Shashank ND, Founder & CEO, Practo

‘Build big or go broke. Aim for nothing less than world domination’

Twenty-eight-year-old Shashank ND wants to buy a rocket. Scratch that, he wants to buy an island-state. He could afford one in a few years’ time, I joke. “Probably, but it wouldn’t be big enough. Why buy an island unless you can try out a new scheme of governance and see if it scales?” he says. This surreal conversation is not part of some post-modern fantasy. It happened one recent weekday morning at a squash court in south Bangalore, where Shashank, co-founder and CEO of Practo, India’s biggest healthcare app and medical practice management software startup, had just won and lost a set each against a younger colleague. It may have been light-hearted banter, but there is no denying the fact that Shashank, even when sweaty and tired, is a man in pursuit of grandeur. Dream big. The much bandied about catchphrase holds special resonance for Shashank and Abhinav Lal, classmates at NITK-Surathkal, who, while in the final year of college, set out to “build something the world needs”. Shashank’s father had just had knee surgery, so he found that one of the things the world could use was digitised, accessible and shareable medical records. Practo Ray, a SaaS product for doctors, was born the next year in his grandparents’ disused home in JP Nagar, Bangalore. The duo borrowed a few lakh rupees from their parents, got some coders together and started up, ignoring the good-natured warnings of doctors that they would see little adoption. “There were about 10 of us and I used to tell people, if you can code and have a mattress, come on over and join us. After 14 days of intensive coding—it was insane fun—the product, a cloud-based software for clinic management, was ready,” Shashank says.

In a couple of years, when Practo, earlier known as turbo-doc.in, had a few hundred customers, Sequoia Capital pledged a small sum of money, under $500,000, to help the company scale up. Relief washed over the founders, who suddenly felt validated. “I remember feeling, oh my god, I have actually made it through,” Shashank says. Sequoia had never made as small an investment, in as young a team. For the founders, though, it was a lot of money. “We saved screenshots of our bank account going from four digits to eight. It was a special, priceless moment.” Later, when the team went to Coorg to celebrate, they danced around a bonfire to Pitbull songs till 2 am. “There was the sense that we could cross the chasm that separated us from our first million,” Shashank says, wearing his customary Practo t-shirt at his office in JP Nagar and the excited air of someone younger than his years.

Thereafter, things happened fast. Sequoia alone led three more rounds of funding, until Practo could rope in investors like Matrix Partners, Tencent Holdings, Sofina, Google Capital and Yuri Milner. “There came a point when we knew we had to build big or go broke,” Shashank says. “We went into hyper mode and launched in eight cities. Our investors at Sequoia were like, what happened to you guys?” Today, Practo is valued at over $500 million and has 2,500 employees working across 35 cities and six countries. Last year, it launched a consumer product, an app to find doctors and get appointments that has had over 500,000 downloads, and integrated it with its B2B offering. Spreading its wings abroad and on a spree of acquisitions over the past six months, Practo now claims to have more than 200,000 doctors, 5,000 diagnostic centres and 10,000 hospitals listed on its platform. It is the largest appointment booking platform in Asia—and perhaps the world.

Still not enough, Shashank says. He is sculpting a vision of the world he wants to live in, he says, a world where everyone has easy access to healthcare. “We want patients to have a single health account linked to their families that will store their health information securely, and provide helpful information in a timely manner (reminders to take medicines, for example) to help people live healthier, longer lives,” he says. Shashank does not rule out dabbling in anything from genetics to wearables. In fact, his eyes light up and a smile scurries across his face, as if to say, just wait and watch.

Shashank has another abiding desire: to put JP Nagar, a neighbourhood south of Indiranagar and Koramangala that are home to several startups, on the tech map. “Just like you know Mountain View because of Google, or Menlo Park because of Facebook, I want people to know JP Nagar,” he says. He lives here, at his family home that he has named Practo House. “This is where it all started. We always did things from first principles. We were the first to marry a healthcare SaaS product with a marketplace. And it has paid off,” he says. Shashank’s parents were government employees. His mother worked at Bharat Electricals Ltd in the computer division and that is how he got his first computer in 1996. “Wealth was not part of their vocabulary,” Shashank says. They had wanted him to get an Ivy League MBA, but they couldn’t be happier now. Except, maybe, for the fact that he has not bought a house or a car for himself. Shashank drives a Hyundai Getz. “I almost bought a Skoda, but it seemed like a waste buying it just for my weekend drives,” he says. “Maybe I will buy a Tesla some day.” He doesn’t travel much—he is a Rajput who has never set foot in Rajasthan except to launch Practo products— and spends his weekends watching movies, running or playing squash, and occasionally driving to Auroville.

His sincerity shines through in his work ethic and his indomitable vision of success. “I want to build something that lasts for decades,” he says. Shashank is dismissive of suggestions to diversify his portfolio. “Why would I cash out when this is the fastest-growing business I know and believe in?” he asks, huffing after a vigorous game of squash. He sounds like an Indian Zuckerberg—‘Zuck’, Shashank calls him, when we meet the morning after his rendezvous with the Facebook founder in New Delhi—another college entrepreneur who wouldn’t count his millions until they became billions. Shashank does admit to making a couple of personal investments in startups but they are exceptions. Mostly, he is ambivalent about his wealth. “I spend on gadgets, I have six phones and several laptops. I’ve had a ball wearing Google Glass to pubs in Bangalore. Other than that, I don’t have any big indulgences,” he says. Except dreaming big.

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