Summary

The Offline Network Episode 18: $50M Bet & Surgeries Abroad (aired 2025-10-10). Guests: Eklavya Gupta, Sahil Jain from Recur Club, Dineout / TMTC. Eklavya: "So I think a particular company, right, like you're absolutely right, can take multiple forms of debt financing, but whether they are eligible for a bank debt or not, people don't know." Eklavya: "They're primarily for startups above, you know, 5 crore annual revenue or who have raised 5 crore equity." Topics: venture capital and funding, AI and LLMs, consumer brands and D2C, B2B/SaaS. The Offline Network is India's live show on startups, tech, and venture — streaming M/W/F at 4 PM IST on YouTube.

Full Transcript

Speaker 5: This is a test.

Dhruv Sharma: Hey, listeners, welcome to the pre-Diwali stream of the Offline Network. Today we are talking with Ekab Eklavya Gupta of Wrecker Club. Eklavya, it's great to have you on the show. I've heard great things about you from common friends. Just never had the chance to talk to you. And here we are. How's it going? You guys just announced your Series A. Congratulations on that milestone.

Eklavya Gupta (Founder, Recur Club): Thanks. Thanks. Likewise. It's great to be here. And thanks for the wishes.

Utsav Somani: Eklavya, so break us down. What does Wrecker Club do? First time many of our listeners might have heard that name. So just maybe a one, two minute summary on what the business is doing right now.

Eklavya Gupta (Founder, Recur Club): So Wrecker Club is an AI native debt marketplace where we are a one-stop-shop debt solution for startups and SMEs, whether it's a working capital solution, long-term debt solution, CapEx financing, acquisition financing, right, like different kinds of debt solutions. You know, you think debt, you think Wrecker. You know, that is where we are. We leverage technology significantly to save on time, cost, get the best offers from multiple lenders integrated on the platform.

Utsav Somani: And how is it different from like, say, I mean, I'm just going to make it easier for our listeners as well or for them to understand bank financing, venture debt, like this asset class has many forms of debt available, right?

Eklavya Gupta (Founder, Recur Club): Absolutely. So I think a particular company, right, like you're absolutely right, can take multiple forms of debt financing, but whether they are eligible for a bank debt or not, people don't know. They apply to a bank, they take hours, weeks, months at times just to realize that they were not only eligible for a bank loan, right, at that point in time. So from an asset class point of view, A is your strength of cash flows, right? Like you know, if your cash flows are good, if your revenues are good, you can leverage those cash flows and revenues to actually upfront that capital and get money today. Right. Like that is one solution that we offer. You don't need to raise equity. You don't necessarily need to, you know, have large investors or securities basically, right, that a bank may ask at times. So it's purely cash flow financing from one product point of view. But we have also launched multiple products. Let's say you need today bank financing. As you said, you need venture debt, you need recurring revenue financing, you need supply chain financing, right? Like you need to open up more stores. If it's a B2C brand, they need to open up more stores. You need financing to open stores, right? Like because there is a Capex put out set up, right? You can get that. So think of a use case where you need money to grow your business, where there is predictability. You can come to us and we will help you structure and curate the best solution through technology, right? Rather than going to 10 different places, it gives you aggregation of the right structure, right product at one place.

Dhruv Sharma: On your website, Eklavvya, there's a distinction between two products and from a distance, one looks like a small facility, the other looks like a large debt facility. Can you can you tell us a little bit more?

