It’s 8:30 PM. The orthopaedic clinic in north Bengaluru is teeming with patients on Thursday night. Most of them are glued to their phones, the screen glow drowning the dismay of the often hour-long wait-in. The receptionist, meanwhile, manages with a fat diary, appointments neatly listed and ticked off as the clock noiselessly ticks. There’s no computer. Dr Gaurav Sharma, until recently a senior consultant and professor at St Johns Hospital in south Bengaluru, ranks the second highest on Google when searched by specialty and location, doesn’t use any software for managing his clinic.
Marginal health
Practo and the perils of plenty
It raised too much venture capital, at too high a valuation. Threw too many hats in the health-tech ring whose coda, as we know, isn’t ‘fast fail’. Now down to 900 people, from 2000+ just two years ago, Practo is leaner but is it also wiser as it hits the fund-raising road?
Practo built India’s largest doctor search and discovery platform and then squandered the lead trying to sell at any cost
Its primary consumer all this while, doctors, don’t accept its value proposition
Practo has pivoted; now it wants to sell to consumers. Health-tech looks more like health commerce
It has thrown money at problems in the past, will it do better this time?
