Oladoc says it has served 50 million patients, but has never published what it earns
The Lahore doctor booking platform began by charging clinics a subscription. It now grows through telecom partners and publishes its reach, not its revenue.
In October 2019 Oladoc said it was in advanced talks for a $4 million Series A. The round it announced on 14 January 2022 was $1.8 million, 45 percent of that target, and it had closed in 2021, long after the talks. Oladoc has never said what it earns from the patients and doctors it counts, so the size of its rounds is the only financial measure of the business that outsiders can read. Its website now claims more than 50 million patients served, more than 9 million teleconsultations and more than 25,000 doctors.
Doctors paid first
The company began as Mydoctor.pk, started in Lahore by the brothers Abid Zuberi, now chief executive, and Arif Zuberi, now chief technology officer. In 2017 it ran two products, Mydoctor.pk for patients and Mypractice for doctors, and it was incubated by the Lahore accelerator Virtual Force, which put in $100,000 in exchange for equity.
The revenue came from doctors, not patients. Profit reported in August 2017 that Mydoctor.pk, like ZocDoc in the United States, had chosen to charge doctors a subscription instead of patients, with the fee set according to each doctor's own consultation fee. About 300 doctors were on board then, out of a directory of more than 13,000. The site received around 2,500 hits a day from patients looking for a doctor and about 350 bookings, so roughly 14 percent of those visits ended in a booking. Abid Zuberi said the company was not breaking even and did not expect to until the end of the following year.
Persuading doctors was the hard part, and Abid said why.
“The doctors don't give two hoots about patients having to wait.”
Booking software also records income. Arif Zuberi said in the same report that the company had made a deal with the Federal Board of Revenue to give it all the data, and that tax evasion remained a challenge. A platform that sells to doctors has to persuade them that joining will not expose them, which makes for a slower sale than one that charges the patient.
The scale of the problem explains the pitch. Sarmayacar, the investor, puts Pakistan at about one doctor per 1,300 people before the pandemic, for a population of about 220 million. On those figures the country has roughly 170,000 doctors, so a network of 25,000 would be about one in seven of them, if every listed doctor is practising. Abid Zuberi's stated aim in 2017 was to put everything involving health care under one roof, and the lab tests, helpline and video consultations added since follow from that aim. Sarmayacar adds that the booking platform itself was developed in 2018 and lab tests came more recently.
Four million wanted, 1.8 million raised
In October 2019 Oladoc was the only Pakistani company among the top ten finalists at Startups Istanbul, where it placed third in the scaleups category, a group meant for companies that have raised or earned at least $1 million. It said it had served over 2 million customers in the previous 12 months and that investors had already committed to part of the $4 million it was seeking.
The round that came was smaller. Oladoc confirmed $1.8 million in January 2022, led by Sarmayacar with Doha Tech Angels and other angel investors. Sarmayacar says it partnered with the company in 2021. CB Insights lists $3 million raised across three rounds, with the terms of the two earlier rounds undisclosed. That means the 2022 round was the majority of everything the company is known to have raised, and still fell well short of what it had asked for.
The company said the money would turn Oladoc into a digital health mall that serves patients across the full care lifecycle, and would bring in seasoned senior executives. By then it said it had 8,000 doctors in 10 cities, more than 300,000 verified patient reviews and more than 15 million users over three years. It offered doctor booking, lab tests and a medical history inside the app.
Telecoms as the sales force
The newer growth route runs through companies that already hold large customer bases. On 27 June 2024 Zong 4G announced a partnership giving its users free video consultations with specialists, up to 20 percent off clinic appointment fees, up to 40 percent off lab tests, up to 10 percent off medicine delivered to the home, and discounts on surgeries and procedures. Oladoc's website also names Mobilink Bank, SIMOSA, Jubilee Life and inDrive among its partners.
This is the magazine's reading of why the route matters. A telecom already owns the customer's number and billing, so the cost of reaching a patient shrinks to the cost of a bundle, and the discount is the reason to open the app. Who pays for the free video consultations, whether the telecom, Oladoc or the doctor, has not been published, and that decides whether the partnership earns Oladoc anything per patient.
What the claims cover
The company's own network counts show the direction of growth. The network held 8,000 doctors in 10 cities in January 2022 and more than 25,000 doctors by June 2024, a threefold rise in two and a half years. The website today lists 13 cities, from Karachi, Lahore and Islamabad to Sargodha, Bahawalpur, Wah Cantt and Hyderabad, though it also says services are available across Pakistan. The count of verified patient reviews, more than 300,000 in January 2022, is the same figure on the site today.
The site says every doctor is a verified professional with valid medical licences, and it points visitors to the register of the Pakistan Medical and Dental Council so they can check a licence themselves. For a marketplace that lets doctors list themselves, that verification is the product's main promise. The legal entity behind the site is MediConnect Services Pvt Limited.
What remains unknown is the part that decides the business: revenue, profit, the number of doctors who pay a subscription and the share of bookings that come through telecom partners. The company has not published any of them.
