Seeking to help patients get cheaper hospital treatment and loans to cover the cost, a group of entrepreneurs has launched an online aggregator.
Founded by Mr. Prakhar Gupta and Tenzin Thargay, this New Delhi based healthcare startup Letsmd.com provide options to a person who can choose the hospital, the doctor and get the price/cost comparisons from 300 of the 500 speciality tertiary-care hospitals in the capital.
Letsmd.com also facilitates loans for patients for a duration of 10-24 months at an interest of 6.5-10 per cent.
It closed a USD 750,000 funding from a clutch of angel investors like Calcutta Angels, Waterbridge Ventures and Anupam Mittal, recently, founder Nivesh Khandelwal told Pixr8.
The elective medical needs covered by the aggregator includes only IVF treatment, but has also plans to introduce knee, hip and cataract surgeries soon.
“Through our website, a person can compare the hospitals, look at doctor videos, compare pricing for the surgery and book an appointment at the hospital of his/her choice. We also give an option to convert the surgery bill into low interest EMIs if the person pays up 20 per cent of the loan amount upfront,” he said.
Of the 20 per cent upfront payment, 7 per cent goes to the hospital while Letsmd retains the rest 13 per cent as facilitation charges.
It has tied up with Arogya Finance and LoanTap for facilitating loans for the patients, he said, adding Letsmd is also planning to seek an NBFC licence from RBI.
Khandelwal said their one of the biggest challenges was to get hospitals, especially doctor-owned and doctor-run ones, to agree to display indicative pricing for various procedures. While large hospitals agreed, the smaller ones were wary of sharing pricing as they did not have packages.
The website is planning to expand its coverage to include Mumbai, Bengaluru and Hyderabad in a few months and offer loans to 30 elective surgeries.
“We hope to expand to these three metros by May/June by when we would also be looking at raising some USD 5 million more,” he said.