Practo makes a foray into Brazil

BENGALURU: Online doctor aggregator platform Practo has launched its services in Brazil's financial centre, Sao Paulo. The platform, available in the Portuguese language, will have more than 4,000 medical practitioners in the southern metropolis on the platform.

The company, which has operations in 15 countries and more than 50 cities, will invest several million dollars for its foray into Brazil. It will launch in Rio de Janeiro in the second half of the year.

Asked about the choice of Brazil, Practo co-founder & CEO Shashank N D told TOI that Brazil is the largest country in Latin America with a population of around 20 crore and is the world's fifth largest economy by purchasing power.“China is too big a market, and in most developed markets, the doctor consultation is mostly done through insurance companies and does not provide a big opportunity,” he said.

Shashank said the Brazil move, in the midst of a slowdown in funding, indicates the company's confidence in its model and its strong growth. Practo, which makes most of its revenue in India, hopes to increase the international revenue substantially in the next couple of years.

Practo, founded in 2009 by Shashank and his NIT Karnataka batchmate Abhinav Lal right after they graduated, started as a firm providing software for doctors to update medical records online. It launched a doctor discovery platform n 2013. The company, which now has over two lakh doc ors on the platform, still gets most of its revenue from software it sells, which now includes software for hospital management.

The company has so far raised around $125 million n funding from a host of investors including Chinese major Tencent, Google Capital and Russian billionaire Yuri Milner.

The company has made our acquisitions over the past few months.