In April 2020, as Indian cities locked their doors and hospitals turned away anyone without a fever screening, online consultations on Practo jumped 500% almost overnight. Four months later, in August 2020, the company’s own investors priced it at less than half of what they had paid three years earlier.
That contradiction sits at the centre of Practo’s story: a healthtech platform that rode two genuine pandemic tailwinds — telemedicine and digital health records — while quietly bleeding cash from an earlier bet on doing too much, too fast, in too many countries. It took Practo until FY25, seventeen years after two engineering students coded its first version in a hostel room, to post its first full year of operating profit. Whether that turnaround is durable enough to survive a public listing is the question its bankers are now being asked to answer.
Quick facts
| Company | Practo Technologies Private Limited |
| Founded | May 2008, Bengaluru |
| Founder(s) | Shashank ND and Abhinav Lal |
| Businesses | Doctor discovery and appointments, online consultations, Practo Ray clinic-management software, diagnostics booking, corporate health plans; UAE app launched May 2025 |
| Latest FY revenue | Rs 234 crore ($24.4 million) in FY25, per company disclosure |
| Latest FY profit/loss | Rs 15 crore operating EBITDA profit in FY25 (first full profitable year) |
| Listed | Private; targeting an IPO on Indian exchanges in the second half of CY26 |
| Market value / last valuation | $300-310 million as per its last disclosed funding round (August 2020); pre-IPO trackers cite $500-650 million, unconfirmed by the company |
| Key shareholders / CEO | Shashank ND (Founder-CEO); Sequoia Capital (Peak XV) is the largest institutional shareholder, alongside Tencent and Matrix Partners |
What they do
Practo runs India’s best-known doctor-discovery and telehealth marketplace: patients search for a doctor by specialty and locality, book an in-clinic slot or a video consultation, order diagnostic tests, and store prescriptions and reports in one place. On the supply side, it sells Practo Ray, a cloud clinic-management system that lets doctors and small hospitals handle appointments, electronic records, billing and inventory instead of paper registers. A newer layer sells corporate wellness and outpatient health plans to employers, and since May 2025 the same discovery-and-consultation product has been running in the UAE, with an early pilot for a paid version among US clinics.
The origin
The idea traces to 2008, when Shashank ND’s father needed a second opinion on a knee replacement from a doctor in the United States. The consultation stalled because his medical records existed only on paper in Bengaluru and could not be shared digitally. Shashank, then a final-year biotechnology student at the National Institute of Technology, Surathkal, decided the fix was software that let clinics digitise records rather than another hospital app. He brought in classmate Abhinav Lal, and the two built the first version of what became Practo Ray in their college hostel room, incorporating Practo Technologies Private Limited in May 2008. The founding insight was narrow and specific: Indian private practice ran on handwritten prescriptions and box files while every other services industry had already moved online, and a scheduling-and-records tool for doctors was the wedge that could eventually connect them to patients directly.
The struggle years
Practo’s first serious wobble came from growing too wide, too quickly. Flush with venture money after its 2015 Series C, the company bought five companies in about eighteen months: fitness app FitHo in April 2015, product-engineering firm Genii Technologies in July 2015, hospital-management software maker Insta Health Solutions for a reported $12 million in September 2015, hospital-appointment platform Qikwell the same month, and healthcare-analytics firm Enlightiks in December 2016, as reported by Business Standard and IBEF at the time. In parallel it pushed into fifteen overseas markets, including Indonesia, the Philippines, Singapore and Brazil. The integration did not go smoothly: in 2017 Practo laid off around 150 employees, roughly 10% of its workforce, and its revenue actually fell, from about Rs 212 crore in FY17 to Rs 182 crore in FY18, even as losses for that period ran near Rs 58-182 crore depending on the year.
The bigger reckoning landed in August 2020. Even as India’s telehealth demand was at its pandemic peak, Practo raised $32 million in a round led by Hong Kong-based AIA at a post-money valuation of roughly $300-310 million, according to Entrackr’s reporting on the round’s cap-table filings — more than 50% below the $620 million valuation it had commanded in its January 2017 Series D. Tencent, Sequoia Capital, Matrix Partners, Sofina and Google’s Capital G all took part, but at a price that effectively wrote down three years of growth. Losses kept widening after that: net loss rose to Rs 236.5 crore in FY22, its worst year on record, even as revenue grew, according to Entrackr’s analysis of the company’s regulatory filings. A further round of cuts followed in April 2023, when Practo let go of 41 employees, citing performance reviews, as reported by Inc42 and TechStory.
