Recent unicorn Innovaccer aims to grow at 100% y-o-y

Silicon Valley-based healthcare Software as a Service (SaaS) company Innovaccer was one of the earlier startups to join the coveted billion dollar valuation club this year. While the tag proved to be a much awaited endorsement of moving in the right direction for the company, keeping the annual growth rate at 100 per cent and a decacorn dream is now the driving force.

In February this year, Innovaccer raised over $100 million at a valuation of nearly $1.4 billion in a Series D funding round led by VC giant Tiger Global along with existing investors like M12, Steadview Capital among others. Interestingly, when the company started out in 2014, healthcare was neither the idea nor the focus -- it was data and analytics. 
 
Innovaccer started out in a basement office in Noida. It was serving the academics sector and building data sets for professors. The first year saw top professors from top universities showing interest. But the pivot happened when they signed their first biggest client in Iowa. “I still remember doing a Google search on Indian healthcare versus the US healthcare just to understand what it looks like,” said Sachin Saxena, founding member and Senior Director of Marketing. 
 
Currently Innovaccer Health Cloud works with various stakeholders in the US healthcare sector -- its biggest client base. With patient health records at the centre, data of services like DMEs, claims, pharmacy, labs, EHRs are all made seamlessly available that companies leverage for instance employee care, connected healthcare, population health management, clinical trials and more.

“Our implementation takes 6-8 weeks. Biggest vendors weren’t able to do that in 6-8 months. Plus cost arbitrage changed the way customers perceived us,” said Saxena. The company works with 37,000 providers, at over 1,000 customer locations, and has saved  nearly $600 million in healthcare costs in the US so far.

Apart from four offices in different regions of the US, Innovaccer has its biggest office in Noida. It has plans to expand in India including in Mumbai, Bengaluru, Chennai and Hyderabad shortly. The Indian offices house both tech and operations teams with the marketing teams distributed across the US and India. Investors are looking at the healthcare sector with never-before optimism and are willing to pump in money, said Saxena, adding that after becoming a billion dollar company, adding similar growth every year requires greater focus than before.

The pandemic provided the right tailwind, with progress of a decade happening in a couple of months. While the US remains the top priority, they are also evaluating opportunities in other countries. But the lack of data layering in India is one of its biggest hurdles to launch in the country. “Once India has the data infrastructure, we are more than ready to grab the opportunity,“ he added.

Also read: BharatPe raises $370 mn to become unicorn; valued at $2.85 bn
Also read: Tiger Global to invest additional $125 mn in Infra.Market