Practo raises $55 million in Series D round led by Tencent

With a fresh fund infusion of $55 million, med-tech provider Practo is planning to launch its software in local languages, get into the health insurance technology segment and expand into international markets.

The health-tech platform, which can be used by patients, diagnostic chains, hospitals and other healthcare providers for booking appointments and ordering medicines, has raised $55 million in Series D funding.

The round was led by Chinese technology major Tencent, which had also invested in the last round of $90 million, raised in August 2015.

Also, with this funding, three new investors — ru-Net from Russia, RSI Fund (owned by Recruit Holdings) from Japan and Thrive Capital from New York — have joined Practo.

Existing investors such as Sequoia Capital, Matrix Partners, CapitalG (formerly Google Capital), Altimeter Capital and Sofina also participated, company officials said.

With the latest round, Practo has raised a total of $179 million. It has still not turned profitable.

Talking to BusinessLine , Shashank ND, founder and CEO, Practo, said the fresh round of funding will help the company not only globalise its business, but also mine deeper in the Indian healthcare market.

“The awareness (on technology) in Indian market is very low, and in my estimate only 30 per cent of the population is aware that one can use technology to search for the treatment of their choice,” he said.

Shashank claims Practo manages 45 million doctor appointments every year.

The start-up also has a software that can be used by hospitals, clinics and diagnostic centres.

The initial success in the Indian market has fuelled its expansion plans.

In the past couple of years, Practo has been selling its technology to consumers in Philippines, Indonesia and Brazil. Around 20 per cent of its revenues comes from international markets.

In India, Narayana Health, Manipal Hospital and Cloudnine Hospital use Practo’s technology.

The new fund-raise will help the company to put more efforts into regional languages and use technology such as data analytics and machine-learning to connect users to hospitals in a more effective manner.

“As per our data, 41 per cent of customers come back to us once they have used our service, and we want to improve this rate,” Shashank said.

While Shashank does not rule out an IPO in the future, he says right now he is focussed on laying the bricks as healthcare ventures typically takes longer investment cycles to bear meaningful returns.

Healthcare investments have been on the rise in India, due to an increasing middle class and an ability to afford treatments.

At present, the market is estimated to be $100 billion, and is expected to grow to $280 billion by 2020, according to industry watchers.

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