We live in a world where food services reach before than emergency services. Jeetendra Lalwani and Nilesh Mahambre, who met at a river cleaning drive in Mumbai, recognized this posing threat to society and came up with an idea to start an ambulance service named Dial4242.
The Team
Jeetendra Lalwani is the Co-founder and Director at Dial4242. He is 36 years old marketer who has a long experience in well known firms like Leo Burnett, Bates 141, McCann, TBWA, Cartwheel in India. Nilesh Mahambre is a 51 year old Engineer from Goa who has 25 years of experience in IT Sector.
Himanshu Sharma, a 41 year old man is their third partner. He holds 19 years of experience in startups and companies like Edenred (India), Reliance Communications, eOfficePlanet and Owens Corning India.
What Is It actually?
Booking an ambulance nowadays is a huge headache. One has to wait for calling up to a hospital, a friend or rather sometimes depending on Google. But once this app is downloaded, the service is promised to be superfast.
“I was often put in a spot during the time of my father’s illness. I personally felt the need to have simple, quick and seamless means to book an ambulance as I figured that we needed a go-to resource,” explains Jeetu.
It was launched in May 2017, and after a booking the service reaches within a short span of time. With Dial4242, people can get information about ambulance close to them. The confirmation is received in a minute and the user gets to know what is the estimated time of arrival.
Pricing is one of the major problems and thus keeping in mind the fact that vendors often ask for high steep prices, the app has pre-fixed pricing model for the first five kilometers. After that price is calculated according to additional kilometers travelled.
That is what Dial4242, launched in May 2017, aspires to be–a sure-fire way to book an ambulance and have it reach you within the stipulated time.With Dial4242, Jeetu says that a user can access the ambulances closest to them, and hence, book someone who knows their locality, receive a confirmation within a minute, and learn the estimated time of arrival. Dial4242 currently aggregates roughly 200 general, ICU or cardiac, paediatric ambulances.
The drivers don’t have to sign with the app as they will receive calls anyway. They are presently looking forward to grow more and also look into cases of hospital transfers, medical appointments, general visits.
The Use
Besides the Play Store app, there is also a hotline in Mumbai (022-49414242).
The app has been tested in 2G, 3G and 4G environments and works in low data environment too. Dial4242 gets a commission of 20% on every booking done.
They have had 1,200 downloads in just one month, and completed 200 trips in Mumbai.They even received seed investment of Rs 1 crore and are in talks with several investors for growing their startup.
