CureJoy is a buzzing community and an online destination for Natural Health and Wellness, where people can find answers to some of the common health questions and health advice from Experts. Mr. Dikshant Dave, Founder & CEO, CureJoy, shared that ever since he started his professional life, he has believed in identifying problems and building solutions that can be applied at scale
- Team Estrade: How did the idea of Curejoy struck?
Dikshant Dave: The present conventional health system does not have answers to many prevailing health conditions and this leaves one with no choice but to take pain killers and repress symptoms, which in turn lead to larger issues over a period of time. On the other hand there are our ancient and evolved disciplines like Yoga, Naturopathy and Ayurveda which offer so many better solutions to the present day lifestyle issues like diabetes, Hypertension, Asthama, etc. Taking this as a starting point, we began talking to lot of experts and practitioners in the field and we realized that there is some amazing work that is happening in these domains. Places like Stanford and UCLA have dedicated groups and departments to research and further evolve these sciences. So it felt like our generation has unearthed these old valuable manuscripts and are starting to understand its value.
At that point, we (Shrinivasa Sharma and Dikshant Dave) felt this is what we want to do. Taking this information and knowledge to the world, we began with certain experiments to see if people do really find something amiss in the current healthcare system and if they are open to natural or alternative means. The experiments gave us deep insights about the existence of such unsatisfied groups of people, resulting in the formation of CureJoy, a Platform for Natural Health and Wellness Content and Information.
We started with only a hypothesis around the need for Natural and Alternative Health. Due to our background in Social and Metric Driven Consumer business, we started experimenting on Facebook. Insights were pretty overwhelming. Both the sides, i.e. the Experts and doctors felt a huge need for something like this and end users wanted information from credible sources with some assurance. Curejoy started matching this need and building a layer of trust for all the parties involved.
- Team Estrade: What are the services offered at CureJoy?
Dikshant Dave: CureJoy is a buzzing community and an online destination for Natural Health and Wellness, where people can find fresh and credible content, answers to some of the common health questions and health advice from Experts. Most of the content is based on the present day needs of quick consumption Anywhere – Anytime. For Natural and Alternative Health Experts, it is a platform to reach out to the relevant users who are looking for genuine help and advice from them.
The portal provides curated content through its back end algorithms and technology on natural health and wellness by experts usually associated with large universities like Stanford or UCLA and merges it with the global trends and patterns. So in essence, CureJoy is a market place matching users looking for Alternative and Natural Health Options to Experts who provide it. Users can access CureJoy both on the internet and through mobile app.
- Team Estrade: Currently how many experts and users CureJoy has? What is your user acquisition strategy?
Dikshant Dave: We currently serve close to 9 Milion users on our website and have over 3500 Experts registered.
“People want to prevent ill health and the awareness of adopting the natural means like Yoga, Ayurveda, and Naturopathy is their best bet”
- Team Estrade: What’s your revenue mix model?
Dikshant Dave: We are primarily an information destination. At this point we do some bit of unbiased advertising. Presently we do not have any revenue sharing tie ups. In future, we may start providing a more closer access to the experts, which may be paid or free depending upon the expert.
- Team Estrade: How do you see Indian Health and wellness Industry today? Is Healthcare the most buzzing sector?
Dikshant Dave: India is growing in all aspects. We are seeing a huge rise in the number of broadband and 3G/4G connections. With easy access to internet today, people naturally resort to it for all kinds of information. And in that, Health is one of the top categories that they look out for. Just like the Global trend, India is also rising to the fact that “Prevention is better than Cure” and wants to adapt to lifestyle and methods which lead to healthy life. So, many people are moving towards Natural Health and Wellness. When you look at this trend and the fact that only about 10% of the country has a proper access to internet, we realize what potential we have over the next few years.
- Team Estrade: What are the major trends that you have witnessed in Health and Wellness industry?
Dikshant Dave: eHealth / Tele Medicines a growing trend. With the availability of technology and medium like smartphones, it is getting easier every day to reach out to a health professional and get your questions answered.
Another major trend is the movement towards Natural Health. People are fed up of popping a pill every time they have a problem. They want to prevent ill health and the awareness of adopting the natural means like Yoga, Ayurveda, and Naturopathy is their best bet.
- Team Estrade: Geographically speaking which region has shown maximum traction in India for CureJoy?
Dikshant Dave: In India, All the metros are showing a great uptake on the content we have. Besides this we are also seeing tier 1 towns rapidly growing in their usage.
- Team Estrade: How do you envisage Curejoy in next 2years?
Dikshant Dave: We are a technology driven company at heart. We rely on a lot of cutting edge technology to curate and deliver the content to end users. Going forward we will continue to invest significantly on technology, especially the Personalization aspects of content and reach. We already have a sizeable Data Science team looking into the metrics and content relevancy aspect of our products.
Other than this, we are looking at geographic expansion into European countries like Spain, UK, Germany and Italy. Along with that we are also going to be launching niche sub categories like Beauty, Nutrition, Fitness, etc. We have seen a high demand for some of these categories and we think we can best cater to this growing demand by providing a dedicated destination and communities for those categories. Ofcourse, Mobile remains our key area of Focus and growth for coming quarters.
eHealth / Tele Medicines is the next big thing: Dikshant Dave
