ekincare Success Story: AI-Based Integrated Health Benefits Platform

HealthTech 🩺

Chayanika Goswami

Oct 8, 2020 — 13 min read

Company Profile is an initiative by StartupTalky to publish verified information on different startups and organizations. The content in this post has been approved by ekincare.

Lives have become easier, safer and better with technology. Today every aspect of our lives is touched by technology and one of the most important sector which is affected by technology is the Healthcare sector. Health-tech companies are coming up with innovative concepts to improve healthcare services. ekincare, a health-tech startup, is helping corporates take better care of their employee's health.

As of May 2020, ekincare claims to have seen a 221% increase in online doctor consultations, and that 76% of doctor consults were non-COVID related.

Read ahead to know more about ekincare Company Profile, Funding, Growth, History, Success Story, Founders, competitors etc.,

ekincare - Company Highlights

Startup Name	ekincare
HeadQuarters	Hyderabad
Founder	Kiran Kalakuntla, Srikanth Samudrala
Industry	Healthcare
Founded	2014
Website	ekincare.com
Parent Organisation	Aayuv Technologies Pvt Ltd

ekincare - Covid19 Measures
ekincare - About and How it Works
ekincare - Vision and Mission
ekincare - Market and Industry Details
ekincare - Founders and Team
How was ekincare Started
ekincare - Startup Launch
ekincare - Name and Logo
ekincare - Funding and Investors
ekincare - Acquisitions & Mergers
ekincare - Growth
ekincare - Startup Challenges
ekincare - Competitors
ekincare - Advisors and Mentors
ekincare - Recognition and Achievements
ekincare - Future Plans
ekincare - FAQs

ekincare - Covid19 Measures

To fight COVID-19, ekincare is helping India Inc by offering free telemedicine services to employees of more than 600 companies and their dependents.

It has also built a symptom checker for self-assessment, temperature tracking into the platform which enables employees and their dependents to check themselves for the coronavirus symptoms, seek doctor consults if at risk, followed by COVID-19 RT-PCR testing if required by ICMR approved network partners pan India.

“We have added more than 50 corporates in just the last four months, with most of them opting for health benefits for the first time. From the client acquisition point of view, we had the best four months in the history of eKincare. We today are in 100 cities pan-India catering to over 200 companies serving 3.5 lakh lives.” Says Kiran Kalakuntla, Foudner ekincare

ekincare - About and How it Works

ekincare is a patent-pending AI powered integrated health benefits platform helping organizations monitor the health and well-being of the employees. The integrated platform provides access to multitude of healthcare services such as 24*7 chat with doctors, health check-ups, medicines purchase and delivery, Gyms etc. ekincare provides health check services across 50+ cities all across India through 500+ NABL / NABH / CAP / ISO certified diagnostic centers. The company claims to have strategic partners across more than 2000 locations in India.

ekincare offers solutions for employees, organizations and also for insurance companies.

ekincare Solutions for Employees

ekincare acts as a one stop platform where a user can maintain all health related records and get tips, guidance and solutions to stay healthy.

The solutions that ekincare app provides to the employees are-

Employees can personalize the ekincare app by completing the ' Health Risk Assessment', that the app prompts the users to do. After personalization, ekincare offers the users recommendations to stay fit based on the users lifestyle, family history etc
Using the ekincare app users can chat with general physicians 24/7 and can also talk to specialists.
ekincare lets the users digitize all his medical records and reposit them with ekincare so that these can be shared with doctors when required.
Employees can also order medicines through the ekincare app at discounted rates.
Users can sync their wearables like Google Fit, Apple Health, Strava, Gramin or Fitbit with the ekincare app
Employees can also take various challenges, earn points and redeem the same for availing healthcare services.

ekincare Solutions for Organizations

With the help ekincare, organizations can organize well-being programs like health check up camps etc in the office premise or any nearby partner diagnostic centers of ekincare. Organizations can also organize employee specific activities and challenges. These activities and events helps organizations engage better with the employees
By using the detailed and analyzed health related data of the employees that ekincare provides, organizations can negotiate with the insurance providers for reduced premiums for their employee insurance plans.
Real-time analytics regarding employees health helps organizations take various predictive health initiative for the employees.

ekincare Solutions for Insurance Companies

Using ekincare data insurance companies can divide the population in terms of high, medium and low risk segments.
Insurance companies get information regarding accurate health related data of the insured individuals. Using ekincare eliminates the scope of manipulation of the data by intermediary.
By gaining insights from the ekincare data, insurance companies can develop new products, better suited to customer needs.

ekincare - Vision and Mission

ekincare aims to create a preventive, predictive and highly personalized healthcare journey for individuals to help them adopt a healthier lifestyle. Furthermore, the company wants to empower the corporates with data and technology to reduce the overall health risks.

