Vivant is aiming for a user base of two million in next two years: Adrit Raha

Launched in July 2018, after India-based AllizHealth and Singapore-based Symple Wellness Platform came together, Vivant is looking to expand its business to occupational health and wellness space and also introduce voice-enabled apps, vernacular languages, among other things. For this, Vivant is considering raising growth capital, its CEO Adrit Raha said in an interview with Ateeq Shaikh.

This business-to-business enterprise focuses on providing their platform to insurance providers, insurance brokers, corporates and healthcare providers, who, in turn, take it to their end-consumers. 

What was the idea behind Vivant?

The genesis of Vivant is unique and interesting. It was launched in July 2018, after India based AllizHealth and Singapore-based Symple Wellness Platform joined hands in a cash plus equity deal. AllizHealth had been a dominant player in the Indian healthcare technology space for over four years with an outstanding client base, whereas Symple Wellness, virtue its location and backing by an eminent Singapore-based family office, had all the necessary chutzpah to go big in the South East Asian market. So it was a coming together of two extremely synergistic groups with complimentary skillsets, but both tied with a common goal of challenging the healthcare status quo and addressing the growing concern over non-communicable or lifestyle diseases.

How much fund have you raised? What's the revenue stream, margins and profitability like?

We believe in the core philosophy that the best funders of your venture are your customers. Since the acquisition, our customer base has grown significantly and we have, and are, in the process of onboarding several leading enterprise clients. This has given us the necessary cushion and runway for the next few months and there isn't an immediate need for capital raise. However, having said that and given our ambitious expansion plans, we are considering an external investment, primarily to serve as growth capital and as validation of our growth plans. Our revenues primarily come from our comprehensive health and wellness platform, which we sub-license to various enterprise customers, either on an annual subscription model or on a per-user, per-annum fee based structure. We currently serve over nine hundred thousand lives and are aiming for a user base of about two million in the next two years. This would put us on the path to profitability.

By when do you see Vivant becoming profitable?

I have set myself some very aggressive targets of attaining profitability by the end of this financial year. Although, realistically, I think it would be fair to say that we will achieve profitability by mid to end of the financial year 2018-21. We aren't too bogged down by the notion of profitability so early in our growth phase. We foresee healthcare to be a tremendous data economy in the next few years, and given our early inroads and the volume and velocity of our data growth, we stand a great chance to encash on the same. We are deliberately delaying our data monetisation strategy as we believe healthcare is quite unique as compared to e-commerce and you need to build that trust and empathy with an end consumer before trying to upsell or cross sell your services. So, at present, our sole focus is on the aspects of user acquisition and strengthening our user engagement story. Profitability will follow as we get these two things right.

What is digital healthcare? And how big is this digital healthcare market in India?

Broadly speaking, digital health utilises mobile health (mHealth), health information technology (IT), wearable devices, tele health and telemedicine, and personalised medicine etc, to bring together the stakeholders in healthcare system such as patients, healthcare practitioners, researchers, medical device industry firms together and make the healthcare system efficient. It empowers consumers and helps them take the right decision at the right time, armed with the right information. According to the National Association of Software and Services Companies, the Indian Healthcare Information and Communications Technology (ICT) market was a whopping $1 billion in 2014 and is expected to grow 1.5 times by 2020. A major portion of the projected growth is expected to be driven by digital healthcare ventures. We don't believe healthcare technology is at a nascent stage in India, with the country most definitely being further along when you compare it to the rest of South East Asia. Yes, the space is certainly extremely chaotic, and there is a dire need to bring some method to the madness. The transformation of our healthcare system, as we so perceive it, is quite clearly underway. Recent initiatives both at government level and by private players and healthtech companies demonstrate a degree of diligence and considerable amount of strategising. But all the ecosystem participants need to work towards better utilisation of data, moving towards value-based care and incorporating an ethos built around customer centricity; collaborate and work alongside other ecosystem players and not treat information with discrete handoffs.

What makes you stand apart from the competition?

Competition is always good. It prevents you from getting complacent, serves as a beacon at times, and given the size and opportunity of the Indian healthcare market, it is not necessarily a winner takes all proposition. So there is enough and more room for multiple players. Having said that, there are two crucial aspects that differentiate us from rest in the field. First, we have an absolutely fantastic team in place with expertise drawn from various fields, from the founders of AllizHealth to the new influx of people with start-up experience, background in managing wellness initiatives for billion-dollar companies and a Board of advisors with significant expertise in the health and wellness space. Having the right team in place is half the battle won. The second factor is our legacy and our unwavering focus towards delivering the best value to our enterprise clients. When we started, there were several players offering similar services, but the long gestation period of healthtech took a toll on many of our peers. Even with limited access to capital, we stood firm with our vision and market approach. We never took our foot off the pedal and as result today we are foremost when it comes to wellness technology ventures, not just in India, but in whole of Asia.

Who are your target group?

We are a B2B enterprise player and focus on providing our platform to enterprises who in turn take it to their end-consumers. By enterprise we mean insurance providers, insurance brokers, TPAs, corporates (more specifically the blue-collar occupational health space) and healthcare providers. We sublicense our platform to these groups and in the majority of cases, are their exclusive partners for all health and wellness initiatives. We started with the Indian market, but, now with enhanced bandwidth and access to capital, we are quite aggressive with our plans for South East Asia and MENA (Middle East and North Africa) regions.

What are your expansion plans for India?

We are extremely bullish on the Indian Healthtech space. We believe it is at the cusp of a massive paradigm shift with respect to how health is perceived and delivered. Having already established ourselves as a formidable player in the Indian space, we are now looking at several different ways to make further inroads, and, more significantly make a deeper impact. We are quite excited with two areas in particular. One, with the entire occupational health and wellness space, given a large number of manufacturing setups and base of pyramid workforce, there is a tremendous amount of value addition that a healthtech venture like ours can bring in. From making the occupational health centres paperless to interpreting employee health data and build health-based cohorts, identifying major risk areas and workers needing immediate medical attention, there is a significant synergy to be derived from implementing a wellness platform. Secondly, the proliferation of smartphones and cheaper data plans have brought the entire strata of society online and have expanded the pie for healthcare services. By introducing voice-enabled apps, vernacular options and peer-to-peer forums, Vivant is looking to strategically reach out to this new group of online users and bring them onboard. This number could be quite staggering as the number of internet users is expected to reach 627 million by the end of this year. So, we are furthering our presence and investment in India to take advantage of these shifts. In short, expansion plans for India are extremely impressive and with that, we're looking to take what we've learnt in India and implement it to other markets outside.