The Market Monitor Minding the Nation's Business
Asian healthcare platform Practo announced recently that it had acquired Qikwell, a leader in appointment scheduling at hospitals, making the former the world’s largest appointment-booking platform with nearly 40 million appointments managed every year.
As a result, Practo gets a fantastic product that delivers a great consumer experience in hospitals and clinics by providing smooth appointment booking, significantly reducing waiting time, and contactless payments at hospitals.
The key proprietary technologies and algorithms help synchronize patients, doctors and front-office staff at the hospital to reduce the average waiting time by over three times, resulting in a much better consumer experience, as well as the better optimization of hospital operations. Practo will use this technology to improve the booking experience across its entire platform.
Founded in 2011, Qikwell now has more than 100 employees. Over the last four years, it has grown to become one of the leaders in hospital-appointment scheduling, with presence across 250 hospitals in 19 cities in India. It powers the patient experience in some of the top hospitals and has over 6000 doctors across India, including top pediatricians, gynecologists, neurologists and more.
“This is our fourth acquisition in the last five months. We continue our mission to help simplify and digitize healthcare globally and make Practo everyone’s health app. I am very pleased to welcome [co-founder and Chief Executive Officer (CEO)] Krishna [Prasad, co-founder and Chief Product Officer] Raghavendra [Prasad] and the Qikwell team to Practo,” Practo founder and CEO Shashank ND said.
“Practo has been the pioneer in digital health, and with this acquisition, Practo now becomes the world’s leading appointment-management platform. Over the coming months, we will continue our aggressive expansion and build the world’s leading healthcare technology platform,” he added.
“Qikwell is thrilled to join Practo in our quest to (enhance) digital healthcare worldwide. We share the same passion, vision and commitment to customers in offering great products,” Krishna said.
“We chose Practo over some other options because, together, we can offer superior, comprehensive and integrated solutions for all participants in the healthcare ecosystem….I look forward to working with Shashank and the Practo team in realizing our shared vision of transforming healthcare globally,” he added.