Market and Industry Details

The global corporate well-being market was valued at US$ 29,266.9 million in 2017. It is projected to reach the valuation of US$ 61,690.9 million by 2026, growing at a CAGR of 9% from 2018 to 2026.

The well-being industry in India is estimated to rise and touch INR 500 billion. The well-being program alone is going to claim almost 25% of the market and it is expected that the growth of the particular segment will be almost 30% every year. The demand and supply gap in the corporate sector regarding the well-being service can be a huge opportunity for the entrepreneurs.

Adoption of Corporate well-being program can save India Inc. income up to US$ 20 billion by 2018 through a reduction in absenteeism rate by 1.00 percent and at the same time improve chronic and lifestyle diseases of corporate and employees, according to the Associated Chambers of Commerce and Industry of India (ASSOCHAM) latest paper.

ekincare - Founders and Team

Kiran Kalakuntla and Srikanth Samudrala are the Founders of ekincare.

Kiran is a graduate from Duke University. He has a 10+ yrs of experience in building and marketing 30+ technology products like Moto X, world’s 1^st3D smartphone and RFID. Kiran has managed $100 million in product sales for AT&T.

Srikanth Samudrala is the Chief Technology Officer & Co-founder of ekincare. Srikanth is a graduate from IIT Madras. He has 11+ yrs of experience in building large scale web and mobile applications for Barclays and HSBC. He founded Teamroq, an open source enterprise collaboration platform. Srikanth is responsible for the overall product roadmap and technology in eKincare.

Dr. Noel Coutinho, Sr. Vice President of ekincare

Dr. Noel Coutinho is the SVP BD & Sales at ekincare. Noel graduated in BHMS, MHA (TISS), AIII. He has 15+ yrs of experience in the health and life insurance space. He served at RGA, Metis and United Health care leading various functions including sales, customer service, medical management and provider networks.

How was ekincare Started

ekincare was built out of a personal problem, where NRIs (Non Resident Indians) weren’t able to contribute towards the health of their parents who are remotely located. Kiran was in Seattle, USA while his parents were in Hyderabad, India. Kiran found it very frustrating that even in the current internet age, people are still relying on a phone call home to keep a tab on their health. Merely asking parents daily about how they were doing over the phone didn’t cut it. This frustration further aggravated when his father went through a surgery and none of the family members located in Hyderabad could explain the root cause and why a surgery was recommended. This made Kiran think of a way to take care of ones dear ones even while staying away and thus ekincare was started.

In 2014, ekincare started out as a B2C platform that allowed users to keep one's medical records in a digitized form and the platform helped one track the health of their close ones even while staying away. When he started up Kiran's idea was to use existing technology and focus on just services. However, when Kiran entered the industry he realized that though there were platform where users can store their health records in digital form, there were no platforms that analyzed the health data to provide personalized recommendations. This led Kiran to build ekincare as an analytics driven platform.

Besides, Kiran also realized that India is a country where Health becomes a priority only when there is a pressing discomfort. Preventive healthcare is not still popular in India. As such, a user-specific health-tech platform was not suited for the current Indian scenario. This made the ekincare team to pivot the company and adopt and enterprise model.

India has a steep way to go before preventive healthcare takes the first foot. The decision of the team to try entering into the enterprise model and figure out solutions of Health benefits for Health enthusiastic organizations is paying off and actually creating an impact - Kiran says explaining the company's decision to enter the enterprise model

ekincare - Startup Launch

At ekincare, Kiran's method has been lean. The company has always tested its products with a sample group and taken their feedback. This is the foremost thing that has helped them make a product that is solving a defined problem statement in the real world right now.

In this 4 year on-going journey of mine since ekincare inception, the major challenge has been to to make sure the product resonates the best with the beat of the problem statement - Kiran says

ekincare - Name and Logo

The name ekincare is a thoughtful derivation from three words :- e - electronic, kin- one's family and care

ekincare - Funding and Investors

The latest round in 2019 takes the total funding raised by ekincare to $5.6 million.

