An Emergency Services Startup, Two Unicorns, LinkedIn’s Top Picks And More

Prabhdeep Singh says he is out to “patch a broken emergency response system”.

“By 2030, we will have 20 crore people above the age of 60. As Indians, we are predisposed to issues of the heart, diabetes etc. A lot of emergencies come 10 years younger too. If a heart attack in the US has to come at 75, in India, we should expect it to come at 65.”

Singh is the founder and chief executive officer of StanPlus, a startup that provides ambulances in 15 Indian cities in 15 minutes or less.

“Pan India, there is no brand that manages emergencies at scale. In limited pockets, we have the 108 ambulance service that the government runs and hospitals that change from city to city, so there is no single number that one can rely on.”

The Hyderabad-based startup wants to change that. In 15 cities including as Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Chennai, Mumbai and Delhi, one can call on their number and expect immediate medical assistance.

But direct-to-consumer is not the route they have taken first. “We are launching our direct-to-consumer efforts soon, both through subscription and incident-based models. Our current go-to-market strategy is through hospitals and employers.”

Which means several top multi-city hospitals, such as recently-listed Krishna Institute of Medical Sciences, Narayana Hrudayalaya, Apollo Spectra, CK Birla, Fortis and Manipal have outsourced their emergency support units, staff and ambulances combined, to Stanplus. This allows the startup to earn revenues from the hospitals and also provide a network of hospitals for corporates as an emergency insurance package.

“We also enable employers to provide protection for their employees, inside and outside of the workplace as well.”

Citing the example of the recent death of Cyrus Mistry, the Shapoorji Pallonji group scion, Singh said, “Imagine you are a HR head and you get a call that one of your leaders has been in an accident in Navi Mumbai. How does a company take care of medical response for their employees?” He followed that up with an example of Zomato. “Not just leaders, what if one of Zomato’s delivery executive has an accident? It extends to partners.”

“We help large companies help protect their employees when something wrong happens.” He said companies already buy insurance policies and health check ups, but that’s all preventive.

StanPlus’ business is divided into two revenue streams, subscriptions and incidents. “Incidents make up 60%, while subscriptions are 40% of our revenue. Subscriptions are paid for by the hospitals and employers, and incidents are paid by users directly when they use our services.”

StanPlus owns all the advanced life support ambulances on their fleet. When questioned about the having expensive equipment on its own balance sheet, Singh said they are not an asset-light, but an asset-right model. “High-risk cases are taken care of on our fleet, and low-risk cases are outsourced to independent operators.”

Singh, who has raised close to Rs 200 crore so far from investors such as HealthQuad and Kalaari Capital, said there’s no pressure to raise funds anytime soon, but scaling-up technologically would require future rounds of funding.