 "Practo goes on an acquisition spree after its funding from Tencent")
Indian healthcare start-up Practo today announced that it acquired Qikwell, a site for booking appointments at hospitals. The deal size remains undisclosed.
Last week, Practo acquired Insta Health Solutions, a hospital information management tool that automates scheduling, registration, billing, electronic medical records, ward and bed management, diagnostics, and insurance.
Qikwell helps in appointment booking, reducing waiting times for patients. The start-up also has a tool for contactless payment at the hospital. It claims to reduce the average wait time by a factor of three.
40M appointments
Practo’s flagship product is a search tool that helps find doctors and book appointments. Besides adding doctors from Qikwell’s database of hospitals, the acquisition will also improve the booking experience on Practo’s site.
“The acquisition makes us the world’s largest appointment booking platform with 40 million appointments managed every year,” says Practo founder Shashank ND.
Qikwell will operate as a separate division, with founders Krishna Prasad and Raghavendra Prasad TS will remaining in charge. Before starting up, Krishna worked at Yahoo as a scientist. Raghavendra was a business operations leader at Honeywell Technologies.
Eating up the small fishes
Practo is one of the most heavily-funded start-ups in India. It recently secured a $90 million in series C round led by China’s Tencent.
Practo claims to list 200,000 healthcare practitioners on its service and enable 10 million searches a month. It has 1,500 employees on the payroll.
Practo claims to list 200,000 healthcare practitioners on its service and enable 10 million searches a month. It has 1,500 employees on the payroll.
Practo previously acquired FitHo, a preventive healthcare app which offers advice on nutrition and exercise. It also acqui-hired Genii, an outsourcing firm that has been helping ecommerce, financial, and media firms build up their online portals.
