Doctor Search Portal Practo Buys Hospital Management Platform Insta Health For $12M

Doctor search platform Practo, which recently closed a $90 million Series C round led by China’s Tencent, is broadening its focus on catering to hospitals after buying up healthcare management firm Insta Health in a $12 million deal.

India-based Practo is best known as a medical search portal that helps patients connect with doctors and clinics. The company, which has expanded into Southeast Asia and plans further global launches, also offers a software solution for practices — Practo Ray — which manage the business side of things. That’s where the deal for the fellow Indian health tech startup — which was made in a combination of stock and shares — will expand its position.

The software part of the business may not be seen by end user patients, but it’s an important focus. It not only give patients better service, but it put clinics and doctors on its platform, giving it scale that makes it more relevant, appealing and useful for patients, as we explained earlier this year. The addition of seven-year-old Insta, which is backed by U.S.-based Inventus Capital Partnersextends that business management focus to hospitals.

Practo explained some of the practical benefits to the union in a blog post:

The acquisition will provide an option to hospitals using Insta’s product to integrate with Practo’s platform and thus provide a superior healthcare experience to patients by enabling them to search and easily find information about doctor availability across hospital and departments, instant bookings, as well as no wait times or queues once they reach the hospital for their appointment,” the comp. Patients will also be able to access all their health records after their discharge on Practo; either on the web or on the mobile app.

Practo confirmed that Insta will operate as its own entity, and it will continue to be helmed by founder and CEO Ramesh Emani, who was formerly CTO of IT services giant Wipro. As you’d expect Practo said that it will “integrate Insta deeply with [its] platform” going forward.

Shashank-ND-Practo-CEO-and-Founder-with-Ramesh-Emani-Insta-CEO

Emani (left) with Practo CEO and founder Shashank ND

There’s also an interesting international angle here. Practo is active in the Philippines and Singapore, but it intends to be in 10 international markets across Southeast Asia, Latin America, the Middle East and Eastern Europe by March of next year. To that end, Insta has over 500 hospital and clinic clients from 15 countries across South East Asia, the Middle East and Africa — in addition to India — which will give Practo a running start when the time comes to building its presence among doctors, clinics and hospitals in those markets.

This acquisition is Practo’s third of this year, and the first time that it has disclosed a price.

“This is the third of several acquisitions we’ve been evaluating as we continue our mission to help simplify and digitize healthcare around the world,” Shashank ND said in a statement.