Ritesh Banglani

As every parent knows, small children never fall ill during the day. When a child wakes up with a raging fever (or in a pool of vomit) at 2 am, the parent usually has one overriding concern: is it something serious that merits a visit to the ER? If only a doctor were available in the middle of the night to help answer that question.

Our newest investment, mFine, addresses precisely this concern. They operate a mobile platform that allows patients to consult doctors from top hospitals any time of the day or night. For patients who need long-term care, such as diabetics, pregnant women or post-operative patients, they provide continuous medical care through the app.

All this is enabled through a smart assistant that uses Artificial Intelligence to improve the quality of diagnosis and optimize the doctor’s time.

This is the story of our investment in mFine, and why we think this tiny app can change the world of healthcare.

mFine is founded by two former executives from Myntra, India’s largest fashion retailer. Ashutosh Lawania co-founded Myntra in 2007 and shepherded it to more than $1B in revenue before leaving this year to start mFine. Prasad Kompalli was an SVP at software major SAP before joining Myntra as Chief Business Officer in 2012.

The team is rounded out with the addition of former colleagues Ajit Narayanan (previously CTO at Myntra) and Arjun Chaudhary (previously head of Digital Marketing). Dr. Jagadish Prasad, interventional neuro-radiologist and founder of Femiint Hospitals brings strong clinical expertise to mFine.

In the recent past, we have come across some excellent companies founded by senior executives from established startups. We have already invested in two such companies – Wydr and Noticeboard – and mFine is our third such investment.

There are several reasons we believe successful startup executives will make great founders. They have delivered rapid growth amidst extreme chaos. They have run a never-ending series of business experiments, but also quickly doubled down on the ones that worked. They have gone through repeated failure and yet have been able to recognize success when they saw it.

This is not to say they won’t make mistakes – we just hope those are new mistakes.

“mFine has a massive headroom to create a $100M+ business over the next 7-8 years.”

The market opportunity for mFine is a no-brainer. There is a $40 Billion market for just primary healthcare in the country. Of the roughly 1 million doctors in India, approximately 80% are general physicians or primary care specialists. In addition, some portion of the $60 Billion secondary and tertiary care market is also available for online penetration.

The current level of online penetration is minuscule. By our estimates, no more than $50-60 Million of healthcare expenditure (not including pharma sales) is currently online. This gives mFine massive headroom to create a $100M+ business over the next 7-8 years.

During our diligence, we spoke to more than 50 patients about their health needs and the opportunity for online consultations. We are convinced the need is real and widespread, and there is a strong value proposition for online consultations.

• Convenience: Going to the doctor for minor ailments is very inconvenient – involving traffic, commute, and wait times. Patients prefer to do a quick online consultation in such cases. This value prop applies to primary specialties, as well as certain secondary specialties like dermatology that can be done remotely.
• Availability: The only care options available outside of business hours are hospital emergency rooms. Patients value the ability to get a doctor’s opinion before rushing to the ER.
• Privacy: For certain healthcare issues like sexual health, infertility, depression, and other psychiatric issues, patients prefer to consult the doctor anonymously or privately.
• Second opinion: A significant portion of patients want to go online to validate the diagnosis or treatment plan they have received from their doctors.
  Medicines and lab tests: Patients value the ability to get an online prescription, and the ability to order medicines and lab tests online.

What we particularly like about mFine’s technology is how they have created an AI application to benefit both doctors and patients. The most scarce resource in healthcare is the doctor’s time. Yet the average doctor spends the bulk of their time in activities that do not involve applying clinical judgment. mFine’s product attempts to accomplish at least some of those tasks by machine, so the doctor’s time is freed up to focus on clinical diagnosis and treatment. The machine also reduces the probability of human error in the mechanical tasks of symptom reporting and probing, which is likely to improve the quality of diagnosis for the patient.

In addition to significant technology prowess, building a self-learning decision support system of this kind requires massive amounts of data. The mFine team has cleverly utilized public-domain clinical data sets to train the initial machine learning model, which will obviously improve as more and more consultations happen on the platform.

“They will need to prove the benefits of their AI engine to both patients and doctors”

Of course, an early stage investment like mFine, especially one with a large technology element, is not without risk. They are not the first company in this space, and at least a few competitors are well-funded. We expect them to differentiate themselves both on their technology and stronger value proposition. They will need to prove the benefits of their AI engine to both patients and doctors, and also convince the patient to pay a premium for the convenient and high-quality clinical service.

Our team at Stellaris is convinced that mFine is one of the boldest innovations in Indian healthcare, and we are excited to partner with them in their journey, in sickness, and health.

