Q] What are your expectations from MediBuddy’s recently launched Surgery Care services? How will this new offering benefit your customers?
Before launching any new service at MediBuddy, we first think from the customer’s point-of-view. We follow their opinions to provide them with better services, which ensures that they get holistic care. When MediBuddy first started, we only had online consultation. But eventually we moved to offline consultation, and then came the pharmacies, and finally diagnostics. All problems cannot be solved by going to a doctor and taking medicines alone, as some problems would require surgery. So now we are extremely happy to offer a one-stop solution to all critical needs of customers. We have launched an end-to-end surgery care where we will help them to connect to the right surgeon, right hospital, and then get the right surgery or procedure done. We will also provide post-operative care, which can be at-home healthcare. We have collaborated with a lot of hospitals. In case you have health insurance, we’ll help you get that done as well.
Q] What does your marketing mix look like? Do you have any campaign in the pipeline for surgery care?
Last year, we did a marketing campaign with our brand ambassador Amitabh Bachchan. Additionally, we have a media plan to ensure that we are able to reach a wide range of audience. So, we have a combination of out-of-home, hospital, and in-hospital branding. Besides, we also do a lot of branding on Digital and mobile. On the other hand, we have collaborated with multiple partners and sponsors. Basically, we have crafted a strategically constructed series of messaging and engagement that allows the right audience to follow our brand wherever they’re. We have a holistic online and offline multimedia approach to a campaign in order to create more awareness around surgery care.
Q] MediBuddy also acquired Clinix - an online doctor consultation platform. What was the prime objective behind this acquisition?
Our overarching idea is to make high-quality healthcare accessible to a billion people. Now we want to go deeper into rural areas, and Clinix has a widespread network across tier 3 and tier 4 cities, tackling health issues of the rural population. So we need to further scale our operations and services to smaller towns, and ensure that it’s easy for people to get the right health care service.
Q] What kind of growth are you seeing from these rural areas and non-metro cities for your app?
50% of our customer base is coming from the big cities, and the other 50% from smaller towns. Since we launched our Amitabh Bachchan campaign, we’re seeing a significant growth, close to 70%. All of this is essentially coming from these smaller towns because there is better awareness now, and we are able to reach them in the right language also.
Q] What was the thought behind roping in Amitabh Bachchan as the brand’s face?
Amitabh Bachchan is a respected, trustworthy, and a credible person to work with. In fact, what he is to cinema, is what MediBuddy aims to become for the Indian healthcare ecosystem. We wanted a brand ambassador who is the epitome of trust and respect, and for a pan-India visibility, Bachchan was the right fit. Also, we wanted to go into the rural areas, specifically the central and northern part of the country, where Bachchan is very popular, and will be able to create the right connection with potential customers, as he can speak the local language very well.
