1Crowd, others invest in rural health-tech startup Karma Healthcare
Summary
The company will use the fresh funds to scale up its operations and beef up its technology offering to improve the quality of its healthcare services, Jagdeep Gambhir, founder and chief executive of Karma Healthcare, said.Founded in 2014, Karma Healthcare sets up health centres in rural areas, which provide a range of health services including web-enabled patient-doctor consultations, face-to-face doctor consultations and medicines to patients. A community health worker, who is a nursing staff, is employed at this clinic.Whenever a patient walks into one of these clinics, the community health worker records vital parameters, facilitates a video consultation between the patient and a physician, prints the e-prescription emailed by the doctor and provides medicines free of cost. When the patient requires a more detailed medical examination or admission, patients are guided to the appropriate tertiary care/specialist facilities in nearby cities and towns.Karma Healthcare, which currently has operations in Rajasthan and Haryana, claims to have conducted over 50,000 consultations and operates 10 e-doctor clinics, the company said in the statement.Access to healthcare, healthcare financing and ensuring equitable services remain a major concern. This leads to a selection of inappropriate and expensive medical facilities, which can increase disease complexity and financial burden, the company stated on its website.A management graduate in finance and operations from the Indian School of Business (ISB), Gambhir was a technology analyst with Goldman Sachs before venturing on his own.Earlier this month, 1Crowd marked the first close its debut angel fund at Rs 23 crore ($3.5 million). It will initially invest around $500,000 in a firm and then subsequently increase its stake.Last week, Bengaluru-based Terra Blue, which operates as TerraBlue XT, received a commitment of Rs 2 crore from The North East Venture Fund, the first dedicated venture capital fund for northeastern India.