Curelink, a health-tech platform that connects doctors to patients via Whatsapp, said it has raised $3.5 million in Seed funding led by Elevation Capital and Venture Highway. The fresh funds will be used to ramp up hiring across functions such as product, growth and wellness professionals and for geographical expansion and diversification of services across different medical specialisations such as dermatology, paediatrics and psychiatry, the company said.

The round also saw participation from Digital Sparrow Capital and angels such as Vijay Shekhar Sharma (Paytm), Ankush Sachdeva and Farid Ahsan (Sharechat), Gaurav Agarwal, Prashant Tandon (Tata 1mg), Rajat K. Dhawan (McKinsey), Rohit M.A. (Cloudnine), Ritesh Malik (Innov8) and Harsh Mahajan (Mahajan Imaging) among others.

Founded in 2021 by Aman Singla and Divyansh Jain, Curelink is looking to reinvent chronic care management for millions of Indians in Tier II cities and beyond. Around 90% of out-of-clinic interactions in the healthcare industry happen on Whatsapp, the company claims.

“Curelink builds on this behaviour and allows doctors to seamlessly communicate and engage with their patients automatically- all within WhatsApp,” the release said.

India has a doctor-patient ratio of 1-1456 and doctors spend an average of 2 minutes with a patient. Doctors in India are therefore burdened with a large number of patients and given the paucity of time, they have to prioritise giving tactical, immediate advice (such as medicine dosage) over coaching their patients to manage their conditions better, it said.

“Today, 200 million people have incurable diseases such as hypertension, PCOS and diabetes. Many of these people, especially those who are older or do not spend too much time on the internet are unlikely to download a separate app to manage their health issues. They are however comfortable using WhatsApp to communicate with familiar medical professionals,” said Aman Singla, cofounder, Curelink.

Curelink is currently active in Gurgaon and Bhopal and plans to expand further in Delhi NCR, and experiment with the next tier of cities like Lucknow and Jaipur by the end of 2022.

The number of messages on the platform has seen a month on month growth of about 150%, the release said.

“Doctors are the focal point of healthcare delivery in India, and Curelink’s model of being a trusted aide to doctors resonated immediately with us. The team is hyper-focused on their stakeholders, which is amply evident in the design choices they have made: being WhatsApp-first for patients, enabling private and contextual consultations for doctors, and being squarely focused on outcomes,” said Vasudha Wadhera, vice-president at Elevation Capital.

“India needs telehealth 2.0. Chronic health conditions require ongoing supervision and management, but due to limited bandwidth, doctors are often unable to stay updated on their patients’ progress,” said Samir Sood, founding partner at Venture Highway.

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