The Russian house-call doctor service DOC+ is announcing the completion of a $5.5 million Series B round involving Yandex, the Russian search giant, and Baring Vostok Capital Partners, a major Moscow-based investment fund.
The two investors had already injected $5 million in the startup less than one year ago. The company’s first funding, in 2015, amounted to 35 million rubles (roughly half a million US dollars at that time’s exchange rate), coming from a group of Russian and Western business angels.
The company claims to have generated 70 million rubles in revenues last year ($1.05 million at the average exchange rate). The DOC+ app has been installed over 70,000 times since launch in September 2015, while the company’s doctors made more than 60,000 visits.
Moscow doctors make over 50,000 home visits daily, according to DOC+, which believes it can cover 10% of the Moscow house-call market.
Competing e-health platforms
Not only will the latest funding allow DOC+ to expand its existing business of on-demand visits and remote consultations. The startup also plans to develop a number of new digital health services, including online pharmacy and drug delivery, electronic sick note management, distant monitoring for chronic diseases, autodispatching / routing for doctors, electronic health records (EHR), data input automation, mobile workplace for doctors, medical CRM for client/patient support, etc.
Another telemedecine startup, Docdoc, focuses on booking in-clinic appointments, unlike DOC+, but also aims to build a universal health service platform in Russia. Just ten days ago, Sberbank, the national savings bank, announced the acquisition of a controlling stake in this startup.
On the Russian telemedicine market, DOC+ competes with Online Doctor, Pediatrician 24/7, ONDOC, Doctor Ryadom among other services. As a competitive advantage, DOC+ benefits from an exclusive partnership with Yandex, with DOC+ doctors providing consultations via the recently launched “Yandex.Health” service.
As a competitive advantage, however, DOC+ benefits from an exclusive partnership with Yandex, with its doctors providing consultations via the recently launched Yandex.Health service.
DOC+ is also discussing potential partnerships with local social networks (e.g. VKontakte) and online portals (e.g. baby.ru).
The digital health services market in Russia will reach 180 billion rubles by 2020 (a little more than $3 billion), according to Sberbank data cited by DOC+.
