The coronavirus pandemic has shown that healthcare is the one startup sector that can weather most storms. However, the many departments in most healthcare companies work in silos, which makes it tough to improve clinical outcomes.

It was to change this that Kunal Kishore Dhawan and Gaurav Gupta started Delhi-based healthtech startup Navia Life Care in 2016. Navia Life Care offers smart solutions to healthcare providers to increase patient loyalty, improve outcomes, and drive higher revenues.

“We aim to address the major issue of information asymmetry in the healthcare ecosystem. This includes lack of electronic medical records for easy access by patients and doctors, insights on prescription patterns for pharma, or even smaller-scale issues such as unavailability of waiting times in OPDs for patients or information about drug availability at their nearest pharmacies,” Kunal Kishore says.

Navia

Founders of Navia Life

Before starting Navia, Kunal Kishore and Gaurav worked together on a couple of pharma consulting projects. Kunal has a biotechnology and pharma background, and has worked at Fresenius and GSK. Gaurav is a techie with experience in corporates and at Surabhi Foundation.

Both came from families with chronic disease patients, and it seemed only natural to start a healthcare company after studying and working in the field.

In 2018, Nupur Khandelwal joined the Platform-as-a-Service provider as a co-founder. Nupur has a finance background and the other two founders brought her in for her expertise in strategy and consulting.

The Navia Life Care difference

Common problems that crop up at clinical centres include poor patient experience, which starts from the time of booking appointments to getting out of the hospital/clinic. This can take anywhere from 1.5 to 4.5 hours. This is often accompanied by poor record management, leading to poor diagnosis and sub-par clinical outcomes

Navia is going digital to bring efficiency and certainty to patient treatment and enable doctors to quickly and effortlessly create digital prescriptions.

“Patients also face inconvenience for follow-up visits or smaller ailments – not every follow-up requires physical presence or a visit to the hospital. Remote consultations are the need of the hour," Kunal says.

The healthcare ecosystem is complex: it encompasses providers, pharma, patients, and technology enablers. It includes patient-facing or B2C companies such as Practo, mfine, and Lybrate, along with B2B companies such as Navia, Healthplix, Doxper, and others.

“Our products are very simple for doctors to use; there is no change of behaviour required from the doctor or other stakeholders,” Nupur says.

Also ReadOTTs win over multiplexes in lockdown as Amazon Prime Video sets off ‘direct-to-digital’ in India What does Navia do?

Healthtech startup Navia has created a slew of offerings to help streamline healthcare – for doctors, patients, and other stakeholders. These include: 

Navi Voice: a voice-enabled smart digital assistant for doctors.Navi Trace: a simple pen and pad device that converts a handwritten prescription into digital format.Navi Scan: a portable scanner system that allows for image recognition-based digitisation of medical records.Navia QM: a seamless queue management and patient flow streamlining system for clinics and hospitals.Navia Video: a teleconsultation platform that is even more relevant in the wake of COVID-19. It lets patients consult their doctors and get prescriptions on video from the safety of their homes. Navi Smart EMR: This product helps doctors and hospitals digitise medical records without change in behaviour or increasing effort.

"Navia’s video consultation platform is integrated with Smart EMR, which allows a doctor to write a digital prescription while having a real-time conversation with the patient. It has an integrated and seamless payment gateway, and easy appointment scheduling for follow-ups,” Kunal says.

“Video calls can be initiated by doctors only at the scheduled time, protecting privacy and personal time.”

Navia won its first customer in late 2016 when the founders reached out to hospitals and doctors in their network with their full-stack concept. They built and evolved the product with the help of their first few customers.

“We were lucky to work with good hospitals and doctors early on. They were very forthcoming with feedback, which helped us in improving the product,” Gaurav says.

Since launch, the company has seen quite a few challenges. But the founders acquiesce that “no startup is complete without challenges”.

"Having a clear understanding of user pain points was the main challenge that we faced. We spent the last two years understanding and perfecting this,” Gaurav says.

“Spending time with doctors and in hospitals gave us a clear understanding of what ails the system, and how the people involved were likely to respond to new technologies or digital solutions.”

In the time of coronavirus, the company aims to continue supporting the healthcare ecosystem and is already working with hospitals for this to track and store patient records.

The business model

Navia runs on a B2B business model focused on clinics, small and medium-sized hospitals, and pharmaceutical companies.

The Platform-as-a-Service (PAAS) player offers a monthly subscription model, which is dependent on the client’s size and ability to pay. It has three products for three types of customers: NaviSmart EMR for doctors and hospitals, Navia QM for hospitals and clinics, and Navia INTERACT for pharmaceutical and life sciences companies.

