Practo buys Insta Health for $12 mn

Practo, a platform that connects doctors and patients online, has made its third acquisition in six months in Insta Health Solutions, a hospital information management solution (HIMS) by former Wipro Technologies chief technology officer Ramesh Emani.

Practo, which raised $90 million (Rs 574 crore) in Series-C funding in August, acquired Insta Health in a cash plus stock deal of $12 million (Rs 80 crore). Insta Health will be an independent subsidiary of Practo with Emani continuing as its chief executive. In April, Practo acquired fitness technology start-up FitHo and in July technology design firm Genii.

Insta Health's solutions enable hospitals, clinics, labs and diagnostic chains to digitise and manage their operational, financial and clinical by digitising their health medical records. Inventus Capital had invested in Insta Health in 2009.

"This is the third of several acquisitions we've been evaluating as we continue our mission to help simplify and digitise health care," said Shashank N D, founder and chief executive officer of Practo. "It will help hospitals digitise records, removing wait times and queues, simplifying payments and more."

Practo, one of the earliest entrants in the health care technology start-up space, has been on a steady growth track since inception. It has raised over $125 million from Sequioa India, Matrix Partners India, Chinese online major Tencent, Belgian investment firm Sofina, Google Capital, Sequoia Capital Global Equities and Russian billionaire Yuri Milner. It is valued at $500 million (Rs 3,250 crore).

Practo offers a service that allows patients to fix appointments with doctors and build a platform to digitise their records. It is present in 35 Indian cities and four countries and aims to scale to 100 Indian cities and 10 countries across Southeast Asia, Latin America, West Asia, and Eastern Europe. It recently launched its services in Indonesia.

"We chose Practo over some other options as we felt we can together offer superior, comprehensive and integrated solutions for all participants in the health care ecosystem. Insta will benefit from Practo's expertise in mobile technology and their geographic and global presence," said Emani.

In 2015, Practo grew six-fold to become one of the fastest-growing health-care platforms in the world, with nearly 200,000 practitioners.

Apart from India, Insta Health has about 500 hospitals and clinics in 12 countries span across the West Asia, South East Asia and Africa. Cloudnine, Deepam Hospitals, MyDentist (India), DaVita (India) and Malaysia, Skyline Hospital in Manila, NMC Group of hospitals in UAE and Karen Hospital in Kenya are some of the customers of Insta.