The pioneers of the successful restaurant technology platform, Dineout, Ankit Mehrotra and Sahil Jain, have announced their venture into a new business in the high-growth industry of medical travel. The Medical Travel Company (TMTC), its most recent venture, has raised the necessary funds to grow its distinct model through a funding round that has raised $4.5 million. The venture is headquartered in the UK and India and was established in 2024, a critical strategic direction shift of the serial entrepreneurs after Swiggy acquired Dineout in 2022.
Core mission of The Medical Travel Company
The venture capitalist, Nexus Venture Partners, and the global finance group led the funding round, and this marked the beginning of institutional belief in the duo capable of repeating their earlier success in an entirely new field. The early-stage venture fund Kriscore Capital was also part of the round.
Joining the investment base were some of the world-renowned international cricketers Ben Stokes, Jofra Archer, and KL Rahul, who invested via their own collective and investment group, 4cast, which is athlete-led. The list of marquee investors was supplemented by a couple of prominent angel investors, such as Swiggy co-founder Sriharsha Majety, Tracxn founder Abhishek Goyal, and Innov8 founder Ritesh Malik.
The Medical Travel Company has a fundamental mission that aligns with a high-trust and organised corridor that links the patients in the UK with affordable and world-class healthcare services in India. The startup is directly addressing the accumulating problems of the healthcare system in the developed world, i.e., skyrocketing costs and disastrously long queues for the key procedures.
Co-founder Ankit Mehrotra pointed out this problem as the healthcare system in other countries is already broken, and in this instance, nearly 7.7 million individuals are on the wait list in the UK, and wait times to access treatment are already approaching a 2-year average. India, on the other hand, has seen a post-COVID investment boom in healthcare, with a substantial reverse brain drain of senior doctors in the US, the UK, and Europe back to India to work in a world-class hospital or to open their own practices.
The medical frontier in India has a chance to be brought to global markets, and its global practitioners and advanced technology can become a global asset, says Pratik Poddar, partner, Nexus Venture Partners. The founders are taking advantage of this structural divergence and are placing their company inside the already approximate 100 billion worldwide medical tourism industry, which is largely unorganised.
Full-stack offering and global expansion
The Medical Travel Company is an end-to-end model of service that focuses on patient safety and continuity of care. Through the platform, patients are guaranteed UK doctor supervision in their entire journey, starting on the first day. This is a vital aspect that is enabled by having a network of about 25 leading doctors in the UK and 20 in India.
The company is also strict in its screening of Indian clinical alliances, in which it only allies with the top two or three hospitals to guarantee quality. Co-founder Sahil Jain described this, stating that a home-country doctor is the key figure in the journey of the patient.
The full-stack solution also covers the mandatory travel support and in-house delivery logistics in the form of after-care and recovery. The founders are, thus, bridging the “trust, access, and coordination gap” in cross-border healthcare, a multifaceted issue, by constructing an appropriate bridge, where professional control and transparency are key.
The secured capital of $4.5 million will be invested in aggressive growth and technological improvement. The short-term strategies involve the expansion of existing businesses in the UK and India and the enhancement of the digital patient management systems significantly. The funds will be utilized to grow the clinical partnerships of the company in India and boost market growth processes.
The investors praised the skills of the founders, as Nilesh Balakrishnan, a managing partner at Kriscore Capital, said that they had demonstrated the capacity to scale and build even in the face of one of the most pressing healthcare needs. Although the company is first committed to solving the NHS waitlist crisis by creating a powerful UK-India connection, the long-term scope is international.
In 3-4 years, The Medical Travel Company will have extended the operational model to other high-income geographies that are struggling with such healthcare issues. The target markets will be the US, Canada, Australia, and other parts of Europe, and the final aim will be to create a corridor of trust, safety, and transparency in medical tourism across the globe.
Conclusion
The Medical Travel Company fundraising success by Ankit Mehrotra and Sahil Jain is a new movement in the lives of the founders of Dineout. TMTC can revolutionize the existing disjointed medical tourism industry by answering the urgent need to focus on the high price and long queues in healthcare of the developed world, and utilizing the rising medical expertise of India. The $4.5 million capital inflow with the robust support of Nexus Venture Partners, Kriscore Capital, and prominent individual investors will help the startup develop a complete stack, technology-enabled solution, and scale its one-of-a-kind patient-centric model to global heights and make India the preferred destination to seek quality, affordable international medical services.
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