
Ontario-based Shopify (NYSE: SHOP) recently announced its quarterly results that continued to surpass market expectations. The company recently announced the acquisition of a logistics company as it continues to build its fulfillment network to compete with Amazon.
>>>Sramana Mitra: What is the segmentation? What percentage of that 25 million can afford your service?
Sylvana Sinha: We believe that a third of them can afford our service. We are starting out with eight centers in Dhaka in the next three years. Then we would like to go beyond.
Sramana Mitra: Are you profitable?
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Marc is yet another techie who has made a successful transition to being an entrepreneur.
In this interview, he discusses his journey, as well as a lot of the nuances of positioning his venture, Starmind, for success.
Sramana Mitra: Let’s start by introducing our audience to yourself as well as to Starmind.
>>>This feature from Inc 42 provides a comprehensive list of all the 100 unicorns in India, which have collectively raised $90 billion in funding and are valued at a combined $333 billion. For this week’s posts, click on the paragraph links.
>>>In case you missed it, you can listen to the recording here:
Sramana Mitra: Tell me about the team.
Sylvana Sinha: Today we have 450 people. My Chief Medical Officer is an amazing woman. She has been working in healthcare for more than 40 years. She’s an expert in quality management. Her husband was a diplomat, so she’s lived and worked all over the world.
She moved back to Bangladesh 12 years ago. She had been working as the Head of Quality at a large private hospital in Bangladesh. She had gone into retirement and I convinced her to come out of retirement. She has been with us since 2017.
>>>Sramana Mitra: What is the pricing model?
Sylvana Sinha: We like to say we are offering more value for money. We price at market. It’s in between the fancy private hospitals and the free and affordable care. To see a doctor, it’s less than $8. To see a specialist might cost $12 to $15. We acquire patients through consultations or through the pharmacy. We upsell them to longer-term patients through diagnostic testing and health checks. The most profitable part of the business is diagnostics testing.
>>>Sramana Mitra: Let’s focus on the first year. What did you build to qualify yourself for funding?
Sylvana Sinha: I spent that year on a listening tour. I was traveling all over the world to meet entrepreneurs and investors to understand business models and innovations in healthcare. I funded myself to do that and just live during that time.
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