Practo raises USD 55 million in series D funcing

Online healthcare platform Practo today announced it has raised USD 55 million (over Rs 374 crore) series D funding, in a round led by Tencent, with which it aims to further build an integrated platform for the entire healthcare ecosystem and invest further in its international operations.
With this funding three new investors- ru-Net from Russia, RSI Fund (owned by Recruit Holdings) from Japan and Thrive Capital from New York, USA have joined Practo, top company officials said.
They said other existing investors Sequoia Capital, Matrix Partners, Capital G (formerly Google Capital), Altimeter Capital & Sofina also participated.
"We are very happy to get the new investors on board and we are looking forward to continue to build a really innovative health care platform with their help, and taking it to all parts of India, and taking it to more parts around the globe," Practo Founder & CEO Shashank ND told reporters here.

He said "the series D will be largely used to help us build the platform to a greater degree and also we have seen some good initial results from international expansion, and we will continue to focus on that."
With the series D funding, the company has raised a total funding of USD 179 million till now.

Practo is the healthcare platform connecting patients with healthcare providers for all their healthcare needs - from finding the right healthcare provider to online doctor consultation, diagnostic tests, managing health records and even ordering medicines.
It also makes software products that help healthcare providers become more efficient and provide higher quality healthcare to patients.

Practo has focused on primarily markets like India, Brazil, Indonesia, and the Philippines and "that's where are seeing greatest traction," Shashank said. These markets are chosen because the health care is very fragmented in these regions and health insurance penetration is on the lower side.
Noting that Practo's international expansion has been going well, he said "last year we launched Brazil, our first Latin American country and it got of to a good start...Indonesia and Philippines are doing good as well...."
He said "Practo's focus has been on South East Asia and Latin America where the company will continue to focus on, while its enterprise business has been doing good in Middle East with office in Dubai which is also doing well,we will continue to focus on these geographies."

More than 20 per cent of Practo's revenue is from international markets.
The city -based start-up already operates in 15 countries, including Singapore, Indonesia and the Philippines, across over 50 cities.
Stating the next big area that Practo is going to be would be health insurance, Shashank said "we will be helping consumers with the goal of connecting the insurance players better with the consumers."
"Our next big foray is into health insurance....This year is going to be an important year for Practo from health insurance point of view," he said, noting that the company will soon come out with an announcement in this regard.

"...There is lot of open opportunities in the health insurance space that Practo can focus on. This is all possible because Practo is a neutral platform for health care ecosystem...." he added.
Responding to a question on breaking even and turning profitable, Shashank said, "Our enterprise business has been doing well for us, the revenues are more from enterprise side. We have been doing well on monetisation...."
On IPO plans, he said, "I think with the international expansions taking good shape and substational revenue now being international, it looks like an IPO in international market is how we think going forward, but there is no update on that for now. We are focused on our business for now.