A version of this article was published in Mint on September 3, 2018

Through the tumult of the past few decades, one fixture has remained constant on Indian roads – the humble motor scooter. From the elegant Lambrettas of the 1960s our grandfathers rode, to the spanking new Athers our children desire, the scooter has remained our favourite mode of transport.

With approximately 200 million two-wheelers on the road, India is by far the largest market globally for motorcycles and scooters. Most middle-class Indians, even those who don’t have a scooter at home, learn how to ride one at an early age. As the chart below shows, even car owners prefer to commute by two-wheelers by a factor of 4 to 1. All of this makes India an ideal market for technology disruption on two wheels.

We have just invested in one such company, Vogo, that uses mobile and IoT technology to let you ride a scooter from anywhere to anywhere. Vogo offers a simple service: use their app to find a scooter near you, ride it to where you want, and leave it there for the next customer to use. The service is similar to popular Chinese bicycle-sharing services Ofo and Mobike, except that our roads, traffic, climate and usage habits all favour scooters over bicycles.

The past two decades have seen a massive buildout of public transport infrastructure in our cities. In 2000, Kolkata (then Calcutta!) was the only Indian city with metro rail. Today most large Indian cities have rapidly expanding metro networks. While the metro provides good arterial connectivity, there are few solutions for last-mile travel to and from metro stations. As per our user research, 54% of respondents would prefer to use public transport, but don’t because of lack of first/last mile connectivity. Millions of potential public transport users are either adding to the congestion on our roads, or are paying more to get to the station than the cost of the metro ride itself.

Self-drive scooters can provide an efficient and affordable feeder network that gets people to and from public transport end-points quickly and inexpensively.

The promise of scooter sharing is not limited to public transport connectivity though. Our research shows that upwards of 80% of our day-to-day travel happens within 3 km of our homes. Widely available scooters can significantly reduce the inconvenience of waiting for autos and taxis, or alternatively wading through traffic and finding parking for a personal car. In our user research below, commuters using a wide range of transport options showed a high willingness to adopt self-drive scooters.

Source: Stellaris research

Self-driving vehicles may be a few years away, but self-driving consumers are here already

Shared scooters have the opportunity to be India’s most affordable form of motorized transport. The cost advantage stems from two factors: higher utilization and self-driving. While our personal scooters stand still for a majority of the day while we are at work, a shared scooter can work all day and do 8-12 daily rides. This means the scooter’s cost is amortized over a much larger number of kilometers driven every month, bringing down the cost per kilometer drastically. Equally importantly, unlike with cabs and autos, scooter riders don’t have to pay anyone to drive them to their destinations – self driving vehicles may be a few years away, but self-driving consumers are here already! As a result, a shared scooter costs less than half what an autorickshaw does, making them widely accessible for the daily use of most middle class Indians.

The service leverages technology in every step of the process: from showing the location of nearby scooters in the app, to unlocking the scooter on demand for the right user, to ensuring that scooters are available in areas of high demand, to letting the company know when a scooter requires refuelling or maintenance. Several of these processes could not have been automated even a few years ago, and therefore the service would either not exist or be too expensive for a majority of Indians.

India can demonstrate the world’s first large-scale, unsubsidized, mass-market adoption of electric vehicles

The biggest technology leap in transportation, though, is still ahead of us: the transition to electric vehicles (EVs). Shared scooters are likely to be the first viable EVs in India – they are utilized far more than personal vehicles, have a critical mass to make battery-swapping viable, and can leverage the provider’s wide and distributed parking network for battery charging. From the company’s point of view, EVs will eliminate the need for centralized refuelling and dramatically reduce maintenance requirements. If the current cost curves hold, we expect the transition to electric to start within two years, and demonstrate the world’s first large-scale, unsubsidized, mass-market adoption of electric vehicles.

Of course, scooter sharing ventures are not without risk. Unlike other transportation aggregators (for flights, buses, taxis etc.), shared scooters will not operate in a marketplace model. That means the company will be responsible for everything from refuelling to maintenance to inventory redistribution, all operationally intensive tasks even when aided by technology. It will also be a capital-intensive business with the company owning all the scooters – while asset financing is widely available, the service providers will need to raise large amounts of capital to fund deposits and operate the scooters. And like in every other venture-funded space in India, there will be intense competition for both customers and investors.

Regardless of who wins, scooter-sharing represents a unique opportunity for technology-led change: to revolutionize how India commutes; to decongest our roads and make public transport accessible; to pave the way for greener transport for all; to once again make the scooter buland bharat ki buland tasveer!‍