How Marham turned a Facebook group about doctors into a healthcare platform

Ehsan Imam's father fell ill in 2015, and Imam could not work out which doctor to take him to. He did what many Pakistanis do and asked around. Then he turned the question into a Facebook group, where people asked each other who the right doctor was for a given problem. Asma Omer helped run it. That group became Marham, a Lahore company that says it now lists more than 40,000 doctors verified by the Pakistan Medical and Dental Council in over 120 cities.

Marham ran for about five years on its own resources and took its first outside money, a $1 million seed round, in August 2021. Its own account shows how a directory turned into a telemedicine business.

Building a directory by hand

Marham's own timeline gives 2016 as the launch year of its verified doctor directory, though some coverage dates the company to 2015, when the Facebook group began. The first job was data. Hospitals often lacked complete details on their doctors, so the founders collected them by hand, visiting hospitals and calling clinics. Imam told the blogger Zair Abbas in 2016 that collecting the data was a real struggle, because people were afraid they "might be from the tax department".

The early team was thin. Imam left his job, and former colleagues helped him set up an office. Farwa Ali, who handled marketing, and Omer, who worked on design, joined without taking a salary. Local firms lent free hosting and marketing help. The first product let people find doctors by specialty or disease, share a doctor's details over WhatsApp or SMS, and leave feedback to help the next patient decide. Imam also listed what he wanted to add next: hospital services, lab tests, rate comparison, a symptom checker and blood donation. Lab testing is now part of the product, which makes that 2016 list a fair guide to where the company went.

By 2018 Marham reported more than 12,000 registered doctors across 18 specialities, about 15,000 appointments booked a month and a full time team of 31, including its three full time cofounders. A call centre helpline served patients who could not use the website. Revenue came from doctors, who paid for software and reach, not from patients. Facebook gave the group mentorship and $20,000 to grow its community, which then had about 130,000 members.

That year Marham also offered second opinions, online consultations and medical tourism inside Pakistan, and it said it wanted to become a centralised appointment booking system for the country within two years. Imam received Google's Demo Day Asia award in 2018, and later Marham was nominated for Asia's Favourite Startup. The ambition was larger than the footprint. Marham then worked with about 1,000 established practices, more than 300,000 people a month came to its website for health information, and the founders spoke of opening more practices and reaching rural and underprivileged areas of Pakistan.

The telemedicine turn

Appointments for a clinic visit were the original product. Telemedicine changed the business. The company dates the scale up of telemedicine to 2020, when Covid kept patients at home. By the 2021 seed round, roughly half of its revenue came from online consultations, and it had added lab test booking and medicine ordering through partner labs and pharmacies. Patients could also pay for a video call with a verified doctor and receive the prescription in the app, a service the company still sells today.

Indus Valley Capital led the seed round, with Weihan Liew, an angel investor from Southeast Asia, taking part. At the time Marham reported 20,000 doctors in 67 cities, more than 10 million patients served since launch and a team of more than 80 people. Aatif Awan, who founded Indus Valley Capital and was previously vice president of growth at LinkedIn, said "the founders' passion is inspiring" and pointed to the progress they had made without outside money.

The stated plan was a healthcare superapp. Imam described a healthcare ecosystem for patients, doctors and hospitals, and the company said it would use the money to reach smaller cities and rural areas and to build micro clinics that rely on telemedicine. Awan now sits on the company's board.

Competition and the first mover claim

Marham's early lead did not stay uncontested. At the time of the seed round, at least five other notable players had entered the doctor booking space in five years, several of them with venture capital. Imam leaned on the head start and on service quality. He said the company had put a lot of care into its team, product and processes, and called Marham's head start the first mover advantage.

What Marham sells now

The product has widened well beyond booking. Marham's website describes video consultations with prescriptions delivered in the app, clinic appointments with listed fees, home lab tests through partner laboratories, medicine delivery matched to prescriptions, and programmes for weight loss, mental health, diabetes, skin and child development. A business arm, Marham for Teams, sells outpatient, wellness and doctor on call programmes to employers. Doctors get a practice management app with scheduling, electronic prescriptions and billing.

The directory's growth shows in the company's own counts. In 2018 it listed doctors across 18 specialities and said it had helped more than 5 million people. Its site now describes more than 100 specialties and says patients using its telemedicine service in the past month came from more than 145 cities. None of these figures has been independently audited.

It reports 1.5 million consultations completed, more than 3 million doctor bookings and over 400,000 patient reviews. It also runs a health content channel with more than 2.2 million YouTube subscribers. Its partners include Chughtai Lab, Roche, Novo Nordisk, Jubilee Insurance and Meezan Bank, along with public sector bodies.

Omer, who leads growth, partnerships and the commercial side as chief operating officer, has been named a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum. Marham says it is building AI assisted treatment journeys that guide patients from booking through recovery, and that it aims to improve the lives of 15 million people by 2030.