HYDERABAD: LabTalk, a healthcare startup from Hyderabad, promises to provide even small-time diagnostic centres a launchpad to boost their business. The one-month-old startup launched in commercial operations on Monday through www.labtalk.in. The startup claims to be the first diagnostic laboratories aggregator in South India.
Although Hyderabad has many diagnostic centres, barring a few brands such as Vijaya, Apollo Elbit, Tapadia and Lucid, many small operators don’t have the bandwidth to reach out to people across the city. “LabTalk integrates over 700 big, medium, small and non-branded diagnostic labs spread across the city. Our focus is to give the user the choice of choosing a diagnostic centre with affordability, accessibility, quality and transparent service,” said Rajshekar Reddy, founder director of the startup.
Currently the startup is offering services such as home samples collection, employee assistance for booking and consultation, offers and delivery of reports online. While there are already a few players in this segment like Healthion and Practo, LabTalk aims to offer consultation service by sending individual reports to doctors as well. The startup aims to launch an app soon by the end of this month and expand its service beyond Hyderabad.
Rajshekar is confident that his business will be a profitable venture. Elaborating on the service, he said, “This business model is new. It is the first time in both Telugu states that the online aggregating business is now spread to diagnostic services. The diagnostic business in India is worth Rs 30,000 crore ($ 5 billion) and several lakhs of tests done every day. The diagnostic business in city is estimated to be around Rs 1000 crore and is growing rapidly at the rate of 12 to 15 pet cent, as people and medical fraternity is preferring evidence based treatment. Diagnostic labs in city conduct nearly 5,000 different kinds of tests and almost five lakh tests are performed in city every day. Hence an aggregator like LabTalk is the need of the hour. We anticipate a business of Rs 1 crore this year.”
“Most of the labs in the city are unorganised and don’t have accreditation. Our endeavour is to make them tech savvy, professionalise their service and take those services to customers and help them do more business,” he added.