Hacking growth in healthcare across emerging markets
My Background
I’m Kat and I am Praava’s Chief Growth Officer. I’m currently based in London and leading the team in Dhaka remotely. Throughout my career, I’ve focused on go-to-market strategy across companies such as Nokia and Microsoft. Having this exposure to hardware led me to increasingly seek tech solutions in healthcare, as I sought to make more and more of a tangible difference in people’s lives. So for the last eight years, I’ve taken my expertise in tech to the healthcare industry, where I have been a founder or early team member for different healthcare startups, including being the co-founder of two successful healthcare businesses. One focused on delivering affordable, quality care to middle-income Brazilians. The other one is a biotech firm based in Silicon Valley.
My most exciting work has been in growing businesses and helping some of the biggest healthcare businesses achieve scale, including Dr. Consulta, Brazil’s largest primary care chain.
My Journey
I was introduced to Praava by some former colleagues at Dr. Consulta, when Praava was looking for someone with experience in growing a similar business. In 2018, I started advising the business on its growth strategy. Over time, I felt an increasing personal connection and professional mission to support Praava in improving healthcare in Bangladesh, prompting me to join full time in November 2020.
My dream is for Praava to reach every Bangladeshi and provide high-quality, world-class, patient-centric healthcare. With my experience building similar experiences in other markets, I hope I am able to add a lot of value to Praava to accomplish this goal — at Dr. Consulta, I grew revenue and valuation 3x in one year, between Series B and C. Clinics grew more than 300% in 18 months; new patients tripled. Awareness grew from 1% to 30% in just one year. In 2017, we won “Interbrand Breakthrough Brand” of the year. I hope to leverage this experience to help Praava grow to its potential in providing access to high-quality care in a market that needs it.
My Motivation
Providing quality healthcare to more patients is what motivates me and makes me get out of bed every day. I want to ensure more people know what we do and how it can change their health for the better. The growth team’s role in accomplishing this goal is to ensure that patients and families know what important health services they need and how Praava can help them along their healthcare journey. We want to drive awareness for as many people as possible, arming more people with the information they need to make informed healthcare decisions, and to be the preferred partner to all Bangladeshis in staying healthy.
My team works with digital, offline, PR, and corporate sales channels to reach our audience. To ensure we are top of mind, we create all creative assets, content, and marketing activities. We use data-driven marketing and growth-hacking techniques to maximize our ROI in marketing.
When the COVID-19 pandemic reached Bangladesh, the growth team immediately saw the need and obligation to serve patients, old and new. Praava invested in a second PCR machine and became the first private lab to offer COVID-19 testing in Bangladesh. To avoid unnecessary hospital visits, Praava also added remote and at-home services. Then, my team quickly worked to make sure our audience was aware of these new services to help them through the pandemic through targeted awareness campaigns on social and physical media. We also saw that many of our corporate clients were worried about their employees becoming infected, so we created a new team to specifically cater to these clients. By adapting to the pandemic and creating new COVID-centric products, we have been able to grow Praava’s patient base. In turn, through our high-quality services, these new patients have also come to trust Praava for their other healthcare needs, furthering our growth in other services.
My Experience
I started at Praava as a consultant in 2018 and quickly fell in love with the challenge, mission, and team. As a consultant, I was involved in strategy, but I felt that I needed to be more deeply involved in the business to make a real difference. Now as Chief Growth Officer, I am able to lead the team, drive strategy and implementation. I also am able to make decisions, rather than just share advice. Since I joined Praava full time in November 2020, our patient base has almost doubled from 120,000 patients to over 350,000 today. For me, this growth is even more impressive when you consider we had fewer than 10,000 patients when I first consulted with Praava in 2018.
Due to the pandemic, I have not yet been able to meet my team in person, and the team has also had to work remotely to stay safe. Despite this, we have created a supportive and collaborative team culture. I love the challenge and can’t wait to meet the team in person once the pandemic settles down.
My time at Praava has been a tremendous learning experience. I have had to make difficult decisions on where to invest and do more with less. Despite the difficult situation we are all experiencing, it has been rewarding to see Praava continue to grow. Working for Praava is intense: we are in a high-growth phase of the business, and there are new interesting problems to solve every day — but that is the whole fun of it! The direct impact of my work and working with a team in a different market and culture have been the most rewarding elements. I am constantly learning every day.
