Story of Pulseconnect - Profile of a Startup Venture

CINE Submitted by: Harleen Sachdeva

Story of Pulseconnect - Profile of a startup venture

Submitted by:

Harleen Sachdeva

Story of Pulseconnect

Overview

ViditShukla and Devesh Singh founded PulseConnect in 2011 with objective of providing Real-Time Customer Feedback and Experience Management Solutions for healthcare service providers.By engaging, capturing, interpreting and acting in real-time, its solutions enable businesses to gain true insight into the whole Voice of the Customer, resulting in significant increases in patient satisfaction and loyalty, and derive true economic benefits.

Website:

Vidit isan alumni of IIT Delhi and had worked in various MNCs for over 15 years before taking a plunge into entrepreneurship.

DeveshSingh is analumni of IIT BHU and has an industry experience in software technologies for over 10 years.

Q) What does Pulseconnect do?

Vidit:PulseConnect makes it easy for any business to gather real time patient feedback at the point of experience.

Product features

-Provides communication capabilities utilizing Touch screen devices, website, Smart Phone, Phone based interviews and iPAD/Android Application to engage patients using the channels of their choice.

-Gathers patient’s experience while they are in service zone or afterwards, and identifies Improvement area for better service quality.

-Analyses and converts feedback into quantitative inputs for decision making at all levels.

-Integrated Complaints Management System

Q)What was your motivation to start Pulseconnect?

Vidit: I had been thinking of starting my own venture for a couple of years before starting Pulseconnect, but was hesitant to take a plunge. One day, one of my friend’s mother, who was seriously ill was misdiagnosed by a doctor in hospital. The hospital staff was not very friendly either – and I am talking about a big reputed hospital here. I was accompanying them for the hospital visit. We couldn’t find any mechanism to report our dissatisfaction or feedback to the hospital authorities. This is when it clicked to me that I need to do something to correct this, that there is a gap and a business opportunity for me as well

Devesh:Having passion with IT and innovation and IT, I have been looking also been looking for business opportunities. Market sensing is very important. You have to watch your environment carefully to sense the gaps. Not only have you known your customers pain point but how to create a feasible business opportunity is critical.

Initially we made a mistake to follow a product based strategy where we needed to do lot of rework when rubber met the road. Finally we learned that be customer focus and then start developing the products based on needs.

Q) Did you think about any other ideas as well?

Vidit: Initially we thought about having an online portal where people could post feedback for any service that they had availed – from plumber to a doctor. However we realized that B2C can get very costly and would take a lot of time for us to break even. So we narrowed down to one segment first – healthcare services and looked for a more comprehensive solution. We plan to move to other segments as we grow.

Q) Did you file a patent for your idea?

Vidit: We had thought about it initially, but then didn’t pursue it.

Q) Who are your target audience and what value addition does Pulseconnect provide?

Vidit: Our target audiences include Hospitals/Clinics management/Owners/Doctors.

Our solution is being used by some hospital chains in central and north India and also by NHS general practitioners in UK.

Product value addition

-Quick and easy system for Patients to use

-Real-time feedback on patient perceptions

-Improved Patient services and advocacy

-Operational Efficiency by reduction in patient complaints

-Actionable data analysis

-Use Patient-feedback data analysis in decision making at all levels

-High feedback volumes with increased reliability and transparency

-Value for Money for state-of-art technology

-Customizable system

Q) How did you evaluate the market?

Devesh:Firstwe talked to our close friends who have been running the business in same industry. They did not directly reveal the profits they were making or business secrets, but you can make out by their confidence and the talks they do reveal some information the sort of money they are making.

In parallel, we found lot of information about the growth path in the business journals and articles about the growth of industry in next 5-10 years. This gives an idea that how overall the industry is doing and its growth prospects.

Next we talked to some of our friends from industry who were in need of such services who helped me figured out that there is a gap in the market to whom we are planning to serve. In fact some of the few customers that our business had were from this set. Not only they helped us to gain initial business, but also we got initial seed money from one of such acquaintance. They also helped us to shape our services according to the industry needs.

