IIT graduates try hands at entrepreneurship, develop healthcare app

Students pursuing their graduation degree from Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) are known to be very innovative and if you do not believe us you can read about innovations by IIT students here.

 

To cater to their innovative side, IIT graduates are known to embrace entrepreneurship and even the educational institutes are now encouraging IITians to try their hands at entrepreneurship by offering them with the cushion of applying for a deferred placement.

 

However, even before such an initiative was taken up by the IITs, students at these famed engineering institutions were opting for entrepreneurship and we know this because many IITians have made it big in the world of business due to their hardwork and thereafter working consistently towards making their ideas a reality.

 

And keeping true to this tradition of thinking out-of-the-box, six IIT Bombay graduates have developed India’s first map based “Doctor” search engine called – Healthcare 24 by 7.

 

Before understanding why, how and when this new app/search engine was developed by these IIT Bombay graduates, let us first learn about the brains behind this innovative venture:

We spoke to Kapil Wanaskar, the Business Lead of Healthcare 24 by 7 who shared insights into this new app developed by these IIT Bombay grads:

We are a team of six IIT Bombay graduates from Mechanical and Computer Science Engineering. We are all 2014 graduates. Among us I am the Business Lead, Anurag Meena is the Tech Lead, Rahul Beniwal and three others from IIT Bombay

To explain briefly: A person is new in a city and suddenly he/she faces some health related issue. So, obviously he/she will need to search for a good doctor to treat their case. And since they are new to the city they cannot consult their mother, father or friends who live in their hometown for guidance.

So, they head out to surf the internet for websites and apps to locate the best doctors who are closest to their place of residence. However, they are not able to perform this cumbersome task because all the websites enquire about the area in which the person is staying and thereafter give the doctors' information with respect to the areas around them, which they are not aware about.

Here, comes in our app – HealthCare24by7 which automatically traces the person’s location and shows it on the map. Along with that, on the same map the app also shows the location and speciality of doctors located closed to where they are standing at that specific moment. The map also navigates them to the clinic or hospital selected by them which ensures their safety as they don’t have to share the exact location of their destination with unknown people.

So, through our app the task of “Doctor Search” for people who do not have knowledge about localities in a new city has been made easier.

In order to use the app one has to simply search for “healthcare24by7” on their google play store/ Android app. After this, they need to select their current location and then find the best doctors located closest to them.

I was inspired by my family’s medical background and IIT Bombay’s Entrepreneurship Environment. I was hunting for a start-up idea in healthcare technology field from December 2013. To work towards this goal, I met with more than 100 doctors, clinics & hospitals. Then, I started studying current healthcare startups and finally came up with the idea of setting up India’s First Map Based Doctor Search Engine.

Not as such. But SINE (Society for Innovation and Entrepreneurship), IIT Bombay helped me get exposure in the Entrepreneurship world.

We have spent around 1.5 lakhs on it. The task of collecting information about 5,000 doctors situated in seven cities took around three months.

Apart, from that we built the app within 10 days.

Yes, I appeared for placements. I got a job on Day 6 of the placement drive. But I didn’t join the job and continued working on my start-up after I graduated in July 2014.

We have not received any funding yet. But we invite all investors to join hands with us so that we can further expand this venture.

We are looking forward to increase the number of doctors on our listing to 100,000 in the next six months.

My father works as a Bank manager in Bank of Maharashtra. So, he understands the market very well. He is really supportive of my vision. In fact, he guides me at every crucial step to develop this business. He is my mentor.

Entrepreneurship gives you the power to do what you actually want to do. Money is a secondary thing. But the experience and business exposure you get here can’t be compared with any other profession.