Lunivacare is a health care based digital company that provides its services to individuals, hospitals, clinics and pathology labs. The company has mainly been working to maintain medical records and does data analysis by tracing medical history. Lunivacare is a healthcare product of Lunivatech.

The company is providing mobile health, telemed management system along with a lab management system.

The scattered medical information of patients is synchronized and kept in the digital warehouse, said Shakya. The patient can access the reports from anywhere and at any time in the time of need, he added.

Lunivacare provides their application to individuals, hospitals and labs and they insert their information on it, accordingly.

“The medical information sent by the hospitals, clinics or labs are saved in the company’s internal server and it is encrypted and secured,” Shakya said. Individuals can maintain their records using the Lunivacare app which is not available publicly for now. The company provides the app once the individual agrees to take the services, he added.

However, Shakya and his team are planning to make it public and they are initiating it from mid-April, if everything goes well. “Discussions are going on on how to maintain the data records along with the legal issues too,” he said.

The concept simply emerged during his graduation days when one of his classmates used to routinely miss the lectures because his mother had fallen sick. His friend’s mother was in Dolakha and he sometimes carried her reports, visiting hospitals in Dolakha and Kathmandu, which sometimes used to create problems in proper and effective check-ups.

Shakya through his friend came to know that Gauri Shankar Hospital in Dolakha used to do tel-medicine with Kathmandu Model Hospital sometimes, and it sounded interesting for the undergraduate student, said Shakya.

Then, Shakya along with a team of three, decided to do their final year project on tel-medicine where they planned providing services not only through video-conferencing but also volunteered to keep digital records of patients’ reports and storing them in one place.

“We did a trial through our project, presented it and received good appreciation from our teachers,” said Shakya.

Shakya got so motivated that it became his dream project, but he tried to implement the project practically. “Lack of patients’ medical history creates a lot of health issues which are neglected by many people,” he said.

Shakya said health data is very crucial in western countries, but here we lack such practices. “Keeping medical reports can be life saving sometimes, and it also saves extra expenditure during treatment.”

His curiosity resulted in Shakya and his friends doing research in Kathmandu Model Hospital where they came to know that the hospital used a device of Rs400,000-500,000 for tel medicine, but was providing services only a few times. After visiting a few hospitals they found that the same kind of services are not much in use.

Shakya thought about commercially starting his college project, practically, as soon as he graduated in 2011, but it could not immediately happen due to his friend starting on another job. He, in turn, too started doing a job at Deerwalk for around two years. “But working in Deerwalk helped me sharpen the idea more.”

Shakya’s goal was to store medical data in one place for easy access of information to doctors. “But it became tough to find the patients’ medical records as everything was manual and unmanaged.” This led him to develop a mobile application for the same.

“Honestly, we did not have the investment capital. But, when you want something wholeheartedly, you definitely get it,” said Shakya. Something similar happened to him. As luck would have it, one of his uncles was searching for a web developer and he did the job for him, which earned him Rs15,000, the start-up capital for his idea to take shape.

Shakya has already invested more than Rs10 million in the company until now.

The company is working on a B2B model, generating revenue from clients like hospitals and pathology labs. Shakya is planning to go for a B2C model.

Started with three members, Lunivacare now has become a team of 19 people.

In the initial days, it became challenging to make people understand the importance of keeping medical records, Shakya recalled. “Hospital and labs did not show their interest in it. We found them to be unaware and having misconceptions toward keeping medical health records. It took us a lot of time to educate people regarding the importance of maintaining health records.”

Shakya added that they thought of starting predictive analysis at that time but nobody showed interest. “But now, people are searching for that kind of analytical data.”

Comparatively, the awareness has increased in recent years and that is why the company plans to go in for B2C. “Our revenue will be B2B but we will empower B2C as well.” The company is in the piloting phase to go on a B2C model.”

Shakya considers participating in the Rockstart incubation programme in 2016 as his turning point. “It changed our perspectives toward business. We sidelined the development part and worked more on the business part.”

The increase in awareness levels and the success of the programme make them achieve break even and the company is now making some profit, said Shakya. ”We were running in loss before that as we were investing and reinvesting in the company and most of the time, we went on educating people.” The company reported a 30 percent annual growth last year.

Shakya and his co-founders were in the 23-24 age group when they started company in 2013. Being purely from a technical background, Shakya and his team had zero knowledge of business ideas and he thought that their losses in the initial years were caused by the same. “I was of the view that having an idea is enough to do a business,” he said. Later, he realised that creating ideas was not enough, that selling it was important.

At this time, there are more than 100,000 individual app users while there are around 40 hospitals, clinics and labs that subscribe to Lunivatech’s services.

Individual apps are being provided free of charge as nobody will use an app by paying charges in Nepal, he said.

“We are maintaining health records according to best international practices. We went to the Health Ministry to discuss securing the health data records too.”

The company now plans to focus more on analysis.

“I always had a dream to bring about changes to our healthcare system. I hope my patience and passion will help me achieve it one day,” Shakya concluded.