Picture this: A healthcare provider in a Tier II Indian city is building healthtech solutions for the world. For Ashvini Danigond, Kolhapur-based Manorama Infosolutions is a passion transformed into entrepreneurship.

“Hailing from a small town brought its own set of challenges, but it was clear that I wanted to work and impact in a single domain – healthcare,” said the Founder and CEO.

Danigond shared her journey of transforming healthcare through technology at a virtual fireside chat titled ‘Empowering Global Health with Indian Ingenuity: Manorama Infosolutions’ Pioneering Spirit in Healthcare Technology’, hosted by AWS Bharat Innovators Series, in partnership with AMD and YourStory.

Sunil PP, India and South Asia Lead: Education, Space, NPO, Channels and Alliances, Amazon Web Services moderated the session.

Expansion and market strategy

Founded with an objective to simplify the hospitalisation experience using information technology, Manorama has grown to serve over 11 countries with a team of 220 technical resources. 

Talking about the initial idea of providing doctors with complete data sheets to improve treatment protocols, Danigond said that they launched their product in 2006 after four years of dedicated efforts. 

“Our initial focus was on Health Management Information System (HMIS), which then evolved into comprehensive digital solutions,” she said, highlighting how Amazon Web Services (AWS) is helping the company modernise its technology stack and manage large-scale data. 

Danigond emphasised the importance of being comfortable in their location and the strategic advantages it provides – a strong medical and engineering presence. On market penetration strategies, she said Manorama works with local partners for international markets. 

The company, which focuses on B2B solutions, has a large customer base in both the private and public health sectors, including major installations in various cities. It works with some large private corporates and the “Big Four” global consultancies—KPMG, EY, PwC, and Deloitte. Manorama’s public sector projects include automating 400 hospitals for Mumbai corporation, Coal India, and a few smart city projects.

Solutions and country automation projects

Recounting the first significant deal that Manorama closed, Danigond said, “The Lokmanya group in Pune involved integrating our solution into a hospital workflow. The deal was challenging but successfully completed in 25 days.”

Danigond shared an anecdote about securing a deal with the Kuwait Ministry of Health for a cardio-thoracic solution despite initial objections. Manorama’s solution delivery pattern and gap analysis helped the company overcome geographical challenges. 

Manorama completed its country-wide automation and enterprise HMIS implementation for the Ministry of Health, Seychelles and the Ministry of Health, Royal Government of Bhutan during the pandemic to provide digital solutions for the government-run hospitals in the countries. 

Sharing details, she said, “Bhutan’s technology subsidiary, Thimphu TechPark Limited, supported us largely in terms of the localisation, cultural changes, and deployment policy of the project.” 

The founder and CEO believes that the Bhutan project showcases Manorama’s ability to build customisable and scalable solutions for large-scale projects.

Future of healthcare and AI integration

Danigond credited COVID-19 for accelerating digitisation in the healthcare industry. She predicted that many emerging markets will move towards complete digital transformation by 2025. 

“Now is the time to help biomedical companies and pharmaceuticals take the next level of action, to go for real-time analytics, and help doctors give more accurate and fast services,” she said. “The real investors in healthcare are the ones who are thinking beyond the decade.”

Manorama is focusing on AI, machine learning, and clinical decision support systems to enhance healthcare services. The company has launched speech-to-text technology along with supporting multilingual facilities and is also working on health information exchange platforms.

The company aims to continue focusing on large e-health projects and national-level digitisation. “Our long-term goal is to make healthcare data accessible and useful for research and development, pharmaceutical companies, and disease management,” Danigond said. A nationwide health ID system for better data management and patient care is also on her mind.

Advising new startups in the healthcare industry, Danigond emphasised the importance of ground-level experience, understanding use cases, and building a sustainable technology platform. 

“Startups must focus on market opportunities, target for the focus market, and then be passionate about the product built,” she remarked, highlighting the importance of choosing the right technology platform.

The Bharat Innovator Series serves as a platform for founders, policymakers, and thought leaders to engage in meaningful discussions about technology opportunities. This initiative aims to foster dialogue, address challenges, and explore synergies for the future. The series features webinars, podcasts, and events that spotlight the exceptional work of Indian innovators spanning various domains.

November has not started on a good note for the Indian startup ecosystem as venture capital (VC) funding came in around the $ 100 million level. This is mostly likely due to lower activity given that the year is coming to a close.

The total funding for the first week of November stood at $101 million across 21 deals. In comparison, the previous week saw a total amount of $289 million.

This lower amount of funding for the week was largely due to the absence of large deals. Additionally, the months of November and December generally tend to see lower activity as it is the last two months of the year.

