Tap on an app for a ‘PA’ in hospital

Need to go in for a surgery and don’t know where to go and what to do? No worries — just tap on an app and it will assign you a personal assistant who will help you till your discharge from hospital and after that, all for free.

Former Indian School of Business (ISB), Hyderabad, professor Mudit Kapoor and his student Vaibhav Singh have founded a start-up called myCOL (My Circle of Life), whose new app provides detailed information about over 1,300 hospitals in Delhi-NCR through a map-based search.

The duo decided on the start-up after doing primary and secondary research in Delhi hospitals to identify the most common issues faced by patients and caretakers, Singh told BusinessLine .

With the long-term aim to emulate disease management centres in the US, Singh, who was earlier with a private equity fund, said myCOL is trying to fill the huge gap in accessible information in India “We are the first-of-a-kind one-stop-shop for in-patient care in India,” he said, adding that the app offers a personalised caretaker to patients. The caretakers will help them locate hospitals, identify specialists, and get admitted seamlessly. They will also handle administrative formalities, including payment and insurance.

What re-affirmed the potential for such a start-up was a survey of patients and hospitals, which confirmed that what bothered them most was the long time taken for admission and bill settlement.

Right now myCOL has 25 people on board, said Singh. “Our target is to have about 250 people in Delhi at peak load, say, in 6-12 months,” he said, adding that most of the staff is drawn from the hospitality and healthcare management sectors.

In Delhi-NCR, myCOL hopes to tap into the ‘Big Five’ to begin with, and is in the process of signing up with Medanta Medicity. It will also approach Gangaram, Fortis, Max and Apollo.

Clear about never charging user fees from patients, Singh sees good scope for monetising the services from hospitals. Some big Delhi hospitals are upbeat about the idea and are willing to consider paying if the patient satisfaction score can be improved, he said.

About 6,000 ISB alumni, who were Kapoor’s students over the past decade and are now aligned with many corporates, are helping the founder duo network better. “We are reaching out to HR departments through them, telling the companies to get employees to download the app,” he said. myCOL plans to focus on tier 2 and 3 cities, “as a large number of NCR beds are filled by out-of-towners”. It is also reaching out to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, said Singh.

The start-up is wholly private funded (about ₹ 1 crore). Once the pilot succeeds, it may look for outside funding, he added.

COMMENT NOW