Funding Details are divulged below:

Date	Ampunt	Series	Investors
Janary 2015	$161k	Seed Round	BitKemy Ventures, Adroitent Pvt Ltd
March 2016	$330k	Pre Series A	BitKemy Ventures, Maheshwari Investments Pvt Ltd, Anshoo Gaur, Rama Krishna Reddy, Sandeep Seerapu
January 2018	$1.5 Million	Series A	Ventureast, Endiya Partners, Eight Roads,Touchstone equities, BVR Mohan Reddy
November 2019	$3.6 Million	Series A	Undisclosed

“We have seen tremendous growth from our initial investment in ekincare, both in terms of patient-engagement, employers adoption as well as revenue growth. Hence through this round of investment, we reinforce our commitment to support ekincare management team in their vision to build a world class healthcare platform.” Srikanth Sundarajan, Partner at Ventureast, said.

ekincare - Acquisitions and Mergers

In a strategic move, ekincare acquired Celes care, an online healthcare provider with a strong focus on affordability.

ekincare - Growth

Today, ekincare is known for being the fastest growing health benefits platform in India. Especially, the company has been able to achieve a lot in the last 2 years and proof of the pudding is the kind of fortune 500 companies that have trusted in them for their employee health. ekincare is the Health Benefits partner for global giants like Unilever, Barclays, BNY Mellon, Ebay, Fedex, Disney and more than 130 other companies.

ekincare caters to more than 200 companies including multiple Fortune 500 clients and managing 300,000+ employees health on their patent-pending platform.

ekincare has been growing 50% quarter on quarter in terms of revenues, they have a really strong set of industry backers who are invested in life sciences, paired with a strong advisory team vested across technology, data and insurance. Within 2 years, ekincare has been able to achieve what other larger companies are elsewhere couldn't in terms of number of clients and the number of employees.

ekincare - Startup Challenges

Kiran's biggest challenge was his family to be convinced to move back with him and for them to sacrifice. The pressure was tremendous initially, as Kiran had to make sure none of them should regret the move in the future.

When Kiran first had the idea, he did not have any network in India. All his friends were in the US and some of the friends who were here in India, he had not been in touch with them in 10 years. Moving to India, starting from the cold start and building the business, building the team, everything was from ground zero. That has been the biggest challenge and along the way.

I have been lucky in finding the right partners and common connects like Srikanth, Noel and the rest of the team. Today, we boast of some very good advisors like BVR Mohan Reddy, Dr.Vara Prasad and Nimish Parekh. There was a huge dilemma whether to start with healthcare or not because I am not from Healthcare background. How do I ensure that I will be doing justice to the idea that I had in healthcare? This is when I was told that an industry outsider will have a new perspective towards the industry which results in better innovation. Different thinking would result in a revolution, as compared to an evolution from the traditional jaded mind-set

ekincare - Competitors

Companies like Practo, Call Health, Healthifyme, Healthi are some of ekincare's competitors.

Kiran's philosophy when it comes to competition is that you keep an eye on competition like a rear view mirror. Time to time glances on the competitor's performance helps Kiran plan his strategies better.

When a competitor is doing well, I personally wish them well and I try to learn in terms of what areas they are right. Talent acquisition, what kinds of combinations of talents they are looking at, what kind of operational structure have they built, what kind of positions are they hiring for etc. What not to do is something I have always made a note of from the competition. If something is not clicking, it is just one of the 999 ways in which the puzzle is not to be solved - Kiran says explaining his take on competitors

ekincare - Advisors and Mentors

ekincare has people like BVR Mohan Reddy, Dr.Vara Prasad and Nimish Parekh mentoring them in every step of their journey.

ekincare - Recognition and Achievements

ekincare has received following Awards and recognition till date-

Superstartups Asia awards - 2019
Top 10 most innovative startups by Nasscom
Aegis Graham bell award - By Aegis School of Business at India Mobile Congress 2018
Journal of mHealth - Top 100 most innovative digital healthcare companies, 2016”

ekincare - Future Plans

ekincare has grown from a 23 member team to a 120 member one in the last one year. With the right partners backing up the wheels of the wagon, Kiran is confident the company can grow to a 250 member team very soon.

In terms of clients, ekincare is looking forward to on-board 500 companies during this year.

ekincare - FAQs

What is ekincare?

ekincare is a patent-pending AI powered integrated health benefits platform helping organizations monitor the health and well-being of the employees. The integrated platform provides access to multitude of healthcare services such as 24*7 chat with doctors, health check-ups, medicines purchase and delivery, Gyms etc.

Who are the Founders of ekincare?

Kiran Kalakuntla and Srikanth Samudrala are the Founders of ekincare.

Who are the Top Competitors of ekincare?

Top Competitors of ekincare are Practo, Call Health, Healthifyme, Healthi

How much funding has ekincare raised?