Curelink, a health-tech platform that seamlessly connects doctors to patients via Whatsapp, announced today that it has raised USD 3.5 Mn in Seed funding led by Elevation Capital and Venture Highway. The round also saw participation from Digital Sparrow Capital and prominent angels such as Vijay Shekhar Sharma (Paytm), Ankush Sachdeva and Farid Ahsan (Sharechat), Gaurav Agarwal, Prashant Tandon (Tata 1mg), Rajat K. Dhawan (McKinsey), Rohit M.A. (Cloudnine), Ritesh Malik (Innov8) and Harsh Mahajan (Mahajan Imaging) among others.
Founded by Aman Singla and Divyansh Jain in 2021, Curelink is on a mission to reinvent chronic care management for millions of Indians in Tier 2 cities and beyond. 90% of out-of-clinic interactions in the healthcare industry happen on Whatsapp. Curelink builds on this behaviour and allows doctors to seamlessly communicate and engage with their patients automatically- all within WhatsApp.
India has a doctor-patient ratio of 1:1456 and doctors spend an average of 2 minutes per consult. Doctors in India are therefore burdened with a large number of patients and given the paucity of time, they have to prioritise giving tactical, immediate advice (such as medicine dosage) over coaching their patients to manage their conditions better. Curelink provides an efficient and feature-rich alternative to WhatsApp for managing their patients automatically. Through virtual care teams, Curelink helps doctors fill this gap by providing condition-specific advice on diet plans, exercise regimens and more detailed handling of patient queries for thyroid issues, pregnancy, diabetes etc.
Aman Singla and Divyansh Jain are recent graduates from IIT-Roorkee. They were motivated by the desire to build a company that would create a tangible social impact. Both of them quit lucrative jobs at MNCs to start Curelink as a way to make healthcare convenient.
Aman Singla “Today, 200 million people have non-curable diseases such as hypertension, PCOS and diabetes. Many of these people, especially those who are older or do not spend too much time on the internet are unlikely to download a separate app to manage their health issues. They are however comfortable using WhatsApp to communicate with familiar medical professionals. Curelink converts vague advice, such as ‘change your diet’ to actionable advice thereby enabling time-strapped doctors to give personalised, accurate and in-depth care to such patients, thus improving the overall quality of healthcare available to a vast number of people.”
Divyansh Jain added “Our vision is to make healthcare convenient, both for patients as well as doctors. The tragedy of the Indian chronic care ecosystem is the lack of actionable advice that patients can refer to for managing their diseases. We enable doctors to provide support to their patients in a manner that is effortless yet exhaustive.”
Curelink is currently active in Gurgaon and Bhopal and plans to expand further in Delhi NCR, and experiment with the next tier of cities like Lucknow and Jaipur by the end of 2022. The company kicked off their services in Dec 2021 by partnering with gynaecologists in Gurugram. Currently, approx. 70% of the gynaecologists in Gurugram are using the platform to offer holistic care to their patients under their own brand. Approx. half of these patients require PCOS or pregnancy care – both conditions where personalised, empathetic and timely answering of queries is critical.
The Curelink team went from idea to execution in 5 months and has grown from a 4 member team in Sep 2021 to 40 members today. The platform has seen tremendous traction since going live in Dec 2021. They started with onboarding 3 active caregivers catering to just under 500 patients and currently have approx. 300 caregivers catering to more than 10,000 patients. The number of messages on the platform has seen a MoM growth of about 150%, enabling a large number of patients to receive a higher quality of healthcare.
The fresh funds will be used to ramp up hiring across functions such as product, growth and wellness professionals. They will also be used for geographical expansion and diversification of services across different medical specialisations such as dermatology, paediatrics and psychiatry.
Vasudha Wadhera, Vice President at Elevation Capital said “We’re excited to partner with Divyansh and Aman on their mission of delivering comprehensive, outcome driven-care to patients. Doctors are the focal point of healthcare delivery in India, and Curelink’s model of being a trusted aide to doctors resonated immediately with us. The team is hyper-focused on their stakeholders, which is amply evident in the design choices they have made: being WhatsApp-first for patients, enabling private and contextual consultations for doctors, and being squarely focused on outcomes. We believe Curelink is going to be the partner of choice for Indian doctors, and we’re privileged to be part of this journey.”
Samir Sood, Founding Partner at Venture Highway said “India needs telehealth 2.0. Chronic health conditions require ongoing supervision & management, but due to limited bandwidth, doctors are often unable to stay updated on their patients’ progress. Curelink’s holistic approach to healthcare is empowering doctors to take a proactive approach and provide service equivalent to any digital therapeutic company. Their Whatsapp-based solution combines personal attention and AI to re-imagine healthcare delivery and create better health outcomes. We resonated immediately with Divyansh and Aman’s passion, vision and product-first thinking and are excited to partner with the team as they build the preferred platform for Indian doctors.”
