CliniVantage mobilises the entire healthcare ecosystem, making it work in tandem to provide better outcomes for patients and improved productivity helping deliver profitable care by providers. Nilesh Jain, Director & Co-Founder, CliniVantage, gives an insight
In early 2017, we announced that we are building a PaaS (Platform as a Service) product, that aimed to democratise innovation in healthcare by transformation of ideas into products and services.
CliniVantage began its journey long before, than its actual inception. Between Abhay, Dinesh and I we talked, discussed and even tried to acquire a company to give us a jump start. But when such tries failed, we took matters in our own hands, and created a vision for an open PaaS (Platform as a Service) that integrates across all IoA (applications) and DoT – (Doctor of Things – connected devices). In excitement, I coined my own term – DoT, (Doctor of things) in line with the trends of current day craze for “connected things.” Thus, we embarked on a journey not knowing how this will shape up, with our own set of IoAs and DoTs. We began creating a customer-centric healthcare story, with a clear goal, delivering wellness 24×7 for 365 days a year.
The startup that begun as an allied project took shape largely in reality. It hit us when we got our first customer who was willing to be a part of our MVP (Mobile Virtualization Platform?) product. We took a challenge, and decided we won’t build an MVP, but instead will build a production ready solution, given our experience, domain knowledge and eagerness to be the best. We made a production ready PaaS for healthcare domain, with our own time, money and energy.
We further launched a few months later to small fanfare and a handful of early customers. At the time, we made a conscious decision to try and self-fund this product as much as possible; i.e., we’ll use incoming revenue on it, and won’t take on an equity investment until we believed that the product risk was taken care of.
In about a year later, we’ve reached that magical bootstrap nirvana of being across six countries, three major global partnerships with zero external funding and on a road to be profitable in FY 2018-19. I believe there are several factors that have contributed to this, our passion to build something from ground up, support from our customers and the urge to revolutionise the healthcare space. Focussing on priorities, is exactly what helped us build software, hardware and get the right domain gist. Parkinson’s Law states, “Work expands to fill the time available for its completion”. This is exactly what we have experienced. We were never out of work and the pace of our growth didn’t help. Although very exciting, but lots to do. At every stage, we questioned on priorities and delegation, soon we learnt that building the next generation of flagship bearers was important. We started hiring the best domain expertise. We are proud that not only our founders’ backgrounds are complimentary, but our team reflects the same. Encouraging our teams to challenge and push each other to give the best to our customers and effectively building world class products be it, hardware, software, integration and an open platform, have resulted from equal efforts in code and growth.
Six months into the life of CliniVantage, we realised that focus on growth was as important as building of our products. So, we divided our concentration equally on growth and creation. We were about to disrupt our own processes, time and focus. This paid off immensely and we could effectively expand our customer base and get traction with partners willing to position as the best solution and take us places.
Our efforts in acquiring customers have worked well; we have several customers who believe in us and our capabilities to deliver. I credit this to our deep domain knowledge personalised experiences and ability to deliver on technology. Dinesh, Abhay and I personally reach out to customers regularly and ask them how they are doing and product feedback.
We published a product road map, early on and asked our customers for their input and feedback; we treated them as co-creators, since they are the ones who enjoy using our product. Of course, this is very tricky balance between building some ‘me too’ and creating a disruptive technology that customer has not envisioned. We have set out to disrupt healthcare and how services are to be delivered, be customer centric and move from wellness to illness, this is easier said than done.
Finally, we look forward to a new India where healthcare is wellness care. India has witnessed a surge in diseases capable of adversely affecting the health of its population. Rising prosperity has been marked by a “healthcare burden” — a continuing rise in infectious diseases and a spurt in non-communicable or “lifestyle” diseases, which accounted for 60 per cent of all deaths in 2015, from 42 per cent in 2001-03.
Healthcare sector is now well placed to undergo positive change at all stages of the process — prevention, diagnosis and treatment. Investments from the private sector and innovation from startups can bring in a positive change in such a burgeoning healthtech scene. Healthcare is becoming one of India’s largest sectors, both in terms of opportunities, scale and size.
‘Liberty, when it begins to take root, is a plant of rapid growth’ — George Washington
When it comes to the possibilities of ‘learning from history’ there are doubtless many things we could aspire to learn. Some of those would be more practically useful, in terms of contributing to the normal and decent functioning of well-meaning societies.
It is in these moments of decision that the destiny is shaped, repeated actions will form habits and habits will lead the transformation on harm reduction efforts towards a healthier and a tobacco free world helping save a BILLION Lives!
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