Kartik Vijaywargi is the Founder & Managing Director of HArbor Vision Pvt. Ltd. HArbor Vision intends to be a global platform for integrating healthcare solutions by leveraging advanced technologies in their simplest forms to create sustainable and standard healthcare operations across facilities.

Kartik begins, “HArbor is a retail healthcare platform focused on bridging the gap between private and public healthcare. In private healthcare, we are connecting doctors to their chosen radiologist, pathologist, medical staff, and administrative staff with their patients on a single platform without being the listing business. And in the public healthcare segment, we are trying to take care delivery to the doorstep of rural India which is the real Bharat at a much more affordable and accessible format.” 

“HArbor was founded with a vision to have two different verticals which are working independently but have an interconnected bridge for the patient’s journey. We want to solve this for the doctors because the doctor-patient ratio is very low in our country. We need to bring the doctor to the epicenter of healthcare by removing the pressure of administrative tasks and the pressure of performing better than the competitors.”

USP of HArbor

Kartik narrates, “Doctors find it very difficult in adopting technology solutions. And they find it very easy to speak to what they have to convey. So, we developed an AI where the doctor can click on the mic button and speak the entire EMR. We have done this for Indian ascents. This way, tech adoption among doctors increases. You need to give doctors a tech system for all their administrative stuff so that a doctor starts trusting their team for running their business.” 

“Telemedicine as a service is solving problems for the urban population. The penetration of telemedicine for the rural population, the real Bharat, is very low because these people do not understand technology to a much larger extent. We want to bridge that gap with our assisted telemedicine health kiosk. The presence of assisted paramedical staff increases the care quality because doctors are getting medical input from trained paramedics. We have built our system thinking to solve the problems on ground zero.” 

Kartik emphasizes, “Largely one of the biggest USPs of HArbor is that our business model is not built on selling patient’s data. We respect the patient’s right to privacy. We never sell patient’s data to any corporation for their business. We want to have a single platform for all the services related to healthcare and this is why we diversified and launched our own rapid tests and diagnostic machines. Products are FDAC certified. We want to place these battery-operated test kits and machines in rural places. The assisted paramedic staff can use these for precise findings of patients and tell them to the doctors. So, we wanted to create a single platform for all these services and this has become our largest USP.”

Customer base

Kartik informs, “There are more than 150 doctors who are using it in the private healthcare segment. And for the public segment, we will be completing our rollout in 3-4 districts which will be impacting 10 lacs + patient’s lives.”

Revenues and expansion plans

Kartik mentions, “FY22 was a good year for us. We are in a position to explore all verticals. This financial year, we will be launching in 5 more cities and will touch 7-8 districts for the public healthcare platform.”

Challenges in rural healthcare

Talking about the biggest challenge in rural healthcare, Kartik explains, “Telling them (the rural population) that it is something for your betterment or healthcare needs was the most challenging part. Understanding the needs, and having local authority (whom they trust) tell them that it is for your betterment was the biggest challenge we have faced in rural places. Similarly, in the private segment, tech adoption with doctors was very tough. So, we created a team who were relationship managers of doctors and sat beside them and taught them.”

The golden words for aspiring entrepreneurs

Kartik concludes, “Don’t plan your resources according to the MVPs. Have conviction in your thought process. Build everything you can on day 1 and grow eventually from there.”

(Edited by Renu Gupta)