The turning point
The event that reshaped Practo’s business was the COVID-19 lockdown of March-April 2020. Online medical consultations on the platform spiked 500% during the lockdown months compared with pre-pandemic levels, Practo told Business Standard in June 2020, and Forbes India later reported that full-year 2020 teleconsultations ran three times 2019 levels, with peak lockdown demand touching ten times normal volumes. A Practo product executive told Forbes India that growth the company had expected to take three to four years arrived in ten months. The number on the other side of that same event is the $300-310 million valuation the company accepted four months later, a discount of more than 50% to its 2017 peak. Demand had inflected upward; the balance sheet built on the previous five years of acquisitions and international bets had not yet earned the market’s trust. It took another four years of cost discipline — cutting the advertising and consultation subsidies that had driven Practo’s Rs 68 crore annual ad spend in FY22 — before revenue growth and shrinking losses converged into the operating profit Practo now points to.
The money behind it
Practo has raised a little over $230 million across roughly 13 rounds since 2008, according to Tracxn’s funding database. Three backers defined its trajectory. Sequoia Capital (now Peak XV Partners) first invested in the company’s growth-stage rounds and, after the 2020 down round, emerged as its largest single shareholder with close to 39% of the register, giving it effective control of governance heading into any IPO discussion. Tencent led the $55 million Series D in January 2017 that valued Practo at $620 million, its high-water mark, and its capital funded the very international expansion that later had to be unwound. AIA, the Hong Kong-listed life insurer, stepped in as the lead investor of the 2020 round with $20 million, pulling Practo’s capital base away from pure venture money and toward a strategic insurer relationship at the exact moment the company needed a resettled valuation and a case for outpatient-insurance data. No primary round has been disclosed since a small April 2022 top-up, and the company has not confirmed a fresh valuation since the 2020 mark-down; third-party trackers such as Tracxn and PitchBook place informal pre-IPO estimates anywhere from $500 million to $650 million, figures Practo has not confirmed.
How it makes money
Practo earns from three connected streams rather than one clean transaction. Doctors and small hospitals pay a recurring subscription for Practo Ray to manage appointments, records and billing; that subscription and related software-and-maintenance revenue is a steady, high-margin base that does not depend on patient traffic. Patients who book paid consultations, diagnostic tests or specialist referrals generate a cut for Practo on each transaction, booked in its filings as “diagnostic and consulting services” — the largest single line, at roughly half of operating revenue in FY23. A smaller, newer stream comes from corporate wellness contracts, where employers pay Practo a per-employee fee for outpatient benefit plans. The part outsiders tend to get wrong is treating Practo as an advertising-led marketplace like a food-delivery app: its FY22 filings show it spent almost as much on consultation and surgery-partner costs (Rs 95 crore) as on advertising (Rs 68 crore), and the swing to profitability came largely from cutting both, not from a step-change in monetisation. Contribution margin — revenue left after paying for consultations and delivery, before fixed costs — moved from about -1% in FY22 to 40% in FY24 and 46% in FY25 on the company’s own reporting, which is the number that actually explains the turnaround.
The numbers
Revenue held broadly flat through FY22-FY25 while losses fell sharply, then flipped to a small operating profit. The FY22 and FY23 figures below are net loss as reported in Practo’s regulatory filings and analysed by Entrackr; FY24 and FY25 are operating EBITDA, the metric the company itself has disclosed for those years ahead of a possible listing, so the two pairs are not strictly like-for-like.
| Fiscal year | Revenue (Rs crore) | Profit / (loss) (Rs crore) |
| FY22 | 211.2 | (236.5) net loss |
| FY23 | 204.4 | (99.4) net loss |
| FY24 | 240.0 | (17.0) operating EBITDA loss |
| FY25 | 234.0 | 15.0 operating EBITDA profit |
The pattern to notice is that revenue itself barely grew — it is roughly where it was three years earlier — while total expenses fell from Rs 452.6 crore in FY22 to a fraction of that by FY25. Practo’s improvement is a cost story first and a growth story second, at least until its India business resumes expanding and its UAE and US pilots start contributing meaningfully.
Where the money comes from
Geographically, Practo is still an India business with an international option attached. Its FY25 disclosures put GMV at Rs 3,500 crore-plus, largely from India, where the platform says it serves more than 50 million patients across 640-plus cities with a listed network of over five lakh doctors. The UAE launch in May 2025 is the one genuinely new growth line: Practo says it onboarded more than 50,000 monthly active users within weeks and listed over 31,000 doctors across 3,000-plus clinics, reaching an annualised GMV run rate of about Rs 100 crore, alongside an early-stage US pilot with 50-60 paying clinic customers. By revenue line rather than geography, diagnostic and consulting services made up close to half of operating revenue in both FY22 and FY23 filings, with the Practo Ray subscription and software-maintenance business supplying most of the rest. The surprise, given how the company is popularly known — as an appointment app — is how much of its earlier revenue mix (Rs 11.5 crore in FY22) came from online medicine ordering, a line that has since been scaled back as the company narrowed its focus back toward its original clinic-software and consultation core.
