Establishing an ambulance service in India and making a good business out of it, isn’t easy, especially when there are already established players in this segment. But StanPlus as a company has learnt the art of running its business in an efficient and sustainable way. Antoine Poirson, Co-founder and COO, StanPlus shares his recipe for success and plans for the future
How do you plan to scale your business and sustain it in the long run?
In a very competitive market, StanPlus has developed a category leader position, setting the tone on how the industry will evolve. Our ability to transform the traditional business model and align the incentives of the various stakeholder, coupled with our operational excellence, powered by technology is essential in sustaining in such a market.
Also, StanPlus is a very patient centric and focussed system. Our key premise has been to provide an ambulance within 15 minutes during emergency situations. The ability to service 50 per cent of Hyderabad’s population within 15 minutes and 85 per cent of population under 30 minutes is what sets us apart from other established players.
The secret for sustaining in long run is technology as we believe that operational and business efficiency are brought together by technology. At StanPlus, we see technology as an enabler rather than an end. We deploy it to cater the exact needs of the business. As an example, we made sure that our call-centre would be equipped with a smart dispatching tool, leveraging real time data from the ambulances to respond better to patients.
We are also obsessed about quality of our ambulances. We ensure that the vans are sanitised daily and fumigated every week, and are stocked with all life-saving devices. All drivers and paramedics are also periodically trained.
This year, the focus for us is to improve operational flow and to expand in different cities in the Hyderabad – Vijayawada – Vizag region. We also plan to bring our average response time from 15 to 20 minutes to the eventual target of 12 minutes.
What kind of funding have you received thus far and by whom?
Very recently, we have secured an investment of $ 1.1 million as seed funding for a minority stake, which is being led by Kstart (Kalaari Capital’s Seed Fund) and co-invested by CM Diamant, a chain of medical centres and hospitals in Canada and Africa, and INSEAD Angels (Asia). And the initial funding was $15,000 which we secured by winning the INSEAD Venture Competition.
You mentioned about Kstart and CM Diamant as your latest investment. What kind of impetus will this provide you? Any learning that these investors bring to you?
With the recent funding, we plan to increase our advance life support fleet and expand across regional geographies, innovate with cutting-edge technologies and to cover all medical transportation categories. We also want to consolidate our operations in Andhra Pradesh and Telangana and want to go deeper in the towns and villages.
Our start-up at present has a fleet of 300 ambulances each with three trained drivers to take turns during a 24-hour period, alongside trained paramedics on-board at all times and six advanced life support (ALS) ambulances. On an average, we receive over 60 calls per city every day, with each one answered in less than 15 seconds. In addition to being an aggregator, we will also be setting up our own fleet of vehicles to cater to specific segments of the market.
Our investors are highly supportive to our efforts, in fact, this is one of the reason we decided to proceed with them. If CM Diamant is a long-term strategic investor, the Kstart and INSEAD Angels (Asia) bring immediate support to the company. Kstart being a venture capitalist entity, they support the StanPlus with their extensive experience of growing companies at the seed level. Some of the challenges that we face have already been faced by other start-ups that Kstart has invested in, and we benefit instantly from that experience. Kstart also brings an amazing team of professionals and advisors who work with us on tackling our biggest strategic challenges. Similarly, the angels from INSEAD Angels (Asia) have extensive early stage entrepreneurial experience across the globe which we heavily leverage for expertise.
Do you plan to venture outside Telangana and its neighbouring states? If yes, which states?
StanPlus is currently spread across eight cities including Hyderabad, towns of Andhra Pradesh, Telangana. In a year from now, we will be catering to entire Andhra Pradesh and Telangana region as well as the Bengaluru area. Bengaluru will be a first step towards a nationwide presence and I see the company serving patients and our partners in all major and regional cities of India in less than five years from now.
What has been you your learning in this journey and how would you mend mistakes that you have made in your business venture in the past?
With experience, we believe that any early stage organisation on a mission to transform an industry will need to be highly adaptive. Mistakes are part of the journey. Mistakes are necessary in the iteration process to reach to a product market fit. To put in other words: to define a product or service that someone is willing to pay for.
As an example, we started with an emergency only focus, but rapidly realised that it would be difficult to gain traction from scratch on the emergency front. The customer requests are scattered and random for a service that is operationally heavy. After a few days of attempt, we adjusted our strategy and targeted the non-emergency market for the first months in order to gain traction and finally be ready to handle emergencies. As we did so, we discover a fantastic untapped market. In the medical transportation space, 70 per cent of the market is not emergency but scheduled transfer. The pain points are almost similar, but as an early stage organisation we could identify many low hanging fruit to harvest.
This iteration process is needed at every level of the organisation, for high-level business model adjustments (see above example) as well as for very specific problem solving.
Another mistake that we made was to focus on straight-up deployment of mobile applications in the ambulances. Our drivers were not trained on smartphones, charging facilities were not available, monthly data plans were getting consumed overnight. It was creating more challenges than solutions. As a tactic move, we decided to delay the deployment of the applications and implement passive GPS tracking systems. Then we focussed on developing the relationship with the ambulance partner, on skilling the drivers and harvesting the bulk efficiency gains. Six months later, now that 80 per cent of the efficiency gains have been achieved and drivers are ready for app, we are coming back and deploying the applications. This brings efficiency gains from 80to 99 per cent, serving our initial goals.
Making mistakes, understanding them and learning from it, accelerate the iteration process toward maturity. It equips the organisation with a mindset and an experience toolbox that can be reused anytime.
But, as we deal with patients at risks, mistakes cannot be made everywhere in our industry. Hence, whenever it comes to patients, we always perform extensive testing and pilots before deploying a new process/ service.
You have taken departure from the app model and now rely on a 24-7 Regional Emergency Response Centres. Can you explain why and how this will improve your business model?
Yes, we are a phone-only service and operate on a call-centre model. When it comes to ambulance, people want reassurance that their service is arriving than waiting for the app to load. StanPlus receives an average of 60+ calls per day.
With this model, we are able to give customers a single number access to every hospital ambulance in our chain. It is easier for us to search and dispatch the nearest available ambulance and the right medical equipment than expect a person at the emergency situation to handle. We currently have 300+ ambulances, 60+ ambulance operators on board, 15 hospitals accounting for 2000+ beds that exclusively use StanPlus’ highly dependable ambulance network.