If Indian businesses can transport groceries in 10 minutes, shouldn’t they be able to do so for medical situations as well? According to Prabhdeep Singh, CEO as well as co-founder of StanPlus, which bills itself as a “pioneer in private ambulance services,” dispatching ambulances for patients in need, should be easier than delivering groceries.
“Delivering supplies in 10 minutes is a significantly more difficult challenge to solve than providing ambulance service. This is since an ambulance is a dark store with all the inventory already on hand. All that is required of operators is that they move as soon as the call is received. When it comes to groceries, someone must walk into a dark store, select the things, and then deliver them to someone. Only one step is necessary for our setup: traveling from Point A to Point B. You may construct stations locally to ensure your ambulance comes in 10 minutes or less if you perform your fleet mapping properly, which involves mapping where individuals reside and where most emergencies occur. “It’s a simpler problem to solve than groceries,” Prabhdeep explains.
Of course, he recognizes that it isn’t merely a logistical issue.
Service Objectives
Prabhdeep studied for his master’s degree in business administration (MBA) in Europe from 2014 to 2016. He was living and learning overseas while his parents remained in India, and he pondered how he would handle the situation if something horrible happened to them while he was so far away. He was convinced that this was a problem worth tackling after experiencing the helplessness of someone living far away from their loved ones, whether in India or abroad.
He co-founded StanPlus with Antoine Poirson and Jose Leon shortly after finishing his MBA in 2016, against popular opinion that this was an impossible problem to address. Prabhdeep turned down a multi-crore salary offer from a huge multinational to start StanPlus, and he was adamant about solving the problem in whatever way he could.
The goal at StanPlus is to connect all of the channels and categories via which a patient or their family can contact in the case of an emergency. After all, in India, when a patient or a loved one has a medical emergency, they usually contact their family physician, employer, or the nearby hospital, and occasionally even their insurance company.
Red Ambulance
StanPlus realised early on in its operations in 2017 that simply aggregating ambulances was not the solution due to the low quality. Prabhdeep and his colleagues were told not to become just another aggregator when they began talking to more doctors.
“Instead, they want us to handle the cases that are high-risk, high-visibility, and high-complexity on our own.” As a result, Red Ambulances were created to handle these situations. 70% of the total cases we get are operated by Red Ambulances. Red Ambulances are used for all clinically complicated patients. These ambulances can handle pediatric, neonatal, geriatric, bariatric, and other medical emergencies. “If a complex mission is required, Red Ambulances is the best system to use,” he claims.
The Hurdles
Complex missions include figuring out how to move a 200-pound person four floors down and transport them to a hospital, caring for a ventilator-dependent patient who needs to be transferred from one hospital to another, and responding to an emergency at home that requires assistance in less than 15 minutes or else, among others. StanPlus relies on qualified partners who have been onboarded to their platform for standardised non-emergency transport such as dialysis, oncology, and post-surgery travel.
“Before onboarding any partner, we conduct a very complicated and multivariate analysis.” “Of course, this is not a one-time procedure, but rather a dynamic set-up to ensure that the quality of partners on our platform remains consistent with the standards we desire,” he says.
ETA
The average span it takes for an ambulance to arrive in 15 minutes. According to Prabhdeep, lowering the wait time to 8 minutes will necessitate additional capital and technology. Given the status of emergency medical care in India, more companies like StanPlus are needed to address this issue.
“Imagine losing many lives unnecessarily due to a late ambulance. “We wish this industry to be funded, and we want entrepreneurs to look at emergency care as a viable option,” he says.