The risks
Three risks sit close to the surface. First, Practo’s profitability is an EBITDA story, not yet a net-income one on public evidence, and it was achieved substantially through cost cuts — lower advertising and consultation subsidies — rather than pricing power or a step-up in take rate; if growth requires spending on marketing again, as it typically has for every consumer health app in India, the margin gain could reverse. Second, the market Practo competes in has thinned out and consolidated around larger, better-capitalised horizontal players in diagnostics, pharmacy and hospital chains that now bundle their own telehealth and appointment features, leaving a discovery-only marketplace with less pricing leverage than it had in 2015. Third, the planned re-domicile of its Singapore holding company back to India, a precondition for its targeted IPO, and the IPO process itself remain at an early, unconfirmed stage — Practo had, as of December 2025, begun only preliminary banker conversations with no formal mandate, size or valuation decided, which is itself a form of execution risk given the company’s history of a sharp down round the last time it went to market for capital.
The takeaway
Practo’s arc is a reminder that a demand shock and a company’s financial health can move in opposite directions at the same time. The 500% jump in lockdown consultations was real, and so was the 50%-plus valuation cut four months later, because investors were pricing five years of acquisitions and international overreach, not one quarter of usage. The lesson that seems to have stuck inside Practo is that a platform business earns the right to expand only after its core unit economics work on their own; the eventual return to profit came from unwinding complexity — fewer geographies, fewer product lines, tighter subsidy spend — not from adding more of it.
Frequently asked questions
What does Practo do?
Practo operates an online marketplace for finding doctors, booking in-clinic and video consultations, and ordering diagnostic tests, alongside Practo Ray, a subscription clinic-management and electronic-records product sold to doctors and small hospitals.
Who founded Practo and when?
Shashank ND and Abhinav Lal, then engineering students at NIT Surathkal, founded Practo Technologies in May 2008 in Bengaluru, building its first product in their college hostel room.
Is Practo profitable?
Practo reported its first full year of operating EBITDA profit in FY25, at Rs 15 crore on revenue of Rs 234 crore, following an operating EBITDA loss of Rs 17 crore in FY24 and net losses in every year before that on public record.
How much funding has Practo raised and what is it worth?
Practo has raised a little over $230 million across roughly 13 rounds, according to Tracxn. Its last disclosed valuation was $300-310 million in an August 2020 round, down from a $620 million peak in January 2017; pre-IPO estimates from third-party trackers of $500-650 million are unconfirmed by the company.
Is Practo planning an IPO?
Practo is preparing for a possible listing on Indian exchanges in the second half of CY26, including re-domiciling its Singapore holding company to India, though as of December 2025 it had only begun early, non-binding conversations with investment banks.
Sources
Figures are as of September 2026. Currency converted at $1 ≈ ₹96.0 as of 18 September 2026 (Trading Economics).
- Entrackr, “Practo delivers 3,500 Cr GMV in FY24; narrows EBITDA losses by 82%”, January 2025
- Entrackr, “Practo’s revenue crosses Rs 200 Cr in FY22, losses jump 2X”, June 2023
- Entrackr, “Practo posts flat revenue in FY23, losses down 58%”, November 2023
- Entrackr, “Exclusive: Decoding Practo’s $32 Mn fresh round with 50% lower valuation”, August 2020
- Business Standard, “Health-tech platform Practo narrows losses to Rs 17 crore, revenue up 22%”, January 2025
- Business Standard, “500% spike in online medical consultation under lockdown: Practo report”, June 2020
- Business Standard, “Practo makes yet another acquisition”, 2015
- Practo Digest (company blog), “FY25 Recap: A Year of Profitability, Progress, and Purpose”, 2025
- AngelOne News, “Practo Posts First-Ever Full-Year Operating EBITDA Ahead of IPO”, August 2025
- AngelOne News, “Health-Tech Firm Practo Initiates Bank Selection for 2026 IPO”, December 2025
- Tracxn, “Practo — Funding Rounds & List of Investors”, accessed September 2026
- Forbes India, “Tech for health: Inside the rise of Practo and its ambitious roadmap for the future”, February 2021
- IBEF News, “Practo acquires Insta Health for $12 million”, September 2015
- Inc42, “Practo Fires 41 Employees Over Performance Issues”, April 2023
- Officechai, “Practo Has Just Fired 150 Employees, Totaling 10% Of Its Workforce”, 2017
- The Company Check, “Practo Technologies Private Limited — Company Profile”, accessed September 2026
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