Deal focus: Portea takes healthcare to the home

After completing the sale of her previous business, TutorVista, in 2013, Meena Ganesh looked at investments in a number of areas, but there was always a strong personal interest in healthcare.

Through their GrowthStory platform, Ganesh and her husband identify business ideas, assemble teams and provide seed capital. The likes of online grocery store BigBasket.com and online jeweler Bluestone have gone on to receive institutional VC funding.

In Portea Medical, however, Ganesh recognized an opportunity to build and directly lead a consumer healthcare services company. "There was no one providing healthcare services at the consumer level across the country," she says. "Healthcare is fairly regional and the large firms are tertiary care centers and diagnostic chains."

Portea began in 2012 as a two-person start-up that worked with hospitals to deliver ongoing care to discharged patients. GrowthStory rolled the business into a new platform with bigger ambitions. The company now has a network of 3,000 healthcare professionals across 24 cities in India and four in Malaysia, making 60,000 home visits to patients every month.

This scale has been achieved on the back of a $7.6 million Series A round of funding from Accel and Ventureast in 2013, with Qualcomm Ventures coming in the following year. Last week Accel Partners led a $37.5 million Series B with participation from the International Finance Corporation, as well as Qualcomm and Ventureast.

Hospital relationships are still part of Portea's business but 60% of customers now come to the company directly. In addition to providing primary care services and looking after discharged patients, Portea has dedicated services targeting the elderly and patients with chronic conditions.

At the core of the company's system is a mobile app that ensures healthcare professionals know where they need to go, what services they need to provide, and which data they should capture on a patient's condition. Patients also have access to the system.

There are plans to add up to 5,000 staff over the next 18 months. These will be a mixture of experienced healthcare providers and individuals who come through the Portea training program. Ganesh notes that revenue expansion tends to be linked to people growth, but there are various specialized services, in areas such as palliative and oncological care, that deliver higher margins.

Portea's asset-light model - when entering a new city it requires an operating office, training facilities, and a marketing push to hire staff and promote its services - means expansion can be relatively smooth. Rather, the challenge is one of brand-building.

"We need to ensure we can provide a high-quality service on a consistent basis," Ganesh says. "We want to build a brand in consumer healthcare services so it is important customers know what we stand for and how we do it. We must be engaged with the customer."

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• Topics
• Venture
• South Asia
• Healthcare
• Technology
• Technology
• healthcare
• Venture
• Accel Partners
• IFC
• Ventureast
• Qualcomm Ventures
• India