Customers renew licences every 12 months; Navia claims a 100 percent renewal rate with 125 hospitals.

“We have partnered with local and international companies. International partnerships are always hard to execute. But, we are making our first foray into international markets in the coming months through efficient communication and focus on a good product,” Nupur says.

Navia is working with over 600+ doctors and 125+ hospitals in 10 cities across the country. It is working with a couple of large pharmaceutical companies and diagnostic firms as well. It has also partnered with a healthtech company overseas and expects to get international clients soon.

The focus on keeping costs low and unit economics-positive products has enabled the founders to work with smaller rounds of funding.

Navia raised a seed round and an angel round of investment. The key investor was Benori Ventures, led by Ashish Gupta, Co-founder and former COO of business research company Evalueserve. Other notable investors include Sorabh Agarwal, Dr Rahul Verma, and Mayank Mamtani.

The company did not want to disclose the size of the funding rounds or its revenue figures, as of now.

What comes next?

India's healthcare market is likely to reach $372 billion by 2022, driven by rising incomes, greater health awareness, lifestyle diseases, and increasing access to insurance, according to IBEF.

Healthcare and pharmaceutical industries have traditionally been R&D-heavy and thrive based on their innovation.

Hospitals have relied heavily on manual processes, from patient records to scheduling, and from managing internal processes of patient movement to communication between different stakeholders.

"Technology-enabled patient support programmes have shown a significant impact on the pharmaceutical industry in developed markets. Another area of impact has been the use of data analytics to improve hospital efficiency, which is widely successful in the West. Now, AI is also showing early impact in healthcare,” Kunal says.

As of now, Navia seems poised to take its product overseas successfully. It is working to make the product compliant for other countries and is exploring the Middle East and Southeast Asian markets currently.

“We have received support and interest from doctors and healthcare professionals from many different countries, which is very encouraging,” Gaurav says.

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Original Source: yourstory.com

Kumar Ritesh is a cybersecurity veteran. In his former role, he headed the cyber intelligence practice at Britain’s ‘secret intelligence service’ MI6. “My life has been a bit of an adventure. I worked in state intelligence for almost eight years,” he tells YourStory.

In 2016, after his injunction got over, Ritesh joined global analytics company Antuit.ai, and went on to set up its cyber analytics division – Cyfirma – in 2017. 

Cut to October 2019, Cyfirma was backed by investment banking and financial services giant Goldman Sachs, and later, demerged from Antuit to become an independent entity. “It was always a part of the agreement that once we grew, we would become a separate company,” Ritesh reveals. 

The startup is headquartered in Singapore and Tokyo, with an office in Bengaluru, where most of its product engineering happens. 

Even though cybersecurity and threat analytics are gaining importance globally, the focus largely lies on risk management than on risk prevention. That is the mindset Cyfirma wants to change with DeCYFIR, its threat discovery and cyber intelligence platform.

Kumar Ritesh _Cyfirma

Kumar Ritesh, Founder, Chairman and CEO, Cyfirma

With threat visibility and predictive analytics, the startup helps businesses connect the dots between threat actors, motives, methods, and campaigns (attacks). 

Founder-Chairman-CEO Ritesh says,

“The way cyber intelligence is looked at is changing in the last two or three years. Earlier, companies saw it as just another tool that can be added to their security infrastructure. But now, the market has begun to understand that cybersecurity is not just a disaster management thing; it can also be applied in strategy, compliance, policy, and all business decisions.”

Cyfirma claims it has on-boarded four new customers during the pandemic as the world moves towards a full-blown trade war (including cyber warfare) between the West and China, where the coronavirus originated. 

“More and more enterprises are now waking up to the need for predictive cyber intelligence for their businesses,” Ritesh says. 

Also ReadCoronavirus: Zoom crosses 300 million daily users; outlines new security planCyfirma’s core intelligence platform

Cyfirma offers its clients comprehensive real-time insights and intelligence into emerging cyber threats, attacks, hacking scandals, and more.

The platform enables businesses to understand the methods and motives behind potential cyberattacks, and helps them prepare for it accordingly. 

Its cloud-based threat discovery platform uses predictive algorithms to crawl through discreet sources like the dark web, deep web, hacker forums, closed communities, P2P channels, intelligence agencies, and even social and public discussion forums to identify threats. 

“We collect almost 100GB of data every eight hours,” says Ritesh. 

