India likely to see a boost in Preventive Healthcare Startups post COVID-19

• With 1.3 hospital beds, 0.65 doctors, and 1.3 nurses per 1,000 citizens, India’s healthcare sector was certainly not ready to handle a COVID-19 outbreak.

• The pharmaceutical sector of India saw a growth of $50.65 million in 2020.
• Indian telemedicine startups including myUpchar, Practo, Tattvan, Lybrate and mFine experienced a 3x jump in new users.
• With a boost in customers, startups have created a room for employment opportunities in digital healthcare.
• By 2025, Indian health tech market is expected to contribute $21 billion to the healthcare market.

The 2020 pandemic has been successful in taking a dig at the healthcare system in India and giving a push for innovations. A structural shift from traditional health care to digital health care is seen after the spread of the COVID-19 virus. The age-old practice of preventive health care of Ayurveda is now brought into the limelight by many healthcare startups in India.

Out of 191 countries, India ranks 184th in terms of GDP expenditure on healthcare. A report by Economic Times states that, with 1.3 hospital beds, 0.65 doctors, and 1.3 nurses per 1,000 citizens, India’s healthcare sector was certainly not ready to handle such a crisis. This posed both as a challenge and opportunity for India’s healthcare startups to get on the frontline. With the efforts from all the sides, it took only 2 months for India to become the 2nd largest producer of PPE kits in the world. This is the time for Indian healthcare startups of telemedicine, preventive health care, online pharmacies, etc., to reboot and bridge the gap between digital and traditional healthcare systems of the country.

Unlike any other sector, during the COVID-19 pandemic, the pharmaceutical sector of India saw a growth of $50.65 million, which is $11.11 million more than in 2019. As per statistics of VCCEdge, 53% of seed investments in 2019 were in the healthcare sector making it a hotbed for investments in India. In regards to volume year-over-year increase, the healthcare system had a 50% hike in 2020 vs 2019; 14 deals worth $398 million and 21 deals worth $452 million were made in Q1 2019 and in Q1 2020 respectively.

In 2020, 57% of the total seed investments were done in the healthcare technology sector, as compared to venture capital, private equity and public equity. Some of the star startups like Curefit raised $111.5 million, Iora Health Inc. raised $126 million, and HealthCare Global Enterprise Ltd. raised $119.7 million in the market. As compared to 3 deals in health-tech in Q1 2020, there has been a 3x increase in Q2 2020 (9 deals till now).

Shift to preventive health care practices makes health-tech startups flourish

India has always been inclined to the traditional one-to-one way of consulting a doctor and treatment. With the new normal, people seem to have been understanding the need and importance of telemedicine.

During the increase in a number of Coronavirus cases in India, the healthcare industry has been able to make the most of digital technologies to provide affordable preventive health care for the first line of defence, with telemedicine in demand, contactless COVID-19 testing, remote monitoring and tracking of quarantined patients. This has established that India will be witnessing a significant advancement in the healthcare industry in the new normal, through telemedicine and online pharmacies.

Between January 2014 and March 2020, India’s health-tech startups secured a total funding of $2.3 billion and 459 deals; shortage of tech-based infrastructure and regulatory guidelines being the reason behind low funding. However, the global health crisis has certainly given an opportunity for domestic healthcare startups to flourish. The Government of India has released telemedicine guidelines during the lockdown and made health insurance mandatory for workers. More investment is expected in this sector with the release of regulatory guidelines of online pharmacies. This will help in creating more Indian startups in this sector making preventive health care accessible and better.

By 2025, Indian health-tech market is expected to contribute only 3.3% ($21 billion) of the total addressable healthcare market which is pegged to reach $638 billion. This explains that the room for growth is pretty high for health tech in India due to the massive spike, both from the demand and supply of medical supplies and consultancy during the pandemic.

Along with the global pandemic, the coronavirus has got with itself the awareness of a healthy lifestyle and preventive healthcare. The trend of joining fitness centres, practising a healthy lifestyle, and adopting fitness and wellness apps is increasing in urban areas. Primarily driven by fitness and wellness apps and other diagnostics, the preventive healthcare market in India is expected to reach $170 billion by 2025.

Now the health-conscious consumers are also leading to buy health insurances after seeing a rise in medical treatment costs. Compulsory employee health insurance law by the government and positive response from SMBs and MSMEs lead to mandatory health insurance adoption in India.

Increase in engagement in Health-tech Startups

Modern-day lifestyle has led to a lot of serious health conditions in Individuals. According to WHO, an individual’s lifestyle is correlated to the health and quality of life and can affect it by 60%. Malnutrition, unhealthy diet, smoking, alcohol consumption, drug abuse, stress and so on, are a part of the modern-day lifestyle and lead to many serious health conditions and diseases like blood pressure, diabetes, heart diseases, cancer, etc. From handshake to namaste, Coronavirus outbreak was a wake-up call for Indians to bring back the age-old practices of Ayurveda of Preventive health care. People are focusing more on practising a healthy lifestyle, using healthcare apps to keep a track of their health, and including supplements in their diet. This provides an opportunity for expansion and boosts the revenue of healthcare apps, supplementary food brands, etc.

During the lockdown period, access to diagnostic centres was restricted unless emergency; and this gave rise to online consultancy and treatment. Homegrown telemedicine startups including myUpchar, Practo, Tattvan, Lybrate and mFine experienced a 3x jump in new users.

After the outbreak of Coronavirus, the shift to online consultancy and awareness of healthy lifestyle has also led to employment generation in the field of digital health care. Practo, an Indian digital healthcare platform had to increase its doctor base by 50 % due to experiencing 4 times more patients in the past few months.

As told by the International Diabetes Federation (IDF), people with pre-existing medical conditions like diabetes appear to be more vulnerable to becoming severely ill with the Covid-19 virus. Thus, BeatO—an app for diabetic patients to monitor their blood-glucose levels—saw a 30-40% increase in engagement during the lockdown.

DocsApp has seen a 60% increase in consultations across various departments during the lockdown after acquiring Medibuddy. The funding in macro health tech is expected to be more in the upcoming times seeing the increase in awareness and usage by consumers.

The post-COVID-19 India would witness a recalibration of health care towards digital health care, telemedicine and preventive health care The COVID-19 outbreak was an eye-opening experience for India and it’ll give an opportunity for the startups to develop better products for treatments. With the acceptance of telemedicine and online pharmacies amongst the citizens, we will experience affordable doctor-patient consultation and quicker accessibility to medical supplies. The structural shift in the healthcare system will revolutionise healthcare delivery in India.

By: Disha Acharya

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