Alkemi Venture Partners leads $4 mn Series A funding in healthtech startup Doxper

Doxper, an app that helps doctors maintain patients' medical records, has raised $4 million in the first close of its Series A round, led by healthcare- focused fund Alkemi Venture Partners.

Rainforest Venture Network, existing investor growX Ventures and a few angel investors also participated in the round.

The company plans to use the funds for geographical expansion and double down presence across the country.

Investments in technology and research and development are planned to improve the accuracy of its machine learning (ML) and artificial intelligence (AI)-powered handwriting recognition engine and develop products in business and clinical analytics, the company said in a statement.

Doxper is an ML and AI-powered data capture solution that allows doctors to instantly digitise their case sheets using a digital pen and encoded paper. The solution can be fully integrated with any existing electronic medical record (EMR) system.

Patients can use the Doxper app to access their records, book follow-on appointments, and share reports with family.

Hospitals can also use Doxper to digitise records by integrating their hospital information system (HIS).

“With increasing competition, patient empowerment and several converging standards and regulations such as the Personal Data Protection Bill, the National Digital Health Blueprint and stricter data compliance in the amendment to the Clinical Establishments Act, digitising patient records has evolved very rapidly from a good to have to a must have,” said Shailesh Prithani, co-founder and CEO of Doxper.

InformDS Technologies, which runs Doxper, was founded by Prithani, Pawan Jain and Randeep Singh. Prithani is an alumnus of IIT Roorkee and has worked with oilfield services firm Schlumberger while Jain and Singh are from IIT Bombay. In their prior stints, Jain worked with financial research firm Visible Alpha and online content solutions firm SnapStick Inc, and Singh was a scientist at Philips Research and director of the biomedical informatics division at SAP Labs.

Doxper serves nearly 1,600 independent clinics and 20 corporate hospitals, including three hospital chains, the company claims. It is processing close to 500,000 case sheets every month and has so far digitised case sheets of over 3.25 million unique patients with nearly five million records.

“The biggest obstacle to data digitisation is workflow change expected on behalf of stakeholders. Doxper solution is simple and unique making compliance easier.  We are very excited to partner and support Doxper to fuel their growth in this sector," an Alkemi spokesperson said.

In April 2018, Doxper raised $1.1 million in a pre-Series A round of funding from existing investors led by Vidal Healthcare.

Earlier, it had secured $750,000 in a seed round of investment led by Vidal Healthcare and GrowX Ventures. Others who participated then include angel investment platform Capier Investments, online venture capital firm Globevestor, and other angel investors including a leading onco-surgeon.

New Delhi-based healthcare and wellness-focused investor Alkemi Venture Partners was founded by Alka Goel, who was earlier a partner at consulting firm McKinsey and Preet Pal who was a principal at healthcare-focused private equity fund Asian Healthcare Fund.

Alkemi had made its first investment in New Delhi-based fertility services aggregator Elawoman last year.

The early-growth-stage investor later backed wellness food and beverages company Akiva and diagnostics-focussed health-tech startup Healthcube.

Rainforest Venture Network is an investor network comprising of high net worth individuals, institutions and family offices. The firm is led by Anirudh Kumar and Abhishek Kumar, both former Snapdeal executives. It invests across technology and consumer sectors.

Early-stage investment firm growX Ventures has invested in more than 25 companies since its inception including Mad Street Den, Quandl, Ziploan and Locus.sh. Most recently, it backed financial technology firm Progcap, drone maker Aarav Unmanned Systems, and Mumbai-based healthtech startup Wellthy Therapeutics.