The Asian Age

PRUNING HEALTHCARE PROBLEMS AWAY

Mansi Gandhi, co-founder and COO of DoctorC, offers interestin­g anecdotes from her life and describes her role in the company which is making lives simpler for many

- SWATI SHARMA

Most decisions are reversible. So, making a bad decision is often better than making no decision at all.

With increasing awareness and a rising number of diseases, modern-day healthcare has become so much more complex than it used to be in the last decade. Multiplica­tion of doctors’ appointmen­ts has implied prescripti­on of an infinite number of diagnostic tests — which is preventing seamless healthcare sessions for patients. In short, the problem has only been getting worse in most Indian cities!

So, with the idea of aligning the interests of customers and diagnostic centres, the late Dr C. Dayakar Reddy came up with DoctorC. After he passed away, ex-Silicon Valley engineers Mansi Gandhi, Neehar Cherabuddi, Karan Kurani and Manya Cherabuddi joined DoctorC with their technical know-how to create and grow the company. The four are now happy co-founders of this establishm­ent. Mansi describes her own and the team’s voyage of bringing Dr Reddy’s idea to fruition.

TURNING AN IDEA INTO A REALITY

“My husband Neehar and I had moved to India to work on our previous start-up, Shoutt. Neehar’s father had the original idea for DoctorC. We got involved from a technology and marketing perspectiv­e and soon saw the massive potential in this space. Over the first few weeks, we worked on the business model, searching for a product-market fit. We were very particular while ensuring two things — that there was a large market which needed this product and the right team in place. For this, we convinced our cofounder from our previous start-up, Karan, to move back to India and join us on DoctorC as our Chief Technology Officer (CTO),” narrates Mansi, who is the Chief Operating Officer (COO) of the start-up.

DoctorC, which is a mobile and internet applicatio­n, brings transparen­cy in medical testing and creates a level playing field in laboratory testing. The main problem that Mansi and her team are trying to solve in the healthcare domain could make a substantia­l impact on the lives of billions of people.

Coming from an entreprene­urial family, funding was never an issue for her but thanks to the team’s hard work after starting out, they successful­ly sustained DoctorC by raising money. “Over the past few years we’ve raised money from some incredible investors. They’ve been supportive and have provided us with mentorship and guidance at each stage. The social

DoctorC, an app that’s headed by young couple Mansi and Neehar now has over 2.8 million users

support I’ve had, from both family and friends, is what has given me the strength to do this,” she says.

Talking about her business bent of mind since childhood, Mansi says that her father and uncle started their accounting firm and ERP software company in the ’90s, right after they graduated. “As a child, starting a company was a normal thing for me to do,” laughs Mansi, who credits her school, Vidyaranya High School, for shaping up the personalit­y that she is today. “It taught me to be creative and follow my own path,” says the BITS Pilani alumna.

THEN TO NOW

Describing her journey to becoming the profession­al she is today, Mansi says, “My time in the Bay Area in the US helped me understand what I really wanted to do. While working at Oracle, I met Neehar, my co-founder and husband. We both ventured into multiple projects. Over the next three years, we developed several iOS apps and made a feature film. It was during the film that I made the transition from being a developer to running operations. Today, I run the entire operations at DoctorC.”

And today, after successful­ly working around with diagnostic­s and lab tests for four years, the team has delved into pharmacy. To explain this venture, Mansi says: “Healthcare has not been customer-centric for the most part. People who struggle with the existing healthcare system are often our customers. Today, we have over 2.8 lakh users across Hyderabad and Bengaluru.”

RISING TO CHALLENGES GALORE

Running a business is extremely hard, this COO believes. “Hiring the right people has been and continues to be the most difficult part of our business. The start-up culture in India is yet to mature. This makes it very hard to find people who really understand what it means to be in a start-up,” she adds.

Getting their diagnostic lab partners to come online was also a big challenge at first. “It was hard for them to break out of their current market practices and adopt a new way of approach to consumer marketing,” explains Mansi.

So, how does DoctorC continue to grow and develop its business? “We are customer-obsessed! This one is straight from Amazon’s playbook. We build our products and business around our customers.”

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