Ambulance aggregator eyes world standards

Hyderabad: As the race between ambulance aggregators gather pace, firms are focusing on reducing the time required for an ambulance to reach a location.

Hyderabad-based eSahai — a medical transport solutions provider —  too has set an ambitious target to close the gap with the world standard of seven minutes.

Speaking to this newspaper, eSahai CEO and founder Hari Bharadwaj said, “Currently, we take slightly more than 15 minutes for our ambulances to reach a location. We hope to reduce this time to 9 minutes over the next six to eight months. By using the latest technology such as AI, we plan to dynamically position our ambulances so that the time can be reduced.”

Mr Bharadwaj, 48, had been toying with the idea of a startup for sometime before taking the plunge in September 2016.   

“There was always a desire to become an entrepreneur. It’s risky, but nothing comes without risk.  I’ve been able to use all my corporate experience, but entrepreneurship is a different ball game altogether. What you’ve learnt in corporate life is one piece of it and this is  very different.”

Born in Kurnool, Mr Bharadwaj has spent most of his life in Bengaluru but decided to set up his business in Hyderabad. When asked for the reason behind this, he said: “The city is a hub for startups and even the healthcare sector is quite mature.”

However, Mr Bharadwaj had eyes on the fintech sector before finalising on healthcare segment.

“During our research, we saw a vaccum in the medical transport. I wanted to set up a credit bureau but it had many challenges,” he said.

Like any other startup, the road till here has not been smooth for eSahai either. “There were two key challenges. Adaptability to technology was the biggest. Vendors had  never used such technology before. So we had to cajole and convince them to use our platform. Even hospitals were a tough nut to crack. As they were set to their old methods of manually calling for ambulances, it took time for them to understand our concept. But now, things are improving as they are willing to hear from us.”

“Second, this is a nascent industry. Investors look at the revenue; the idea can make five years down the line. It may not fall in that category but has a significant potential to it. it also has a slight social element in it.”

Compared to other ambulance aggregators such as CallAmbulance, Amby, StanPlus, eSahai’s medical taxi provides the company with its unique identity. The medical taxi are vehicles partially modified to meet the transport needs of persons with disability and senior citizens.

“India’s infrastructure isn’t quite friendly to people with disabilities. We saw that transporting such persons becomes an arduous task for their caretakers. Our modified medical taxis are used even by other aggregators.”

On future plans, eSahai plans to scale to eight cities over the next year and increase the fleet size to cater to the exact need.