Marrying tech with healthcare

Akansh Khurana, a top performer at Bain, decided to become an entrepreneur at a juncture in his life when his career was growing well. His exposure to the healthcare industry during his job as well as the spirit to try out a new approach were the factors that made him think seriously about starting his venture THB. The decision became easier when his co-founder Rajesh, a classmate from IIITH, agreed to come on board as the CTO. Here’s how he shares his journey: 

Inspiration

“I had a fair degree of exposure to healthcare while I was at Bain and that definitely offered the initial connects, as well as the initial thought process of what the opportunities in healthcare could be. I am extremely passionate about healthcare given I am a Type-1 Diabetes Mellitus. And therefore, the decision of venturing into healthcare was more personal than professional.

Challenges 

One of the most common struggles is the existing state of technology and datasets for healthcare providers, who continue to struggle to streamline data from legacy infrastructures and attain actionable insights from disparate systems. Data needs to be standardised and optimised before it can be used to improve scientific knowledge. The data pipeline also needs to be continuously updated to reflect the real world, instead of a single snapshot in time. 

Achievements 

THB is India’s largest clinical data intelligence platform, with a network of 3000+ partner centers, who share deidentified datasets to generate population health insights. Our offerings include developing data lakes, generating personalised clinical recommendations for patients, driving real-world evidence research, and developing real-time surveillance platforms.

THB has been ranked top 8 healthcare start-ups by IBM India Smartcamp, and top 10 healthcare start-ups by Philips Digital Healthcare Conclave. It has also been recognised as one of the 10 start-ups supported by Google as part of their reputed Launchpad Accelerator Programme.

A word of advice 

Khurana has three nuggets for budding entrepreneurs:

Remeber 99 per cent people are order takers; 1 per cent are order makers — ensure you are in the 1 per cent. And if you are building your own company and/or team, ensure you hire other leaders from the 1 per cent.

Every bit of experience helps — It will come back to benefit you at some point. I was extremely good at taking actionable notes when I started my career. A lot of people felt it was a stupid task. But that eventually benefitted me when our Bain MD started taking me out on important meetings just because he saw this as good 'listening' and 'notes taking' ability. Do what you are best at — Your skills will come in handy across any profession you choose. Don’t force yourself to build a career if you aren’t the best there. But do pick it up if you are great with it. Leverage your skills and build on your strengths.

Future plans

THB’s current presence spans across 5 countries — India, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Bahrain and UAE, with SE Asia expansion on the near horizon.  

— As told to Geetu Vaid