Once we had identified that market is good we identified the clients in terms of who will pay us for the products/services and who will the end users of my services be. We needed to satisfy both the needs. We had few words from such prospective customers and did a detailed analysis if they really need the solutions we am providing.

Learnings:Conduct a detailed market survey is through your network but beware of any bias in their evaluations. So always take second, third….other opinions through secondary sources.

Q) What were the major uncertainties when the venture was started and how did you overcomethem?

Devesh:Major uncertainty was team uncertainty. Though we were close friends but no one belonged to the industry we were to service. So we had to bring in external experts to bring in that knowledge. We minimized the risk of paying huge salary by compensating the team in terms of profit sharing and a minimum salary. This helped us to reduce the financial implications to certain extent.

Secondly few of the promoters were working full time which bought an initial burden to the others who have been working full time with no added benefits. Later this was resolved amicably by redistributing shares based on the risks and effort shared.

Learnings: Work proactively towards uncertainties else the weakest link might bring down the whole business.

Q) How did you go about starting the business? What problems were encountered?

Devesh:Main challenge was forming a promoter team who believed in the idea. Secondly was convincing the employees to join a startup. Initially we hired very little full time employees while most of the expertise comes from highly capable engineers working part time. Also we tapped in to the housewives who due to constraints at personal front could work from home for most of the time and for few hours in office. This all helped us to work in less office space and reduces employee salaries without compromising on output of the product.

Also processes were not in place initially which led to sometimes delay in deliveries or managing quality. Setting up a project management system and CRM (all freeware) helped us to do task better. As a startup we cannot have much process management overhead, but some tools and process do help to increase your efficient and help you perform better. Gradually we increased our focus on robust quality process as operations started becoming complex.

Learnings: Think about innovative solutions to resolve your problems – such as hiring alternate workforce like housewives and using freeware softwares to put some processes in place

Q) To what extend did you get support from outside? Were families supportive?

Devesh: Friends and families played an important part, though initially we had to convince them of our idea’s potential. We were leading comfortable lives with or MNC jobs, and suddenly our source of income stopped. But we were lucky to have our families support. Infact the initially capital was raised from families and friends. After some time even our spouses got involved in the venture.

It’s your network which helps you to fly at the beginning. Focus on building network if you plan to be an entrepreneur. It’s must. Support from your family during challenging time is invaluable.

Q) Any specific challenge that you faced?

Vidit: We once approached a CEO of a large chain of hospitals in central and northern India. We installed our system in one of the hospitals and shared the feedback report with the CEO. He was quite impressed with the reports as we could identify significant improvement areas such as wheelchair accessibility in toilets etc. His team even visited the hospital to validate the issues. However, the operations head of the hospital was quite taken aback and did not want our systems installed. Finally the hospital decided not to go ahead with our system, saying that they would develop their own feedback mechanism. There was resistance from middle management to install the system.

We realized that we need to think from various angles and think about all the stakeholders involved. We had initially relied only on the top level executives to sell our idea.

Q) What are the major problems that you face in your business?

Devesh:You have different challenges at different stage of business. This is part and parcel of owning a business. But you get used to handle them when you reach there. Major problems that we are facing are:

• Technology is changing rapidly and our team needs to be on toes in learning new skills.
• Fixed cost has risen with time which is eating to the profitability of business. Need to bring it down.
• Customers have become more mature and there are new players entering everyday offering services as low cost. We need to continuously innovate and increase value to our existing customers to regain them.
• Focusing more on services to increase the revenue stream.
• To go to the next level we need to have another round of funding which is a challenge

Q) How do you feel about owning your own venture rather than working in an MNC?

Devesh: I have worked in an MNC earlier which I enjoyed working but somehow I felt my creativity were restricted and not appealing to the behemoth I was working with. To express myself, starting my own business was the only choice.

Vidit:Also it provides independence which I never felt in a job. I look forward to doing it many times over and over again. I am pretty excited about it. One of the books that I really like and would recommend to new entrepreneurs is RashmiBansal’s “Stay Hungry Stay Foolish”.