We all know waiting in the long queue is one of the most frustrating things we ever come across, but its almost unavoidable. We are sure many of you would have faced these issues, especially in hospitals and doctor clinics. But here is a smart startup that identified this as an opportunity for their business plan and is offering a simple solution to this mind-boggling issue.
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The founders of Sminq – Shachin Bharadwaj, Santhosh Nagarajan, and Sheldon DSouza – claim that their solution can make you an appointment that keeps. “By saving approximately 74 minutes of wait time per patient, we have saved more than 140 years of waiting time till date for all patients,” claims Nagarajan.
The Sminq App
Currently applicable with only hospitals and clinics, this app is available on iOS, Android, and Desktop and offers two interfaces. One for the doctor to schedule their appointments as per their availability and the second for the patients to receive notifications and alerts to schedule their appointment with the doctor.
“Our algorithms understand the trend and the pattern that a particular doctor follows at her/his clinic and accordingly, predict the time that a patient can expect to be served at,” explains Nagarajan.
Nagarajan claims close to 1 million customers have used Sminq till now to meet their doctors, on time. Nagarajan claims that the company is on its way to close this fiscal by earning close to Rs 30 lakh and has already set a revenue mark of Rs 1 crore next year.
The app considers not just the regular timings of doctors’ schedules, but also factors in multiple habitual factors, cascading effect of a late appointment and then informs the scheduled patients about their particular appointments in real-time.
The Way Forward
It was when the three founders, Sachin Bharadwaj, Santhosh Nagarajan and Sheldon DSouza had sold off their previous startup TastyKhana to FoodPanda and were looking for ideas to start a new venture that a problem faced by one of them turned into an inspiration for Sminq.
“We were contemplating many different ideas around that time when one of the founders’ wives had to wait in a long queue while she was pregnant. It was a nightmare in getting an appointment at the doctor with no certainty of knowing when to expect service. This incident triggered the idea of eliminating queues to reduce the waiting time across all places,” recalls Nagarajan.
And now after successful registrations of over 2000 hospitals and clinics, they are looking at expanding their solution to other sectors as well, with the single motive of ‘creating a world devoid of any queues’
The company is also in the process of raising a Series A round after having raised $1million from two venture capitalists – Saama Capital and Blume Ventures.
The new capital will be used in venturing into new sectors and also expanding the geographical territories. The founders have already tested the waters on the need of a solution like Sminq in other sectors by conducting two pilots with two banks, but for different use cases – one for streamlining walk-in interviews and the other during demonetization to handle the never-before-seen queues.
Their current city of operations in Pune, but in the coming months, this solution will be readily available across the country.
