Lankan doctor video consultation app start-up raises US $ 1mn in seed funding

oDoc, a Sri Lankan start-up, has raised US $ 1 million as seed funding to commercialize its app connecting patients with doctors for video consultation. This is the largest seed investment round for any start-up in Sri Lanka.

According to Tech in Asia, a media platform that promotes tech start-ups, the investors who pumped in the US $ 1 million are John Keells Group Deputy Chairman Ajit Gunewardene, Phoenix Ventures, the investment arm of Sri Lankan apparel exporter Brandix, and Loits, the IT arm of conglomerate LOLC. 

“Say you wake up in the morning with a nasty rash and fever. Three taps on your smartphone and you can submit your pre-consultation notes, take a picture of your rash and get a doctor to review those. A doctor will call you and send his prescription with the doctor’s seal and signature right to your phone. All done in 10 minutes,” Tech in Asia said in an article where it featured the oDoc founders.

The founders of oDoc are: Heshan Fernando (CEO), Sohan Dharmaraja (Tech Head), Inshard Naizer and Dr. Janaka Wickremesinghe.

Before turning entrepreneur, Fernando was the youngest Assistant Vice President of Sri Lanka’s largest listed company John Keells Holdings. He holds four majors – in mathematics, statistics, economics and operations research – from the University of Warwick.

Dharmaraja, with a PhD in computational applied mathematics from Stanford and masters from MIT – was an algorithmic trader with Goldman Sachs. He had built a braille keyboard app for the blind when he was in the US.

Naizer was a former colleague of Fernando from John Keells and Dr. Wickremesinghe is a general physician who holds three patents. Dr. Wickremesinghe is also the founder of Sri Lanka’s first online medical education platform CorpusMedici, which a third of all doctors in the island nation subscribes to, according to Fernando.