Indian Unicorns 2022: Pristyn Targets $5B Indian Health Tech Market

The Indian tech market has seen a spate of unicorns recently. Gurugram, Haryana-based Pristyn Care is a healthcare-focused startup that recently joined the Unicorn club. The company focuses on providing improved healthcare services in Indian cities.

Pristyn Care’s Offerings

Founded in 2018 by Dr. Garima Sawhney, Harsimarbir (Harsh) Singh and Dr. Vaibhav Kapoor, Pristyn Care is a healthcare startup set up with a vision to provide patient-centric healthcare services throughout the patient’s journey. It provides daycare procedures for non-emergency surgeries.

The Indian Healthcare provider market is a highly competitive one dotted with private hospital chains and private practices. Pristyn Care claims to differentiate itself by providing a 24X7 personal care buddy service wherein a coordinator is allotted to each patient to help them through the entire medical process, starting from fixing an appointment with doctors to post-surgery follow-up. It leverages technology and a set of simple processes and operations to create an ecosystem that organizes the world of daycare procedures. It has established an ecosystem of over 150 clinics, more than 700 partner hospitals, and over 300 in-house super specialty surgeons for Proctology, Urology, ENT, Gynaecology, Vascular, Laser, and Laparoscopic surgeries. Pristyn Care currently operates in more than 20 cities in India.

In a country that is not particularly focused on electronic medical records, more than 95% of patients with Pristyn already have their electronic medical records. All the doctors with Pristyn use its in-house doctors’ app and they process the prescriptions digitally. About 30% of its patient consultations happen online and about 40%-50% of the patient discovery happens online. The company is on track to conduct more than 100,000 surgeries next year as it continues to expand its presence in the country.

Recently, Pristyn Care announced a partnership with Urban Company to offer its service partners free telemedicine consultations and help with COVID-19 testing. After identifying a service partner for a doctor consultation, a free consultation is facilitated through one of Pristyn Care’s doctors that are specialized in COVID-19 tests. If needed, the service partner is tested through its network of approved partnered labs.

Pristyn Care’s Financials

Pristyn is privately held and recently reported revenue of INR 25.78 crore (~$3.5 million) for fiscal year 2020 and a loss of INR 33 crore (~$4.4 million). In fiscal 2019, it had reported revenues of INR 3.43 crore (~$460,000) with a profit of INR 2 lakh (~$3,000). The company has grown 5 times since January 2021 and expects to be profitable by mid-2023. It expects to grow another 5 times in 2022.

Pristyn Care has raised $177 million in five rounds of funding led by Trifecta Capital, Kunal Shah, Abhiraj Singh Bhal, Tiger Global Management, Sequoia Capital, Deepinder Goyal, Epiq Capital, Hummingbird Ventures, Winter Capital Advisors, and Varun Alagh. Its most recent round was held in December 2021 where it raised $96 million at a valuation of $1.4 billion, sending it into the coveted Unicorn club.

Pristyn plans to use the recently raised funds to expand into other cities, do more types of surgeries in existing and new cities, expand into new disease categories, and double its 130-strong engineering team. It plans to reach more than 1,000 surgical centers and 5 million patient interactions by March 2022. In India, many patients from small towns have to travel to seek quality surgical care in nearby metro cities. It plans to bridge this accessibility gap in the surgery space by taking superior quality surgeries to patients in tier two and three cities.

The Indian health tech market is estimated to grow at 39% CAGR to reach $5 billion by 2023 from $1.9 billion in 2020. The recent global pandemic has heightened the need for deployment of technology and the availability of quality healthcare services in the country. Pristyn is banking on this high growth market to continue to drive its growth.

Can This Unicorn Sustain Itself?

Our estimate is that Pristyn did roughly $20 million in revenue in 2021, and is forecasting about $100 million in 2022. The $1.4 billion valuation is predicated upon the 2022 projection.

As a private company, we don’t really know the unit economics of its surgical centers, nor the company’s customer acquisition costs.

What I can see is that the company is able to generate significant revenue, build the necessary infrastructure and find the requisite highly skilled medical teams thus far. Whether it can keep doing this at a fast enough clip to reach 1000 surgical centers by March 2022 remains to be seen.

What I like about this company is that it has been able to harness $177 million in venture capital to build much-needed medical infrastructure, including in tier two and three cities.

Excessive funding always runs the risk of Death by Overfunding. This looks like a wonderful company with an awesome mission that is already validated by some solid execution. As it scales, I hope they do so methodically, and without losing sight of the fundamentals of unit economics and profitability.

Disclosure: All investors should make their own assessments based on their own research, informed interpretations, and risk appetite. This article expresses my own opinions based on my own research of product-market fit, channel execution, and other factors. My primary interest is in product strategy. While this may have bearing on stock movements, my writings tend to focus on long-term implications. The information presented is illustrative and educational, but should not be regarded as a complete analysis nor recommendation to buy or sell the securities mentioned herein. I am not a registered investment adviser and I am not receiving compensation for this article.

Photo Credit: Sasin Tipchai from Pixabay

This segment is a part in the series : Indian Unicorns 2022