India’s Hospital Management System, Insta by Practo, Moves to SaaS Model, as it Charts Expansion Course

Delhi, 24th August 2022: Practo’s hospital management system, Insta, trusted by 1500+ healthcare centres globally, today announced its transition to SaaS model to drive more value, efficiency, flexibility and scalability for its partner clinics and hospitals.

The development, part of the company’s holistic growth and profitability strategy, is expected to impact the topline positively, with a 25% increase in healthcare centres. With this move, the company aims to improve its integration, enabling timely upgrades and greater ease of use, at 4x lesser costs as compared to conventional IT infrastructures.

Insta’s ambitious expansion path includes going deeper into the Middle East and Indian markets by providing for local needs. It will also enable hospitals to improve operational efficiency by 20-25% with minimal revenue leakage.

Post-acquisition in 2015 by Practo, Insta has grown 368% in terms of the number of hospitals and clinics using the service and is clocking a 25-30% revenue growth year-on-year, over the last two to three years. Due to consistent on-demand service and highly automated systems, the retention rate for the business has been 92% – one of the highest in the industry.

Insta is associated with hospitals like Apollo Health and Lifestyle, Ovum, Bansal, Omni Hospitals in India and Emirates Healthcare, Right Health, Etihad Airways Medical Centre, VPS- Lifeline, VPS-Lifecare, Valiant Clinic in UAE amongst others.

Speaking on this development, Abhinav Lal, Co-founder and Chief Technology Officer, Practo said, “We remain committed to our goal of balancing growth with profitability. While our consumer business continues to grow, our B2B business is turning profitable. This transition to SaaS is a strategic step in that direction. It helps us anticipate revenues, shorten sales lifecycle, and deepen integration, thus, creating a more predictable ecosystem for both growth and profitability. We are the leaders in the Middle East market and will continue to invest in that market, to grow both market and revenue share. The India market is ripe for SaaS; it provides much-needed agility that healthcare players are looking for, thus, giving us the confidence of further expansion, in a shorter period of time.”

Speaking on Practo’s software, Vikas Kumar, CEO, Insta, said, “SaaS-based cloud solutions have many advantages over traditional systems, such as lower costs, better data security and interoperability, and easier access to information and data sharing. The convenience, agility and cost-optimisation offered by Insta will ultimately contribute to creating a more connected health infrastructure in India and abroad. This is a true example of building in India, for India and the world.”

Discussing the impact of Insta by Practo, Sudha Kamalnath, Chief Operating Officer, Sagar Chandramma Hospitals, Bangalore said, “We have been working with Insta for over 7+ years now and have been using the software across our centres. The move to SaaS has helped improve our efficiency by 85% and reduced inventory leakage by 95%. Overall, we are seeing improved collaboration between different departments and streamlined processes, which has helped us serve our patients better.”

Like many other industries, Covid-19 has put a spotlight on the need for the adoption of healthcare systems to SaaS-based models. And the cloud computing market in healthcare is estimated to reach $51.9 billion by 2024. The adoption of cloud-based solutions also helps healthcare organisations to cut down on the unnecessary expenditure of maintaining legacy IT systems while providing greater collaboration for better patient care.