Sri Lankan medtech startup oDoc has secured US$1 million in seed funding with investors to revolutionize the doctor’s visit.
The startup connects patients with doctors through an app on their smartphone – offering video consultations and electronic health records, as well as enabling patients for booking appointments.
Patients simply need to provide pre-consultation notes, upload their lab tests or photos of their ailments, and subsequently request a doctor. The doctor will then initiate a video call, review the patient’s symptoms and provide his prescriptions.
This is all done through the oDoc app which is currently available in three languages, including English, Sinhalese, and Tamil.
The startup’s fundraising efforts began earlier this year, having raised capital from investors including Phoenix Ventures, the investment arm of Sri Lankan top apparel exporter Brandix; Loits, the IT arm of conglomerate Lolc; and Ajit Gunewardene, the deputy head of John Keells Holdings.
This US$1 million capital also records the largest seed investment round for startups in Sri Lanka – a country which startup ecosystem is still young with more than 50 percent of their entrepreneurs bootstrapped.
Currently, oDoc does not plan to expand into the mass market – at least not yet.
Instead, it looks to build the conditions needed to let video consultation get caught on in India or Southeast Asia. To solve this, the team is taking a design approach to get a proper product-market fit.
According to oDoc, “the reason nobody has really cracked it is because they are looking at it as a medical problem. They were building it as an Uber for doctor of sorts. But it is really about changing behavior. So it is more of a design problem. It needed a fresh set of eyes.”
At present, oDoc earns its revenue by charging patients a consultation fee, of which oDoc gets a percentage. The startup is also mulling a subscription model as well.
