New Delhi: Delhi and Abu Dhabi-based Health Travel startup Healthtrip.com has appointed former Paytm global executive Sanjeev Misra to its board of advisors.
With an overall rich experience of three decades, Misra had previously led the cross-border business at Paytm, led the global expansion as a Vice President in the Adani group and led business development for Reliance in South East Asia as its Vice President.
Prior to that, he has spent over a decade in Silicon Valley working for brands including Motorola Semiconductors, Cisco Systems, Adobe, Compaq Computers and Silicon Graphics.
He is currently leading the investments at Rajeev Misra Family Office.
His earlier interactions with hundreds of patients across countries in Asia and Africa inspired him to mentor Healthtrip.com, founded by ex-Paytm Vice President Danish Ahmed.
“Millions of people travel each year seeking better health, cosmetic & wellness treatments, generating an estimated $400 billion across the world. Post covid, this trend has seen unprecedented growth, and new treatments for cancer, IVF, longevity, aesthetics etc, are further driving the global demand. I have been mentoring Danish and the Healthtrip team, and their commitment to building the trip advisor for health has already helped 40,000 patients from over 100 countries. With their tech-first approach to health tourism, Healthtrip.com is best placed to become a global leader in the space, delivering on the United Nations development goal for access to healthcare for millions of people,” Mr. Misra said.
Launched in 2019, Healthtrip was earlier known as Hospals and is the largest medical travel platform across Asia, with teams operating in 8 countries.
The company has so far raised around $4 million in pre-series A from Wavemaker, Spiral Ventures and multiple angels, including Deepinder Goyal and Kunal Shah.
Commenting on the appointment, Danish Ahmed, CEO of Healthtrip, said, “As healthtrip embarks on its global expansion, it is truly a privilege for us to have Mr. Misra on our advisory board. He brings decades of learnings in expanding billion-dollar companies across the Middle east, Africa, South East Asia and Bangladesh, all of which are key markets for us. We have grown 10x over the last 18 months and hope to continue this growth, under the guidance of our board, serving millions of patients across the world to find the best solutions to health and longevity.”
Healthtrip specializes in medical tourism, wherein it helps patients find the best surgeons across over 300 hospitals in India, UAE, Turkey, Thailand and other top destinations. The platform offers a one stop solution, offering tele-consults, visa assistance, hotel booking, interpreters and logistics services on its platform across eight different languages.
The Indian government has been working towards promoting medical tourism and aims at doubling India’s earnings from this sector to $13 billion per annum by ?? from $6 billion currently.
With growing inflation across the world, and the Ukraine war, Indian hospitals are seeing 130% growth from pre covid numbers.
Governments initiatives around medical e-visa and the recently launched Ayushe-visa has further eased the flow of patents to India.
