2024-12-12 13:48:47 :
As competition in medical technology intensifies and the need for reliable care options continues to grow, the platform is moving beyond its roots in physician discovery to address the complex decisions patients face during life-changing treatments.
After a year of piloting, Practo Assured has partnered with 300 hospitals in eight cities and aims to expand to 1,000 hospitals in 20 cities by the end of this fiscal. Promising transparency and trust, the service evaluates healthcare facilities on over 100 parameters ranging from infrastructure to patient feedback.
Practo Assured specializes in critical and elective treatments across cardiac and neurosurgery, cancer care and other specialties.
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“This product is designed to make it easier for patients to find and choose healthcare providers we believe they can trust, and Practo has done its due diligence to make this promise to our patients,” said Siddhartha Nihalani, co-founder of Practo ” Mint.
The proprietary Hospital Excellence Rating is the foundation of the service, using data insights, patient reviews and expert reviews to evaluate facilities. Only those with a score of 4+ out of 5 will be included in the network. Practo also dispatches biomedical engineers to conduct on-site audits to ensure the quality of its partner hospitals.
A Practo survey shows that doctor experience and surgical success rate are the main factors influencing patient choice.
“Try to compare all the options in a city with hundreds of specialties, super specialties [establishments]…Patients come to us seeking this answer,” Nihalani said.
Practo’s expansion into critical care puts it into competition with established medical technology platforms and enterprise hospital networks that offer similar services.
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For example, digital health platform MediBuddy operates a surgical care vertical that, according to its website, provides free online consultations for more than 50 surgical conditions, helps patients find top cashless hospitals, and provides second opinions sponsored by medical experts . MediBuddy claims to have a customer base of 30 million.
By comparison, Practo serves more than 160 million patients annually, the company said.
Build on strengths
Practo rose to prominence as a physician discovery platform and gained further traction during the pandemic with its remote consultation services.
“During Covid-19, remote consultations became an important part of how consumers started coming to Practo… We are now working to go deeper and solve problems for patients,” Nihalani said.
While the services Practo currently offers are mainly focused on minor diagnoses, the 15 specialties covered by Practo Assured account for more than 50% of its traffic. Nihalani sees this as a key growth area, adding: “We believe this category will continue to grow as consumers discover more and more value.”
However, the company declined to reveal how much its individual products contributed to overall revenue.
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Practo has been profitable in the past two quarters and reported 90% year-over-year Ebitda growth for fiscal 2024. “We’ve been completely profitable over the last few quarters…all our products, all our plans have that in mind,” Nihalani said.
Practo Assured is central to the company’s growth strategy as it deepens its presence in India’s fragmented healthcare market. However, the service’s success will depend on expanding partnerships and responding to the competitive landscape.
expansion plan
Practo Assured currently operates in major cities such as Delhi-NCR, Mumbai and Bengaluru and plans to expand to tier-2 cities by the end of this fiscal.
Nihalani highlighted the potential of mid-sized specialty hospitals, which handle about 60% of critical care but often lack branding. “A lot of these hospitals are great specialty care sites … and we’ve been able to find value and showcase the hospitals that are doing well there,” he said.
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Practo aims to bridge these hospital gaps by providing visibility and trust through its platform.
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