Tech Mahindra, one of India’s to six IT service providers, said it has invested $3 million, around Rs 23 cr, in a fast-growing tele-medicine start-up based in Plano, Texas.
The Indian company, which gets a 6% stake in exchange for the investment, has an option of raising its stake to 14% by January 2021 by investing another $5 million.
The company, VitalTech Holdings, started commercial operations last year (2019) and recorded revenue of around $0.4 million (Rs 3 cr). In the first nine months of 2020, the company has already seen revenue of $2.2 million (Rs 16.5 cr).
VitalTech offers Internet-based tele-health services, and offers a remote patient monitoring platform to healthcare companies in North America.
It has 35 full-time, and 10 contract, employees.
SYNERGIES
Given that VitalHealth is primarily focused on delivering a platform and Tech Mahindra is primarily focused on system integration, deployment and services, the move is likely aimed at facilitating combined go-to-market strategies between the two companies.
The two companies can offer a combined package that includes both the platform as well as associated services such as deployment, training and maintenance.
While this will help Tech Mahindra win new clients in the healthcare industry, it will help the Texas company grow much faster than if it had to do everything in-house.
The Indian company will also be able to put VitalTech’s platform in front of a much larger circle of potential clients thanks to the dozens of North American healthcare companies that it has had multi-year relationships with.
On its part, TechM said the relationship will “strengthen its existing Healthcare IT services business and help the company’s healthcare customers in their digital transformation journey”.
The deal comes at a time when healthcare companies, such as hospital chains, are desperately dialing IT solution providers like Tech Mahindra to help them put in place tele-medicine services to deal with the challenges posed by the COVID-19 pandemic.