WITH AN OBJECTIVE TO BECOME THE DIGITAL WORLD OF DOCTORS, HIGHLY SUCCESSFUL MEDICAL APP, CUROFY IS THE LATEST TO CONQUER THE HEALTHCARE SYSTEM PROVIDING A COMPLETE ECOSYSTEM TO HEALTHCARE PROFESSIONALS IN INDIA.
While there are social media platforms and business interaction platforms for people to engage between themselves, there was nothing available for the medical practitioners as a networking platform. To resolve the dilemma and offer a single platform for doctors to engage and interact marks the birth of ‘Curofy’.
Curofy today is India’s largest community of verified doctors. Curofy offers doctors a spam-free and secure environment to communicate with each other. Doctors can provide referrals, share cases, call other doctors without saving numbers and have access to most recent, specialtywise developments taking place in their field.
Within eleven months of its launch, more than 50,000 doctors from across 300 cities are using the Curofy app. It is no surprise then that Curofy was funded on a live event on CNBC called TiE
the Knot at TiEcon 2014, a conference organized by The Indus Entrepreneurs in October. Here is the look at the amazing journey of Curofy from a startup to a medical networking platform.
Journey of Curofy from its inception:
The founding trio of Curofy started a medical tourism company in their final year of college in 2012. While medical tourism industry was thriving the connectivity among doctors was lacking,
thereby making collaborative patient care slow, inefficient and costly. This made the trio start work on the concept of medical networking in India.
The founders initially built a website and ran a pilot with the 1,000 doctors and received their feedback, which helped the team in further understanding doctors’ needs and behavior, which went into their mobile app design and development. Developed with an objective to become the digital world of doctors, Curofy today is now India’s largest community of verified doctors. Over 72,000 doctors from 550+ cities are using Curofy to discuss difficult cases, read latest news and browse premium jobs.
A word on the founders:
Curofy is the brainchild of three friends Mudit Vijayvergiya, Nipun Goyal and Pawan Gupta. Mudit is a dual degree graduate in chemical engineering from IIT Delhi. He worked with Axtira Inc
on health informatics and analytics for a year before starting his own venture in healthcare. He has been an active part of various entrepreneurial avenues like Jagriti Yatra, TIE, youth forums
and Draper University in Silicon Valley. Nipun is a B.Tech from IIT Delhi with major in Electrical Engineering and minor in Business Management. He worked with Rothschild India for 2 years
on Mergers & Acquisitions and Private Equity Funding transactions. Pawan is a B.Tech in Electrical Engineering from IIT Delhi. He worked with Deutsche Bank for 2 years in Mumbai. He has an
interesting mix of interests in technology and finance. He was a part of the Robotics Club and Entrepreneurship Development Cell at IIT Delhi.
Business model adopted by Curofy:
Curofy’s business model is based on building a high quality engaging network of doctors. In about 15 months of the launch, the company has been approached by numerous pharmaceutical
companies, hospitals, medical equipment manufacturers and other health care businesses for partnerships.
“With a community of highly engaged doctors, Curofy can be a fantastic medium for these stakeholders to engage their potential users and get the word out. From surveys to product launches to
even finding brand evangelist, Curofy is a huge opportunity waiting for the entire healthcare industry” echo the three young co-founders.
The founders reveal how Curofy is currently doing pilot with select players, where the app provides them chance to make their content available on this highly engaged network of doctors. For
example, various top hospitals have been pushing jobs on the platform and are getting candidates through Curofy. Similarly, some medical devices and pharmaceutical players are benefiting
by reaching out directly to interested doctors.
USP of Curofy:
Curofy is changing behavior of doctors, making them adopt this closed social media through its relevance based algorithm, which keeps the platform targeted and spam free. In the words of
the founding troika “ Strong verification process, helps in maintaining the authenticity and trust in the community. Being mobile only, it has a very high engagement of doctors on the network.
It is creating a huge impact in the digital healthcare industry by increasing supply of ‘online active’ doctors share the founding team of Curofy.”
A word on Funding and Finances:
Curofy managed to get an undisclosed amount of Pre Series ‘A’ funding from Roundglass Partners. Earlier in TIECON 2014, Curofy was funded in a dramatic reality-based event on CNBC and won
angel funding to the tune of INR 1 crore. Some highly respected angels like Rajul Garg (Sunstone Business School, Global Logic, Pine Labs), Alok Mittal (JobsAhead, Canaan), India Quotient, Spice Labs, Dinesh Agarwal (Indiamart), Dr Shuchin Bajaj (Cygnus Hospitals), and Presha Paragash (Zostel, Sol Primero) invested in the company highlighting the core business functionality and business plan of the company.
Marketing strategies adopted by Curofy:
Curofy partnered with 10 national conferences as their digital media partner in last season. Most of the new users are coming through word of mouth but the team is also doing offline and online
marketing. “Online has worked better for younger doctors and offline is working better for experienced ones” share the founders as part of their marketing strategies.
Challenges Faced:
The biggest challenge was to drive traffic from WhatsApp to Curofy reveal Mudit, Nipun and Pawan. “Doctors have a high inertia in changing their behavior. Curofy gave them a very easy to use product with high utility. Providing them a spam free with very high relevance for each user was the key. The word is spreading now amongst the doctors and the network is growing rapidly”. Talking on other random challenges faced by Curofy the founding trio explains how another big challenge was to keep the network spam free for doctors by not allowing the pharmaceutical reps and other industry players to get access of the network.
Milestones and awards:
• Regularly ranked in Top 10 medical apps in India in Google Play Store
• Winner, Young Turks TiE The Knot (2nd edition)
• Winner, Google LaunchPad (3rd edition)
• Ranked as one of the best startups to look out from Asia by TechinAsia
• Awarded as Top Innovative Startup by IIT Delhi Alumni Association – 2014
The road ahead for the healthcare sector:
There is a surge in medical apps for doctors, which are trying to add value to the life of doctors. In future, the health app where doctors will spend maximum time will be able to influence digital
health communication as the doctors are the gatekeepers of healthcare. Sharing a researched document including a report by Allied Market Research, the founders showcased how the market is projected to reach 32.3 per cent CAGR of Health market from 2013 to 2020. The valuation of the market is projected to reach $58.8 billion by 2020. Due to the large untapped demand in the Indian context for health-care services, the potential remains huge for health apps in the country.
Future plans and goals of Curofy:
Company’s foremost priority is to create engagement among doctors in India. Curofy recently moved from 25 specialties to 400+ sub specialties to ensure that only relevant content is shown to doctors. Company’s target is to reach out to over 70% of 1.5 million Indian doctors in next couple of years. While penetrating deeply in Indian doctor community is a core focus, Curofy also plans expand globally.
Text: V-Create Media Images: Various Sources