Healthtech startup DocTalk raises USD 5 M for first institutional round
DocTalk
Founders: Krishna Chaitanya Aluru, Akshat Goenka, and Vamsee Chamakura
Founded in: 2016
Financing status: USD 5 million for first institutional round
In its first round of institutional fundraising, Mumbai-based healthtech startup DocTalk has raised USD 5 million primarily from Silicon Valley’s Khosla Ventures and India’s Matrix Partners. Altair Capital, Vy Capital, and Liquid2 Ventures also contributed to the financing round.
DocTalk will reportedly put the money toward enlarging the number of hospitals in its network. The startup will also hire a new employees to support its continued growth.
The company was founded in early 2016 by Krishna Chaitanya Aluru, Akshat Goenka, and Vamsee Chamakura, who are recent graduates of Brown University, Wharton, and Indian Institute of Technology Hyderabad, respectively. The trio won a fellowship from Y Combinator to develop the app in 2016.
Goenka has described the app as a combination of Dropbox and WhatsApp that is tailored to the Indian healthcare system. DocTalk allows patients to upload their medical files to the cloud so that they do not have to carry around hard copies when going to different doctors. What’s more, patients can use the app to message their doctors and pick up prescriptions. As of now, the app has been used by over 500 doctors and 30,000 patients.
In the future, the DocTalk hopes to move into AI in order to streamline and improve Indian health care.
Indian healthtech continues to be a hot sector, as it has drawn large amounts of investment in the past few years. Other top performers in the healthtech startup space include online pharmacy Netmeds, which last month pulled in USD 14 million in funding, and predictive healthcare startup Touchkin, which recently received USD 1.3 million in seed funding.
(Top photo from Doctalk)
