Deepti Arora, CEO & Founder bring more than 15 years of hard core operations, customer service, coaching and financial management experience. She has worked in domestic and international banking and insurance companies, before running her own retail venture for 5 years. She is a trained coach and NLP practitioner. She started healclinic in Dec 2015 to offer treatment plans for different health challenges through alternate therapies like Ayurveda, homeopathy, yoga, nutrition, reiki, tarot card, pranic healing, vastu, past Life regression and many more. Over the last one year, healclinic has worked with clients from India, North America, Australia and South East Asia.
1. What ignited the spark in you to start this unique Healclinic?
Healclinic was conceptualised in December 2015, with the vision of offering customized treatment plans to clients globally to TCAM (Traditional Complimentary and Alternate Medicine like yoga, Ayurveda, reiki, pranic healing, PLR, homeopathy…) lines of treatment.
I had a personal experience wherein someone close to me suffering from an auto immune disorder was not responding to conventional medicines and had developed severe side effects. A friend suggested alternative treatment approach and thus started our personal journey in the area of alternate therapies.
This journey helped us experience and learn common challenges in the convention healthcare and in the alternate therapy space.
This inspired us to create a platform wherein not only do clients get connected to verified practitioners, but also have someone to speak to who can understand their requirement and recommend the right practitioner. And most importantly since consultations and treatment plans are administered online, the location of the practitioner does not matter.
To make the experience complete for a client we offer ecommerce selling natural and holistic products complementing the therapies.
2. We are sure the journey has been rewarding but did you face any challenges?
The journey has been tough but we are loving every milestone we cross and we celebrate every new client we heal.
For any start-up, especially in the healthcare space life is full of challenges, top of the heap is to prove your credibility and in our case, we had to prove to both the clients as well as practitioners. In the beginning empanelling of practitioners was a challenge since the founders did not come from the alternate therapy domain and are not trained practitioners. The next biggest challenge was creating a structure and professionalism on the supply side.
The other constant challenge is educating and converting clients to use alternate therapy remotely using the medium of video as there are misconceptions associated with this field.
3. What plans do you behold for Healclinic?
In the near future, we are looking at scaling up our operations and creating a technology platform which can offer the entire process seamlessly. In the long term, we plan to have integrated clinics and latest technology like wearables to provide preventive healthcare and early detection of illnesses.
4. What piece of advice would you like to give to the aspiring youth who wish to pursue their dream of becoming an entrepreneur?
I strongly believe that experience brings stability and maturity in running a business. My piece of advice to the aspiring youth would be to work professionally a couple of years, gain the maturity to handle the intangibles of the business and then jump into the fray. Most importantly don’t get swayed by a few successful ventures which are featured in the media, because there are 100’s others who have not made it.
5. According to you, what are the top three essential skills needed to be a successful entrepreneur?
As an entrepreneur, you normally have your fingers into all the functions but the top three essential skills -
6. How do you manage the work-life balance?
The key to work-life balance is to focus on the task at hand and not feel guilty in what else you could have been doing at that point of time, be it at home or at work. Another habit which has worked well for me is to complete a task when you have the time and not postpone just because the deadline is far away.
7. What are your views and opinions towards the ambiguous need to promote women entrepreneurship and women empowerment in India?
There is a lot of talk and initiatives being taken to promote women entrepreneurs. I feel that the real change will happen if we can start giving girls equal opportunities from the day they are born and ensure that our daughters are brought up with a strong sense of self and their capabilities. Equally teach our sons to respect what a women is capable of and work together and not us vs them.
There would be no need to segregate entrepreneurs into male or female and no need to have separate initiatives for women. A woman is the full circle. Within her is the power to create, nurture and transform
8. Words for IWIL.
I think IWIL is doing a fabulous job of providing a safe space for women to talk and interact with other women, read stories about what they have achieved and get the required encouragement and respect required to start on their own. Just knowing that there are others who have gone through something similar is reassuring and can go a long way to motivate a person.
