Pankaj Shrivastava graduated with a Master in Computer Application from the College of Engineering (Anna University, Chennai). He started his professional journey in 2004 with Tata Consultancy Services. His entrepreneurial journey began in 2008. He is a serial entrepreneur with many ventures under his belt. In 2014, he started ClinicSpots.com which is a medical Q & A portal focused on medical value travel for international patients to India. It has been amongst the top 5 online MVT companies in India.

Entrepreneurial journey

Pankaj says, “Basically, I was working with TCS in America. I came back to India to start my own business in 2008. I have survived an extremely tough career as an entrepreneur. During my initial ventures, I have faced many challenges like internet penetration being very low. Selling offline and scaling was extremely difficult. But the lesson learned helped us to build ClinicSpot business. My family supported me to continue my entrepreneurial journey. As an entrepreneur, I was forced to learn everything. One thing that helped me to survive is the execution of new ideas. The only way to survive is to keep innovating. So, my journey was phenomenal and my learnings are 10X. With calculative risk, it's worth taking the risk.”

How the venture started

Pankaj mentions, “Way back in 2017, one of my friends referred his friend from Canada for the treatment of stage 3 cancer. I helped him to find the best Oncologist in Mumbai. He got treated and survived. There are 20 million patients who travel to different countries for critical treatment and cosmetic treatment. We realized that by starting a venture, we will be able to assist these people more efficiently and this is how ClinicSpot was started.”

How ClinicSpot aids in medical tourism

Pankaj elaborates, “We provide end-to-end assistance like providing the opinion of top JCI accredited hospital to assisting them to get medical visa with the help of hospital, airport pick up and drop, finding suitable accommodation, hand holding them throughout their medical treatment in India. Normally, post-treatment, small aspect of disease management is done by their local doctor but in some cases, they come back to India and we assist there also.”

Medical tourism in India

Pankaj explains, “SAARC countries are doing the maximum medical tourism like Bangladesh, Afghanistan. Apart from them, maximum patients are from Africa, the Middle East, Iraq, and the Islands for critical medical treatment. For cosmetic treatment (dental, plastic surgeries), generally patients from Europe and North America.

ClinicSpots is associated with all the top JCI accredited hospitals like Fortis, Apollo, Max, Medanta, Jaslok, Saifi, Manipal, Kokilaben hospitals. Apart from these, we have tied up with Turkey hospitals for treatment of patients coming from Europe, Middle East, North Africa.”

Future target

Pankaj concludes, “We have three specified goals to achieve in 2022 – 

1. Investing in resources to scale the medical Q and A platform. 

2. Strengthening our ties with hospitals in Turkey and Africa for inbound medical tourism. 

3. To scale the existed inbound medical tourism in India

(Edited by Renu Gupta)