In November 2013, Raahil Reddy was in his ninth grade and was participating in an idea generation competition that was conducted at his school.While brainstorming for the school business competition, Raahil recalled some of the most common problems faced by his family members and the first person who popped into his mind was his grandmother. She suffered from Rheumatoid Arthritis and hence found it hard to commute to and from the hospital. Therefore, he came up with a solution to this and presented a company which his friends and him referred to as CallADoc. However, seeing the positive feedback CallADoc received from all the judges and the overall interest in the product from his classmates, Raahil and another friend perceived the feasibility of the application and decided to develop it into a real mobile application, not just for the competition - but for public use. There were many structural changes in the company, where his friend left and he found different partners but the foundational mission that was to serve people never left the CallADoc team. The original concept of CallADoc was to provide a video consultation services using a mobile application that had the advantage of reducing travelling times and wait times at hospitals. This was to be integrated with the Call An Ambulance feature and Call A Pharmacy feature, which aimed to provide a 360 degree healthcare platform that could be accessed from home. However, when the idea became a real venture, Raahil realized that it wasn’t the video consultations that patients wanted but medical counselling where they wanted to speak to doctors for second opinions and to understand what next steps to take after they detected an illness. Therefore, CallADoc moved on from being an application that aimed to replace consultations to an application that helped patients understand which doctors to contact, which hospitals offer cheaper care, whether a hospital visit was necessary and answered various other simple queries. Throwing light on the journey, Raahil speaks, “The best aspect of CallADoc was that our revenue model ensured that we were able to offer these services for free with certified doctors answering all the patients’ questions. This makes the CallADoc concept a crucial tool for the underprivileged especially the less literate patients who do not have a great understanding of howthe healthcare industry works”.

CallADoc is a company that Raahil and his team take great pride in. In terms of healthcare, CallADoc is one of the only tools in India that offer patients the opportunity to speak to a doctor about their problems free of cost. CallADoc has also become one of the only platforms where patients can just stay at home and receive treatment. “I am going to fondly remember CallADoc for the rest of my life, not only as my first venture but as the most profitable, with me envisioning profit not monetarily but as a learning experience. The best part of CallADoc was that each and every experience was new to me and hence I was delighted by even the worst of phases. CallADoc is still in an early conceptual stage and we are constantly trying to make the application better and have a greater reach, over time, I believe its impact on healthcare will be drastic, especially because of the growing digital healthcare sector,” he enthusiastically mentions.

He further adds, “Health is the most important fundamental necessity for any human being. You can't study/work without being healthy. Plus if you have noticed, all the other sectors have become digitized. Healthcare is one sector that still needs to be digitized. I feel that healthcare has still not used its technological potential. So we thought that's an ideal field to venture into”.

24 x 7 audiovisual interface between Doctors and Patients

CallADoc has three major features that include Call A Doctor, Call A Pharmacy and Call An Ambulance. Call A Doctor will connect the patient to a certified doctor via video call; this doctor will either recommend a non prescription based medicine for simple illnesses or will help the patient understand what steps he or she will have to take. Call A Doctor does not necessarily require a video call but can also work using an audio call. Call An Ambulance uses a specially designed algorithm that connects patients to the closest available ambulance service, this helps save time in case of an emergency, especially with the increase in traffic over recent years, connectivity to the closest ambulance service and hospital could be a very crucial tool for many patients and Call A Pharmacy acts as a simple tool that displays the closest pharmacies to the patient, the patients can ask for a delivery of medicines from these pharmacies.“Our concept is to provide complete healthcare from your house. The Call An Ambulance and Call A Pharmacy are features that aim to only increase the convenience of the patient. We don't get any revenue from these features as such,’ explains Raahil.

Over the years, the company has partnered with nursing homes.“We have 12-15 nursing homes around Bangalore - and we usually partner with multi speciality nursing homes. However, if a patient comes and he/she requires going to the gastroenterologist and

we haven't partnered with anygastroenterologist, we still guide them to the right doctor because it is their health that actually matters,” he says.

Call A Doc Has Three Major Features That Include Call A Doctor, Call A Pharmacy And Call An Ambulance

The Journey

The journey which began with a couple of excited students, has gathered a well versed team that constantly strives to reach the epitome of success. “We have grown to have a team; we have grown to have an application. We have mentors, our own in house doctors and on these terms our company has grown a lot. We are still waiting for the public to catch up; we have customers and calls going on but it still has not become viral. That is one of the reasons I want to start working on CallADoc from the US. That is another market which is dominated by expensive healthcare costs and CallADoc can be a useful tool for many patients who can have access to healthcare free of cost.