Now the Indian startup ecosystem will start to prepare for next year and it is unlikely there will be any dramatic change. The VC inflow is expected to remain steady with no major downside expected in the present environment.

The Indian startup ecosystem saw heightened activity during the week with the IPO of Swiggy getting subscribed more than three times. The numbers from Ola for the second quarter were a mixed bag.

Key transactions

Easy Home Finance raised $35 million from Claypond Capital, Asia Rising Fund, Xponentia Capital, Finsight Ventures and Harbourfront Capital.

Fitness brand Boldfit raised Rs 110 crore ($13 million approx.) from Bessemer Venture Partners (BVP).

Spacetech startup GalaxEye raised $10 million from MountTech Growth Fund, Mela Ventures, Speciale Invest, ideaForge and Samarthya Investment Advisors.

Robotics startup CynLr raised $10 million from Pavestone, Athera Venture Partners, Speciale Invest and Infoedge (Redstart).

Drone technology firm Marut Drones raised $6.2 million from Lok Capital.

Hala Mobility raised Rs 51 crore ($6 million approx.) from a network of angel investors and family offices.

Backpacker hostel brand The Hosteller raised Rs 48 crore ($5.6 million) from V3 Ventures, Blacksoil, Synergy Capital Partners and Unit e-Consulting.

Service infrastructure in EV is also not just an Ola problem, it’s an industry problem, Bhavish Aggarwal, CEO of Ola Electric, said during the company’s second quarter earnings call on Friday.

“… it’s an industry problem because training the mechanics in EV, battery maintenance, motor, electronics, software, all these are new things. So, we are investing effort into doing this, which I believe is probably the last leg of confidence customer needs,” Aggarwal said.

Earlier this month, the Central Consumer Protection Authority (CCPA) issued a show cause notice to Ola Electric, citing alleged violations of consumer rights, misleading advertisements, and unfair trade practices.

Addressing recent reports of 80,000 monthly service interactions, the Ola Electric founder clarified that these figures arise from routine maintenance and minor inquiries, and are not solely complaints. He added that 80,000 per month is not bad for a company with 8 lakh vehicles in operation, if majority of them are scheduled or minor queries.

“I think there are a lot of numbers floating around. Even if you take the 80,000 number from the press, if you think of any typical OEM product, it has one to two scheduled maintenance per year. If you have, let’s say, a million install base, that’s one and a half to 2 million service touch points per year. Now that makes it about 1.25 lakh a month,” he explained.

The company, which recently debuted on the Indian stock exchanges, posted a net loss of Rs 495 crore for the July-September quarter, narrowing from Rs 524 crore in the same period last year. However, its losses widened from Rs 324 crore on a quarterly basis.

The company saw its revenue from operations jump to Rs 1,214 crore in Q2 FY25, up from Rs 873 crore a year ago.

The Softbank-backed firm clocked a 73.6% increase in scooter deliveries, with 98,619 units sold this quarter compared to 56,813 units last year. As per the shareholder letter, the company’s gross margin rose by 12 percentage points to 20.3%, while the EBITDA margin fell by 17.6 percentage points to -28.4%.

Aggarwal added that the company will see growth over the next few quarters.

“The fundamentals of the EV transition of India remains very strong. As a leader of this transition, we feel confident to be a leader of this inflection point. As we launched our mass market portfolio a couple of quarters back, this quarter came into its own, we were able to supply it almost full demand. Quarter on quarter, our mass market products, the S1X portfolio grew 15%. Despite the growth in mass market, our premium market products continued to be a majority of our revenue,” he said.

Aggarwal revealed that Ola Electric is also developing three-wheelers and plans to launch 20 new products over the next two years, aiming to release at least one new product each quarter.

It also plans to expand its distribution network to 2,000 stores by March 2025 from the current 782 locations, alongside scaling its Network Partner Program.

“We think of firstly product and then volumes. Brand is an outcome of product experience of the customer and, obviously, at the scale at which we do it. Our premium products are holding very good, with our market share in the premium segment, in the S1 Pro or the S1 Air segment, being fairly high,” Aggarwal said.

In August, at its annual event Sankalp, Ola introduced the Roadster motorcycle series, with the first deliveries set for March 2025. The series includes models across mass and premium segments, priced between Rs 74,999 and Rs 249,999, featuring three models and eight variants.

“We have 782 company-owned stores as on September 2024, with each store delivering 130 sales per quarter, roughly 2-3X of industry average. We’re expanding our company-owned store (and colocated service infra) network to 2,000 company-owned stores by March 2025,” he said.

(Disclaimer: Shradha Sharma, Founder and CEO of YourStory, is an independent director in Ola Electric.)