Cloud-based healthcare platform SmartRx secures $500K from Ventureast, others

Bangalore and US-based startup SmartCloud Technologies Pvt Ltd, which has developed a cloud-based software platform called SmartRx for patient management, has secured $500,000 from Ventureast Tenet Fund and two unnamed angel investors from Singapore and the US, a top executive of the company told Techcircle.in.

IIM-Ahmedabad's Centre for Innovation, Incubation & Entrepreneurship (CIIE) also participated in the round, said Anil Kumar, founder and CEO of SmartRx. Post-investment, Ventureast's managing partners Ramesh Byrapaneni and Sateesh Andra joined the company's board.

SmartRx will use the money for product development and also for sales and marketing. "SmartRx is going to use the funds to quickly develop product capabilities. A part of the amount will be also used to acquire customers in India and abroad," said Ventureast's Byrapaneni.

Set up in 2011 by Kumar (founder and CEO) and Vijayakumar Kannan (co-founder and vice-president), SmartRx provides on-cloud and mobile-based solutions for online consultation, health monitoring, etc., and caters to hospitals and individual practitioners. Its solutions enable doctors to manage all aspects of their practice – from putting up a website to managing schedules and appointments, maintaining patient database and billing. The platform can be integrated with existing hospital information management systems (HIS) for integrating patient registration and patient health data. These can be hosted on-premise by large hospitals and managed from anywhere.

According to Kumar, the company's key focus is hospitals and healthcare chains in India and abroad, and it has already roped in a handful of customers in India. "We are working with large hospitals, including some of the biggest healthcare chains in India, to deploy the product," said Kumar, without giving further details.

Queried about pricing, he said, "The pricing for a typical multi-specialty hospital could be around Rs 5 lakh a year. We also offer per-patient pricing model, as well as transaction-based pricing for e-consultation."

The company is now focusing on building a global product and good medical content (for educating patients), and is not looking to achieve break-even immediately, added Kumar.

The startup currently offers three products – SmartRx Engage, SmartRx Outreach and SmartRx Loyalty. SmartRx Engage is an interface between a hospital and patients, enabled via multiple channels including SMS, voice call, e-mail, phone app and widgets embedded in a hospital's website. SmartRx Outreach allows healthcare providers to reach out effectively by providing concierge-like service to patients and educating them – thus driving revenues through smart marketing. The SmartRx Loyalty programme is aimed at improving clinical outcome and increasing revenues.

Prior to starting SmartCloud, Kumar worked with the vice-president of US operations at Realcom Inc, a Japan-based public company focusing on knowledge and content management. Earlier, he had worked with Microsoft and Nokia Siemens in various positions. An alumnus of the University of Mysore, Kumar also co-founded Pragna Technologies, which provides recruitment process outsourcing solutions.

His partner Vijayakumar Kannan, who holds a BE degree in Computer Engineering from the University of Madras, has around 10 years of experience in open source technologies. Kannan previously worked with several multi-national companies including Ascon Health and Accenture, among others. In 2010, he founded rupees4gigs.com, a marketplace for exchanging services and products.

(Edited by Sanghamitra Mandal)