By the year 2020, Raahil plans toadd two more features into the platform - one of which is medical funding. “The key role of funding in this world is that it needs to be transparent –the world is filled with donors who just don’t trust their patients, CallADoc aims to reduce this gap by creating transparency and facilitating direct payments from donors to hospitals, we aim to create a tool where patients can record a video of their necessity and post it on the app and an interested donor can help the patient through our app. We are working with our technology partners CRMIT in developing these features on our application.. Healthcare is becoming more and more expensive day by day. By helping patients who are in need of money, we believe we will be doing a lot more social good,” he further adds.

Additionally, the team has plans to integrate AI into their application. “At odd timings - let's just say 3 a.m. in the morning, if the doctors are not available, we want to have a Bot that guides the patients with first hand care. Our team is already working on this but it is still in the alpha stage. It has not developed completely but there is a lot of potential to improve in this aspect,” avers Raahil.

Raahil’s Philosophy behind CallADoc

What goes around comes around - and with kindness it really does. Research shows that being kind to others increases our own levels of happiness as well as theirs. What's more it has a knock-on effect - kindness is contagious, so it makes our communities nicer places to be. Raahil stauchly believes in this theory. His one and only goal in life is to make the world a happy place. This goal sprung upon him when he was seven. He recalls events where he has witnessed a lot of sadness and suffering in life, poverty, corruption and exploitation. This moved him deeply and he was motivated to operate a healthcare firm. He believed spreading happiness to patients is one of the noble works one can do to serve mankind. He embarked on his journey in November 2013 with CallADoc. He says, “I want to put an end to all events of sexual abuse and harassment which destroy the happiness in a person. I want to put an end to all events of slavery and exploitation as these destroy the happiness of innocent citizens. I want to put an end to deforestation and pollution as these destroy the happiness of our future generations. I want to make the world a better place, CallADoc is just my first venture, there is a lot more on the way”!

Success Mantra – Raahil Reddy

Young and humble Raahil is exceptional and an inspiration to all the budding entrepreneurs and is definitely a gem of an example to all the youngsters out there. His simplicity and politeness is something to be admired and talked about. Taking enormous pride in setting up CallADoc, he says “Try it once. There is nothing to lose. It is definitely worth a try! I see so many people who are 14 or 15 and want to start their own venture. I think that is an ideal time to start because the number of ideas that come into the brain slowly fades away with time. Moreover, this is what an entrepreneur needs to believe. He needs to believe that he can make a difference in this world.”

Enthusiastically, Raahil adds “One important message that I carry throughout my life is never giving up is a very bad thing. I attended a Lean Mantra Startup Course and I realized that the biggest mistake an entrepreneur does is never giving up. We were brought up saying ‘Never give up!’The problem with that is if you don’t give up, you can’t get back on your feet. If you see that your company is not going to work and is not sustainable in the long run, you should let it go. Only then will you have the capacity to start another one. That is a mistake that nobody should make. And I am very fortunate that I never had to give up on CallADoc.

Moreover, never forget the people who helped you. These are the people who care about you and believe you have the potential to succeed. My parents, my family, my mentor Mr.Vinod Reddy and my teachers at TISB are the only reason CallADoc is still servicable today, these were the people who have helped me in this venture from day 1 and everytime CallADoc’s prospects looked bleak, they guided me onto the right path. Therefore, it is unfair to claim that CallADoc is my journey or my team’s journey, it is all of these people’s journey.”

TEAM CallADoc

Raahil Reddy – Chief Executive Officer
Anudeep Gadi – Chief Technology Officer
Anudeep Gadi, co-founder and CTO, leads CallADoc's long-term technology vision. His early passion for social entrepreneurship paved the way for his commitment to tech innovation with social impact and formed the basis of his core belief and helped several humanitarian organizations for the blind and the deaf. The same passion drove him towards starting a social start-up venture CallADoc, a telemedicine platform that virtually connects patients and doctors. Anudeep is leading CallADoc's diversification into the US Market.

Vishal Reddy – Chief Innovator

Vishal Reddy, chief innovator of CallADoc, leads the team with a vision to improve healthcare using technology. Vishal focuses on innovation and is constantly trying to find new technologies that can be integrated into CallADoc.

His primary role is to consider the numerous problems in the healthcare domain and find solutions to these problems. He believes artificial intelligence holds the key to an efficient healthcare industry and is the heading the artificial intelligence division of CallADoc.

RushilSaket – Head of Healthcare Management
Rushil Saket has flair towards service to human kind. The field of medical science is his chosen path to accomplish his aspiration. Rushil is a hardcore social activist with him volunteering in various hospitals and non governmental organizations, the highlight of which was when he was the only student volunteer in a medical camp organized by Sri Venkaiah Naidu. Rushil is the medical brain behind CallADoc and he is constantly trying to maximize the benefits CallADoc offers to its patients.