a country like India wasn’t necessarily the individual beneficiaries. An enterprise model was figured out real quick post the revelation. India, where Health becomes a priority only when there is a pressing discomfort; has a steep way to go before preventive healthcare takes the first foot. The company’s decision to enter the enterprise model and figure out solutions of
Health benefits for organizations is paying off and creating an impact.
Continuous Innovation and future
Innovation being at the core of the work that ekincare does, the company currently is pursuing certain ideas to enhance patient experience and benefits:
- Family doctor – A dedicated doctor to provide the best medical care for employees and their families wherein the employees can consult with their family doctor from the comfort of their home, send messages and schedule call consultations with the family doctor as per their convenience.
- Flexi Benefits – Pay less and get more benefits
- Digitization of Records – Real-time and secured health data
- Collaborations – Plan for partnerships with healthcare services, doctors, hospitals, onboard them onto ekincare app. Collaborate with Insurance Companies for risk assessment and better technical underwriting.
Achievements
ekincare is proud to have been recognized with several awards as listed below:
- Top 10 most innovative startups by NASSCOM
- Top 100 most innovative digital healthcare companies, 2016
- Aegis Graham Bell award – Innovative app for enterprise
- Best Healthcare portal – National quality of excellence awards
- Rising Startups – Yourstory
- Super Startups Asia – Top 30 startups
- Entrepreneur 35 under 35
ekincare has been growing 50% QoQ in terms of revenues. The company has a strong set of industry backers who are invested in life sciences, paired with a strong advisory team vested across technology, data, and insurance. Within 2 years, ekincare has demonstrated an exceptional growth in the number of clients and number of employees.
