This 34-Year-Old Is Enhancing Cancer Patients' Experience By Providing End-End Care Management Rashie Jain's Onco.com currently serves over 12,000 cancer patients every month and has served over 150,000 patients from India and other emerging markets
By Debarghya Sil •
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The World Health Organization (WHO) in a report said India with a population of 1.35 billion witnessed as many as 1.16 million new cancer cases and 784,800 cancer deaths in 2018. In India, if a person is diagnosed with a fatal disease like cancer, his/her hope to survive is automatically crushed due to the poor healthcare infrastructure and lack of technology penetration in the same area.
Rashie Jain, a 34-year-old entrepreneur who has done biotech engineering from IIT-Kanpur and later an MBA in healthcare management from Wharton School, has seen the healthcare space minutely after having worked for 12 years in this space. She witnessed the lack of technology penetration in the healthcare space and significant information gap in the cancer centre across the country increasing the plight of patients and their dear ones.
Seeing her own family struggle to get the basics right such as doctors to consult, hospitals for treatment, when her father-in-law was diagnosed with cancer was the final blow. With ample experience in the space, she along with Dr. Amit Jotwani founded Onco.com in 2017 to put an end to cancer patients' plights. Onco.com is a healthcare technology company focused on providing end-to-end care management to cancer patients.
"Every cancer patient's experience today no matter where they live is broken. It could be due to lack of access to the right specialists, lack of information/guidance on the right treatment for them or lack of end-to-end care management throughout their treatment journey," she explained.
She said being diagnosed with cancer is like being in a state of complete darkness and the treatment journey is chaotic due to this information asymmetry.
"With Onco, we are trying to address this gap by building an online oncology ecosystem that the patient or their family can tap into to get the right advice personalized to their condition followed by the right care thereby making this whole process of availing treatment more patient centric," she added.
Ups and downs
With Onco.com, Jain is trying to build a new business category which envisions to offer a new way of delivering care. With the startup, Jain claims to empower cancer patients and their families with relevant information which includes treatment costs, outcomes and experts, among others. The company currently serves over 12,000 cancer patients every month and has served over 150,000 patients from India and other emerging markets. Wearing the entrepreneurial hat for the past four years hasn't been a cake walk for Jain. Sharing her lows she said there were days when she and her team faced insurmountable challenges to overcome on the growth-side or the product-side and seemed like they with their limited resources were planning to take on the world.
However, she cherishes moments such as getting the first customer, receiving heart-felt reviews and building a strong team right from the scratch.
2020: The crucial year
Last year was not any typical year. Thousands died due to the outbreak of a contagious virus. During this time, Jain said it was a crucial year for Onco as cancer patients were most vulnerable to the deadly virus and needed more support and care. The company worked round the clock to offer right advice online and connect them with local doctors. The company also launched teleconsultation services. "Onco's team and our partners (doctors, hospitals and labs) worked tirelessly in 2020 ensuring that not a single patient had a broken experience because of COVID. This will remain our biggest achievement in 2020," she concluded.
The company as of now has raised $10 million and is expected to raise another round soon. While the company is yet to attain break-even yet they are currently focused on reinvesting their profits in growing the business and expanding their outreach to thousands of cancer patients globally. The company is also looking at launching additional services.
Rashie Jain made it to the list of Entrepreneur India's 35Under35 list of 2021.
