With the Union Budget for the year of 2014-15 being brought out today, a large number of healthcare companies are hoping for some kind of windfall from the all new government. We spoke to the CEOs of some budding and certainly healthcare start-ups to find out what they hoped the budget would bring this year. Here is what some of them had to say:
India's largest dialysis service provider NephroPlus' CEO hopes for better infrastructure and lower tax levied on medical equipment. Vickram Vuppala, the CEO said, 'My expectation is that healthcare needs to get infrastructure status at least this year. This has been pending for a long time now almost a decade. There should be tax holidays of 10 years for all healthcare delivery companies not only in rural (areas) but anywhere in the country as the country needs humongous amount of healthcare infrastructure to meet its ever growing demand.'
A startup medical service that hopes to cater to the rising diagnostic needs of the country, Pathdoor hopes to reduce the costs of medical tests significantly. According to the CEO, Niharika Goel, 'We aim to bring down the amount a person spends on pathology testing by at least 10%. As far as the budget is concerned, as Dr Harsh Vardhan, our health minister has highlighted three points -- increasing the no. of people insured, which will be subsidised for the BPL population, increasing the number of beds in existing government setup and increasing the number of government hospitals. We expect an increased public private partnership in healthcare leading to a reduction in the cost of overall pathology and diagnostic testing. This will further lead to more number of people being able to avail niche testing which is currently only available in the private setup at a much higher cost.
According to Dr Anniruddha Malpani, the Medical Director of the Health Education Library for People, 'The Budget should encourage angel investors to fund start-ups (by making these investments tax-free); and also allow start-ups more liberal funding from banks.' Being the head of a start-up himself, we asked about what he expected from the budget with regards to IT and the healthcare industry; he was very emphatic in saying that his dream would be if the government funded a 'Government of India Healthcare Portal', which would allow citizens to access information on any health related issue, that would include -- reliable information on medical problems, directories of medical services available, govt facilities available and links to players in the healthcare ecosystem ( such as pharma and health insurers). The most interesting part about this idea is that this could be used as a platform on which start-ups could build additional clever tools to ensure information dissemination.
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With the Union Budget for the year of 2014-15 being brought out today, a large number of healthcare companies are hoping for some kind of windfall from the all new government. We spoke to the CEOs of some budding and certainly healthcare start-ups to find out what they hoped the budget would bring this year. Here is what some of them had to say: 
