Injured and admitted, Syed Ahmed had to spend the next 48 hours in pain. His friend Kalyan Sivasailam still remembers that night at the Bengaluru hospital vividly, while they waited for the MRI scan results. Years later, the strangeness of that situation hadn’t left them.
If reports in a metro cities took so long, how difficult was it for the rest? In a struggle to answer this, 5C Network was co-founded.
Theirs, is a story of vision — the one that saw a tremendous gap in our healthcare system and chose to bridge it by collaboration.
Just like their experience, the lack of timely diagnosis was a frequent finding. Once immersed in the lesser explored radiology landscape of India, accurate diagnosis of radiology reports was seen as a huge problem. Heading down the years, the diagnosis centres grew to spread, but the radiologists who could read these scans remained stunted in their number.
Highly in demand and a potentially great business opportunity, this game-changing realisation struck the founding team of 5C Network.
Relatively standardised field of radiology across the world, gave them an upper hand. Regardless of its location, digital files of the patients were generated in the same format. A commonly prescribed way of reading a scan was in place too. As entrepreneurs, this fact excited Kalyan and Syed to no bounds. A fits-all solution dogged the first hurdle most aspiring entrepreneur faced, giving them the much-needed nudge.
‘If it’s not timely or accurate, the value of the diagnosis is lost.’
5C Network as a platform, connected the five stakeholders of radiodiagnosis — doctor, radiologist, patient, technologist and hospital. Best explained in Kalyan’s words, ‘If it’s not timely or accurate, the value of the diagnosis is lost.’ Hence their startup facilitated a timely, accurate, and clinically relevant diagnosis, irrespective of their location, 24/7. While it ensured smooth and consistent earning for the radiologists, the hospitals found reliability and availability with the startup.
Passion was plentiful. Shared was the goal to make a difference. Once Kalyan built the version 0.5 of the 5C Network platform, they officially launched their services in November 2016. The initial funding flowing in, from IIM Calcutta and Villgro was primarily used to develop the business. On receiving their next round of funding from Unitus Ventures, Axilor and CIIE.CO, they assembled a tech team. Leaving no leaf unturned, the team built a stable product that proved promising to their stakeholders. Speaking on how it progressed, Kalyan says, ‘A billion new features have been added since then.’ Presently, 5C Network boasts an easy-access mobile app — a feature their subscribers seem to appreciate.
In 2016 they had begun by handling merely 15 cases in a month. However, today the number has blown up to 70,000. Kalyan and Syed estimate that, the year 2020 would witness more than 600 million people in need of radiodiagnosis. And this is the demand they plan to serve. With a presence in over 27 states and 300 hospitals and 250 radiologists on-board, 5C Network is well on its way to make that happen.
Based on our interviews: By Shrishti Abrol
About the Startup:
5C Network is the Uber of Radiodiagnosis. It is India’s First Diagnostics Network that makes radiodiagnosis more accessible, affordable and accurate through technology. 5C Network connects 5 stakeholders of Radiodiagnosis: The Doctor, Radiologist, Patient, Technologist and Hospital.