This data is stored in Amazon Web Services (AWS) servers and analysed to help businesses understand the context of the threat and prepare against cyber risks. 

Cybersecurity Company

Also ReadIndia created 170,000 tech jobs in 2018; AI, analytics, cybersecurity in demand: NASSCOM

Ritesh elaborates,

“Businesses can apply our threat intelligence to build their risk frameworks. We tell them things like which critical assets could the hackers break into, what the motive behind an attack is, what are they looking for — IP or financial gains, what could the likely mode of attack be — phishing, email or malware, and so on.

"We also help our clients understand the readiness of hackers – how soon are they going to launch a potential attack," he adds.

DeCYFIR uses AI and ML-led “analytical probability models” to prevent attacks. The data collected from secret sources is processed by these models to throw up indicators on the threats.

“We go three levels down from just identifying a malicious IP,” explains the founder.

However, Cyfirma does not execute any cyber programmes on their clients’ behalf. “We are like whistleblowers. We leave it to our clients to take action on the intelligence update we provide,” Ritesh adds. 

Without disclosing names, the founder shares that Cyfirma’s intelligence platform was able to save $400 million for one company. That amount would have been eroded off its topline if an imminent cyberattack wasn’t prevented. 

Incidentally, global cybercrime damages are projected to reach $6 trillion annually by 2021, according to Herjavec Group, a leading cybersecurity advisory firm.

Also ReadReliance's Jio Platforms raises $1.5B from private equity giant KKRBusiness model and growth

After almost two years of product development, Cyfirma rolled out its threat intelligence platform in 2019.

The startup has roped in 20 clients from across sectors, including manufacturing, technology, IoT, IT /BPO, banking and insurance, broadcasting, and more. “Our solution is sector-agnostic,” says Ritesh. 

Cyfirma claims its clients include global Fortune 500 companies, consulting firms, law enforcement agencies, defence establishments, and even governments. 

Ritesh says,

“CISOs (Chief Information Security Officers), CROs (Chief Risk Officers), CIOs (Chief Information Officers) and CCOs (Chief Compliance Officers) are our primary customers. They understand the severity of the threat and the quality of intelligence we provide.”

Cybersecurity

The global cybersecurity market estimated to reach $188.8 billion by 2023

The startup shares that its total contract value (TCV) stands at $3.5 million, and is expected to grow 2X to $7 million by the end of the year. “COVID-19 has been a boon for us,” says the founder. 

“With companies sending their employees remote, they are worried about their data and IP. We give them insights on what we are seeing in the hackers’ community and all the anonymised conversations, and advise them on how to protect their data,” he adds.

Cyfirma has a three-pronged approach to revenue: a SaaS-based pure-play model, which gives clients access to the threat prediction software; a software + services model, which gives them reports, analytics, and account management personnel; and a third-party data model, where intelligence collected by Cyfirma is shared with other agencies.

It also provides cyber education to its clients to train their employees and contractors. 

Also ReadZoom continues to be privacy nightmare; hacked accounts selling on the dark webFunding and future roadmap

Earlier in February, Cyfirma raised an undisclosed Series A round from Z3P Partners, which joined its early backers Goldman Sachs and Zodius Capital. The total funding raised by the startup now stands at $8 million.

Gautam Patel, Managing Partner, Z3Partners, said at the time of funding,

“Cyfirma’s offering is well-timed with the rapidly increasing demand for quality threat intelligence to guide digital transformation and drive business results. The platform is a powerful solution to bring threat intelligence conversations into boardrooms across all industries.”

The startup plans to utilise the funds in product engineering, hiring fresh talent, and expansion across new territories in Asia-Pacific and the US. “We plan to use the money on research and market expansion. We haven’t explored the US yet, that is on the cards,” says the founder. 

Cyfirma Team

Cyfirma's India team is based out of Bengaluru

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Cyfirma also plans to grow its team from 44 to 70. It is looking to close a Series B round of $25 million by the end of 2020. 

It operates in a global cybersecurity market estimated to reach $188.8 billion by 2023, according to Gartner. Cyfirma competes with Recorded Future, FireEye iSIGHT, LogRhythm, Anomali, and others.

In India, the cybersecurity opportunity is projected to be $13.6 billion by 2025, according to NASSCOM. The growth of the sector is being driven by the increased awareness about cyber threats, and push from regulatory agencies.

Ritesh sums up saying, “India has started to take cybersecurity very seriously. There have been many advocates in the last few years, and cybersecurity has grown with the rise of smartphones and digitisation.”

(Edited by Saheli Sen Gupta)

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Original Source: yourstory.com