Sandeep Bhatia's journey from woking in an MNC to starting his own startup 'HELO Health' - Medicircle

Learn Sandeep Bhatia's journey from working in an MNC to selecting the entrepreneurial path with HELO Health. Know more about the struggles, goals and future plans of his venture.

Sandeep Bhatia is a serial entrepreneur who has founded HELO Health and Adarsa. He has gained experience by spending 25 years in renowned organizations like Canon, Forbes & Philips. He has expertise in building teams and businesses from scratch to scale. He is now using his skills in the healthcare space. He had completed his B.E in Electrical and Electronics and later did a Strategic Leadership Program from IIM Bangalore.

Working in MNCs vs. Working in one’s own venture

Sandeep Bhatia begins, “I would like to break it up into 2 parts - why I began entrepreneurship and how it is different from working in an MNC. My main motivation behind starting a startup was to give back to society. I realised that for that freedom and independence, I needed to start a venture of my own. So once my mind was set on being an entrepreneur, the question of what to do arose.”

“In the last decade, I had brought in a lot of innovative changes in the banking sector. That rich experience taught me that retail and healthcare are 2 arenas in this country that needed innovation on the customer experience side. I made the choice of healthcare for the obvious reasons, as we were then in the Covid times. It also married well with my desire to give back to society.”

“A lot of investment is done in the sector of healthcare information system, healthcare management system, strengthening backend and more. But not a lot of investment is done on the frontend or the user experience side. So I zoomed in on customer experience and healthcare screening as a focus area. Where I felt I could make a difference using my experience.”

“The next question was whether the opportunity was big enough. So I researched and came to an estimation that the health screening opportunity, a subset of health-tech opportunity, is worth $1 billion in the next 5 years in India alone. I am talking about the tangible opportunities for devices in software and services. The scale of the opportunity and it connecting with my wish to give back to the society made me take the plunge as I turned 50.”

“Talking about MNCs, I would say that I have worked with MNCs all my life. These are great places to learn, perform, earn and develop a worldview. My experience with MNCs has helped me think on a global scale. But having one’s own venture can be extremely challenging. Instead of the advantage of a big brand of an MNC, in the startup space, you have to build your own brand. Here your company brand and personal brand all get merged with each other.”

About HELO Health

Sandeep Bhatia says, “Our mission is to democratise health screening as it is an area that is often ignored. This also delays diagnosis and treatments. If we only talk about India, healthcare access and its cost are issues. They are an individual issue as well as a cause and effect issue.”

“To cut down on this cost and time is the genesis of our offering. Presently we have a solution for corporate employees where they can get their health screening done. This helps them to check their health parameter. There is also a face recognition algorithm that helps mark their attendance and regulates access to the premises. All this is a touchless operation. In addition to this, we also have a solution for clients or hospitals to install it at their frontend which would help them manage their visitor experience. So these are our offerings.”

HELO Health’s USP

Sandeep Bhatia explains, “If I were to analyse the offerings of others and compare it to what we offer, then our USP is the completeness to our solution and the tightly integrated nature of our offering. So we don’t provide a small part of it but give the entire solution for health screening. That includes the device, a scalable and secure SaaS platform, facial recognition algorithm, data analytics, we are building an early warning system and we have manage services. So any client that ties up with us gets end-to-end services.”

Products in the Pipeline

Sandeep Bhatia adds, “I am excited to answer this question. If I were to explain healthcare then it is the maintenance of health via prevention, diagnosis, treatments and cure of disease or illnesses in people. Now there lies a time gap between the occurrence of the illness and its diagnosis and treatment.” 

“Anyone with a health issue has to approach a doctor who would prescribe certain tests. This in an urban area takes 24 to 48 hours. But in tier 2 and tier 3 cities, one has to travel long distances and this makes them lose their wages and this raises their costs. So we focus on getting their time to a minimum, from the earlier few days to a few minutes.”  

“We are able to do this by building a solution for medical-grade accurate and portable health ATM. This will have a device for testing and will be able to give on the spot results for vitals, biochemistry, haematology, urine parameters and cardiac and inflammation marks. We are also building an integrated telemedicine app for users, doctors and e-pharmacy services. So we don’t want to only offer the devices but provide end-to-end delivery of services.”

“Another neglected area is health records. Today they are all in disparity even in urban areas. Even I as my health record carry a file full of papers. So when the prescription is to be given, it is either unavailable or lying in a file. So we are building a repository for cloud-based health records. This system will of course use our face recognition algorithm, data analytics and early warning system.”

“So we are developing an end-to-end platform for users, healthcare providers and pharmacies. We will also enable online payment to help the fulfilment of those transactions. This will make a difference in the quality of healthcare access and will also help expedite diagnosis and treatment. While it will improve the user experience in urban India, for rural India it would be the most pertinent solution.”

Funding for HELO Health

Sandeep Bhatia mentions, “We have been bootstrapped for a year. But we are looking to raise an angel funding of Rs 2 crores. We have planned and worked out the usage of funding.”

“There are 2 clear areas where we will use the funds. The first thing we would do is develop the portable health ATM solution and here we would conduct 5-6 pilot projects. Another thing is we want to commercialize our existing health ATMs or health screening solution we have for corporates. And take this further to the rest of the country. So these are the 2 areas our funds will be utilised -develop new solutions and commercialize existing solution.”

HELO Health’s Customer Base

Sandeep Bhatia says, “In the last year we have done pilot sales of close to 30 units. Which is spread across 5 clients. If you had to ask me about the estimate of lives we have impacted, then it would be difficult for me to access. If I were to estimate a number based on the transactions then I would say close to half a million transactions done on our devices.”

HELO Health’s Revenues

Sandeep Bhatia says, “Our pipeline is very robust. We were there only for 2 months in FY21. We were just starting out and had no revenues in FY21. But in FY22, we expect to close at Rs 2 million in revenue. Along with closing the order book at a similar amount.”

HELO Health’s Goals

Sandeep Bhatia mentions, “Our goals are tough but pretty straightforward. So we plan to develop a portable health ATM solution. This is tough but we will be building this and would conduct 5-6 pilot tests. Our second target is to commercialize our existing solution. Here we are targeting 1000 units in sales in the next year. We would want to reach the top cities in India but as we expand we would need a robust backend. So we are looking to set up a helpdesk to manage services and also a service management system. For transactions, we have taken up a target to do a million transactions. Gradually we want to make this a monthly occurrence. Lastly, our aim is to make HELO Health a brand of choice for health screening.” 

(Edited by Priyal Shah)

 

Contributed By: Sandeep Bhatia, Founder, HELO Health
Tags : #Top-Innovative-Healthcare-Startup-Series #SandeepBhatia #HELOHealth #healthscreening #healthcarestartup #Indianstartup #smitakumar #medicircle

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