Health sites rode the dotcom boom, some fizzled, the others sizzled
Health sites rode the dotcom boom, some fizzled, the others sizzled
The dotcom bubble spawned off a number of Indian online healthcare sites that tried to ride on the boom that was sweeping across the country. The dotcom however did not take off, because the penetration was low and access and affordability was low.
"There were hundreds launched," said Tushar Sampat, Director of aarogya.com. And Amol Naikawadi, Joint Managing Director, of indushealthplus.com, said, "The concept had to be strong." Few survived.u00a0 Like aarogya.com, indushealthplus.com, both launched in 2000, situated in Pune and which have survived the decade.
At that time, when Indus started their inline healthcare service they did not have any competition in that niche area.u00a0 The idea came to them when they spoke to doctors and realised there was a need.
According to Tushar Sampat, at the time aarogya.com started three sites that existed were doctoranywhere.com, goodhealthyou.com, webhealthcentre.com. And internationally there was : drkoop.com and webmd.com
Status todayIndushealthplus.comu00a0 caught on and today have around 9,000 users annually. And major requests are cardiac-relatedu00a0 or heart ailments. At aarogya.com their daily website visitors are between 1,500 and 1,800 individuals. "In 2009 we have got 4,85,983 individuals who visit the site till today," said Tushar. (please note that these are not hits but individuals.) "This figure was at 10% of current traffic when we started in 2000," he added. The nature of requests are for: financial help to treat cancers, naturopathy/ayurved treatments, surrogacy and IVF treatments, sexual issues related queries, obesity surgery and issues and general health queries.
Case studies1) Take aarogya.com, which aimed to be India's leading comprehensive health information portal --u00a0 a view that was enthusiastically vouched for by Tushar Sampat, director of the company. "It's a platform for health care givers and seekers to come together and share strength and hope," he said. "There is the need for a person to find strength, hope and learn from other people's experiences, which happens here," he added. The site has sections, which cover almost all the medical specialties and gives useful information on various diseases. To enhance its reach, the content is available in many Indian languages too.
"We were the first health website to introduce online support groups. Addiction support and Epilepsy support are examples of some very active and vibrant communities," explained Tushar.
"We promote doctors like Dr Srihari Dhare Patil, Dr K K Desarde and others, to attract patients who are Indians and also non-Indians. Our online consultancy covers a wide spectrum of health parameters -- allopathy, alternative medicine, complementary medicine, family health, health resources and insurance," he said.
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