Venture Capital and Angel Investments in 2018: Top Healthcare Start-ups to watch out for Quality healthcare will become a reality for the masses provided the investments are channelized properly

Today's healthcare (and services) sector is not the same it used to be a decade ago wherein quality and affordable healthcare services eluded a vast majority in terms of reachability. Now, if you are witnessing super-speciality healthcare units even in tier-2 and tier-3 cities of India, and are able to obtain healthcare services from the comfort of your home, you owe it to the innovators behind these critical ideas and more so to the venture capitalists and investors who backed these innovators.

"Venture Capital and Private Capital plays a big role with respect to redefining our healthcare system," states Anoop Pollavaram who is the Operating Partner at Bengaluru-based Aspada Investments, an early-stage Venture Capital firm.

"With the creation of robust models, aspects such as prediction of deviations in personal healthcare become possible. This would also lead to effective management of lifestyle disorders," adds Anoop.

Echoing Anoop's view, Shailesh V Singh - Executive Director at Seedfund Ventures believes that quality healthcare will become a reality for the masses if the investments are channelized properly.

With investors, both venture capitalists as well as angel investors, focussing their investments towards development of robust models to solve healthcare issues plaguing Indian citizens, start-ups that are offering solutions to a lot of problems have mushroomed throughout the country.

This trend only seems to be on an upward spiral in 2018. Therefore, in sync with the above, check below some result-oriented start-ups that have been doing the rounds as far as both potentially grabbing investors' attention and redefining healthcare experiences are concerned. These are also seen as potential goldmines as far as venture capital (and angel investment) funding is concerned:

Be Well Hospitals

Be Well Hospitals is a multispecialty hospital chain that operates out of areas having limited or no access to quality healthcare. Be Well hospital chain is located in Tamil Nadu with a focus on the tier-2 and tier-3 regions of the state.

At this instant, it is worth noting that Aspada Investments led by Anoop has been an active investor in Be Well Hospitals. The healthcare provider is said to have raised in excess of $20 million up to this point in the latest round of funding through Aspada.

Be Well Hospitals was established in 2011 in Pondicherry and is headed by Dr C.J Vetrivel and C Lakshmanan. As of now, seven network hospitals have been identified and integrated with Be Well. Specialities offered by the hospital are multispecialty care, preventive care, and emergency care. It also works on a secondary plus healthcare model that is aimed at integrating primary and tertiary care hospitals.

Portea Medical

Bengaluru-based Portea Medical was founded by Zachary Jones and Karan Aneja, and acquired by entrepreneurs Ganesh Krishnan and Meera Ganesh in 2013. Portea offers home-based healthcare services with avspecial focus on post-operative and primary care.

Portea also collaborates with doctors/medical professionals enabling them offer in-patient secondary and tertiary care as well. Portea operates on the tagline "heal at home". The provider's USP is its home visits by medical professionals who claim to conduct these at nominal costs thereby potentially eliminating the cumbersome 'queue' system that is generally involved with conventional doctor/hospital visits.

Portea recently underwent Series C funding type in 2017 where it raised capital worth $25 million through Sabre Partners and MEMG CDC. Overall, venture capital funding raised by the healthcare service provider amounts to more than $50 million since 2013.

PharmEasy

Mumbai-based PharmEasy was set-up in 2015 in a bid to deliver medicines PAN-India for people ordering online. PharmEasy also delivers health & wellness products to customers throughout the country.

This early-stage startup aggregates pharmacies, and also connects patients with diagnostic centres in select cities of India. Medicines, ordered through PharmEasy are also competitively priced.

Despite being a relatively new entrant, PharmEasy has raised upwards of $20 million in funding from Besemmer Venture Partners, Aarin Capital, and Orios Venture Partners. It also underwent a Series B round of funding in 2017.

Fedo

Started in 2014 by Prasanth Madavana and Arun Mallavarapu who possess a combined experience of more than two decades in management as well as Healthcare Analytics, Fedo harnesses Artificial Intelligence to inform customers about the likelihood of falling prey to diseases such as diabetes, hypertension, and cardiac illnesses.

Fedo's algorithm works by assigning healthcare scores which determine the likelihood of customers falling prey to lifestyle disorders. This analysis is made on the basis of answers to questions that customers should answer. Fedo's initial focus is to deploy this model in the B2B sector through collaborations with insurance companies that can profile the general wellbeing of their customers.

Prasanth informed Entrepreneur India that Fedo would take-off in a big way very shortly; possibly as early as over the next couple of weeks. Going forward, this early stage startup also plans to work with state governments in developing predictive healthcare models.

Fedo has so far raised nearly $100,000 through angel investments and friends. Fedo also holds the honour of winning the KBITS Scholarship from the government of Karnataka.

HealthifyMe

HealthifyMe is a mobile application that enables users to achieve their weight-loss goals. The app also doubles up as a personal fitness coach and includes inputs from expert trainers.

HealthifyMe was started in 2012 by Tushar Vashisht, Mathew Cherian, and Sachin Shenoy in Bangalore. The app has downloads numbering in excess of a million across Android and iOS operating platforms.

HealthifyMe raised $12 million in a Series B round of funding with investments led by Siestema Asia in February 2018. The startup has so far raised $19 million with aims to further its Artificial Intelligence (AI) - backed models.