This healthtech startup aims to be the one-stop platform for surgeries in India

The year was 2021, and Vikas Chauhan, a serial entrepreneur who co-founded 1MG, was looking for the next big problem to solve after a successful exit. Together with Ankur Gigras, who was leading the B2C businesses at Tata 1MG, he considered various healthcare and allied opportunities from medical evacuations to advanced healthcare services that they felt would be best suited to the skillsets. The duo settled on surgical interventions, and after bringing on board Dr Aman Priya Khanna, a minimally invasive surgeon who earlier practised at Artemis and has performed over 5,000 surgeries, HexaHealth was born.

Borrowing from their learnings from 1MG, the team started building to make the surgical intervention journey, be it availing a healthcare transaction, a hospitalisation episode or a cashless claim, as easy and seamless as ordering groceries sitting at home.

“Once a patient has been recommended for surgery, they struggle with the next steps. Surgery is a stressful time for the patient and they need maximum support. At Hexa, we want to become a patient’s trusted digital partner by keeping them at the centre of decision making and helping them in every stage of their hospitalisation journey,” says Ankur Gigras, Co-founder and CEO at HexaHealth.

HexaHealth helps patients discover the right doctor and hospital for the right price with curated options. It also helps patients with financing and EMI options, provides on-ground support, transport to the hospital, facilitates insurance procedures, and ensures patients have access to post-op care and consultancy as required.

“In the long term, we want to be the one-stop trusted platform to cater to a patient’s hospitalisation needs''. he adds.

Solving for an opportunity that is as complex as it is vast

The Lancet Commission for Global Surgery estimates that 5,000 surgeries are required to meet the surgical burden of diseases for 1,00,000 people in low and middle income countries, like India. However, according to a pan-India surgery market report, in India only 1,463 surgeries happen per lakh, just 29% of the needed 5,000 per lakh, pointing to a huge untapped opportunity.

However, the opportunity is as complex as it is vast. A surgery, unlike ordering food, is serious business that requires a hospitalisation episode, which in turn requires a pre-authorisation from insurance to cover. There are other aspects: evaluating hospitals, credibility, expertise, availability, and more.

“For most products or services in India, one would still be able to get a quotation for services online, be it airlines, hotels, or a mobile connection. You will get the exact price, including taxes, discounts possible and even coupon codes that can be applied,” Gigras says.

“However, if you pick any of the big hospital brands in India, you will not find a transparently provided rate package online, or their billing model online,” he adds, citing the lack of a fixed methodology to price a service to a patient In India.

HexaHealth is differentiating itself from the competition by keeping the customer’s needs at the centre and providing the patient with transparent and objective advice. The company aims to build the largest network of hospitals across the country and bring in digital solutions for better patient care throughout the patient’s surgery life cycle. It is also working on addressing the information asymmetry as well as helping patients get more info beyond their limited healthcare understanding.

HexaHealth and the WebEngage Startup Program

For a relatively young startup in rapid-scale mode, the WebEngage Startup Program offers free credits for six months and specialists to help reduce the learning curve during implementation and adoption helped tremendously.

“When we started contemplating an automation partner our website visits were not even five lakh a month. We were then told by various marketing specialists and experts that we should at least reach a threshold of one million visits a month to generate ROI,” Gigras says.

“In that respect, and beyond, the WebEngage Startup Program worked out well for us. We were able to breach the threshold and even start this process earlier than most startups with the WebEngage retention stack, hands-on success management and expert deep-dives,” he adds.

Delivering healthy growth

With its vision to become the most trusted platform to digitise surgery-related decision making and make quality and affordable hospitalisation care available to millions of Indians, HexaHealth ensures that patients are well informed of all their choices, are educated about what they can expect, and are taken care of even post-surgery. This would make sure that providers have less anxious patients and can deliver proper care pre, during, and post-surgery.

HexaHealth’s growth strategy has been successful so far and it has successfully onboarded 500+ NABH Hospitals, 1,500+ expert doctors, and served 25,000+ patients.

Currently operating in over five cities, including Delhi-NCR, Mumbai, Bengaluru, Pune, and Jaipur, HexaHealth aims to begin operations in Hyderabad and Kolkata shortly. It is targeting brand partnerships with 150+ hospitals across clusters like Lucknow, Guwahati, Bhuvaneshwar, Indore and Punjab, and plans to serve 40 cities in the next two years.

This story is the fourth in a series called Retentioneering, where new-age startups share with us their experience of working with the WebEngage Startup Program and how it helped them with various retention efforts.