Indian digital health platform on a mission to provide affordable family care

As the country recovers post-pandemic, we asked Carina Kohli, founder of the digital health platform HUMM, why India desperately needs affordable and accessible family healthcare.

Although 76 per cent of healthcare professionals in India use digital health records, gender-based discrimination remains a prevalent issue.

According to a study conducted in 2016 by researchers at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), the Indian Statistical Institute and Harvard University, only 37 per cent of women got access to healthcare compared with 67 per cent of men.

Recent figures show that 75 per cent of Indian women experience postpartum anxiety for up to 24 months post pregnancy while 73 per cent of them quit the workforce to start or raise a family.

When the pandemic hit, the country faced big question marks. A 2021 BMJ report found that Covid had a negative impact on the Indian healthcare system, with “the exaggeration of income inequality during lockdown expected to extend beyond”.

“I grew up thinking that healthcare is a human right,” says Carina Kohli, founder of HUMM, a healthtech company focusing on postpartum and postnatal care. “The reality is that in India, the majority of the population either don’t have access to healthcare or can’t afford it.

“I was diagnosed with PCOS when I was about 13 and I felt very isolated. I remember being very insecure and nervous and, aged 19, I started doing research on options for women’s health and fertility in India.”

At the peak of the pandemic Kohli and her team created a web application and launched Baby Space – a digital content and community platform for fertility, pregnancy and childcare.

“We grew that to about 16,000 people,” she says. “But in a country like India where we still deal with issues of affordability, geographical accessibility and infrastructure. Therefore, we realised that access to healthcare is a primary need and we decided to pivot and rebuild [part of the system].

“So we established HUMM to offer affordable unlimited family health care to mothers, families and organisations with a focus on postpartum, postnatal, neonatal and baby care.”

HUMM has a range of on-demand, solution-based health programmes as well as different tools with personalised insights, health plans and progress charts covering physical, mental and emotional health.

“Our incredible doctors and experts often chat with our users on social media and the HUMM app, answer their questions and essentially, build that trust,” Kohli explains.

“Telemedicine has been around in India for a little while and people are now more open to options and they’re more adaptable. They know that this can be a much more affordable and convenient option.”

Has the pandemic helped digital health technology in this regard? “Definitely. The pandemic has influenced consumer behaviour to a great extent,” the founder adds.

“There are still a lot of cultural barriers and people may not be always open about mental health or sexual health, but the response we’ve had has been really eye-opening and we found that couples felt less alone knowing that they had dedicated doctors and experts to speak to.”

The lower costs and the one-to-one consultations with experts are what keep users coming back and Kohli says that receiving positive feedback is by far the most rewarding feeling for her, as a founder.

“We have great doctors in our country and I think information and awareness will definitely help us grow,” she says.

“Our dream is to broaden access to healthcare services across the country because the need is definitely there. Currently, we are India-focused because it’s a huge market where 25 million babies are born every year. But we are also looking at neighbouring countries that deal with similar issues. In the next five to seven years, we might consider countries across Southeast Asia.”

Kohli would love to see more openness to femtech. Although there is a growing interest in the sector, women’s healthcare remains underfunded. “I really don’t like when people talk about women’s health as a niche,” the founder says.

“We are 50 per cent of the population and there is so much we need to do.”

For more info, visit hummcare.com.