Eklavya Gupta (Founder, Recur Club): Sure. No. So we have two products, RecordSwift, which is, let's say, up to 10 crores of financing. They're primarily for startups above, you know, 5 crore annual revenue or who have raised 5 crore equity. That's a quick, fast, reckoning revenue financing product that I was mentioning, right? Where you can leverage your business cash flows to get money today and then you can pay as your customers pay, right there. You can get capital within two days, up to 10 crores, depending on your business metrics. Typically, you get up to 25 to 30 percent of your annual revenue in terms of overall leverage in that product. There are no securities, etc. involved in that. So it's a very fast moving, simple product where you can leverage your business cash flows. The other product is debt between 10 to 100 crores. These are typically for if I talk about startups, CDJ plus, if I talk about SMEs, these are more midmarket companies where mid-market includes or small and mid-market, we are seeing companies above 50 crore annual top line from an SME point of view are also eligible for. These are more little secure, partially secure kind of debt products or a supply chain financing solution that gives you larger quantum. But, you know, obviously more security involved. And that takes typically up to three to four weeks end to end to get you that capital.

Dhruv Sharma: When we talk about SWIFT, who is a good candidate for that product, Ikhlaviyan, who is not a good, we're talking about startups here. Who's a good candidate for that product? Who's a bad candidate for that product?

Eklavya Gupta (Founder, Recur Club): So I think everyone is a good candidate at a point in time, I would like to say. Today, like someone with a five crore annual top line at least, right, like or who have raised at least five crore equity capital, they have like a runway of, you know, at least six months, right? Like it should not be there very tight in terms of their cash position. That is not a good option at that point in time because it can only land you to trouble unless you have predictability on certainty on equity that's happening. Typically, someone growing at, let's say, at least 20 percent year on year, right? Like because the early stage companies. So it tells a lot on the product market fit, 20 percent less annually, year on year. Yeah, that's like just the benchmark. You're absolutely right. Typically, what we have seen that companies that have taken record SWIFT in early stage are growing 110 percent with us year on year. Right. So that's been on average across 700 companies in that segment that we have funded. But just as a benchmark, because cycles are different, right, like it could be seasonal, it could be cyclical, it could be different. We don't want to negate those companies because some of them can still be eligible for debt from that point of view, may not be for equity at that point in time. But that becomes an interesting option there. And someone who has like, let's say, the unit economics of the product market could set up. Right. How we determine that is like there is predictability in terms of either it's a tech company or a SaaS company or a B2B company. LTV2 CAC is sorted at least 1.5x. Ideally, companies have 3 to 5x LTV2 CAC that we have evaluated. But just as a bare minimum bottom line. Right. Like if I may say if it's a D2C company, then, you know, ROAS is at least greater than 1.2x again. Right. Like the things like that or the cash conversion cycles is, let's say, you know, less than 100 days, ideally. So some of those parameters become important for you to qualify. And then this is the cash flow you generate. At the end of the day, every financing is linked to cash flows. Right. If you can generate that cash flow, even if you are burning at least operating cash flow and have a path to, you know, generate operating cash flows to service that debt, that becomes an option. Right. But if you are running hand to mouth, we advise people against. Right. Like get your business sorted, equity sorted and then come for that solution. This is what startups should.

Dhruv Sharma: Are you always able to match the repayment terms to a company's cash flow?

Eklavya Gupta (Founder, Recur Club): We try to write like that's the endeavor. That's our model that we have built in. Right. Like we see historical trends, our technology model, you know, forecasts, does a lot of statistics to actually fine tune and streamline those repayments right towards business cash flows basis, our assessment. So that's the endeavor so that the companies don't really have a, you know, fixed obligation and they are able to service. They grow. So that's our mantra, right? Like so.

Dhruv Sharma: And we're heading into festive season. Is it correct to assume that heading into the festive season, people have been lining up.

Eklavya Gupta (Founder, Recur Club): Disbursements might have gone up. Yes. No, absolutely.

Dhruv Sharma: I think time for business.

Eklavya Gupta (Founder, Recur Club): Yeah. Last couple of months from a consumer brands point of view or an e-commerce brand point of view, we have seen a great amount of demand, right? Like a lot of brands do like, you know, 50 percent of their business in one quarter as compared to the entire year. Right. So this is this is the strength and especially with advent of e-commerce, we are seeing people go crazy for their, you know, consumer buying, business buying. So we have seen significant growth in the last two months from B2C brands as well as e-commerce brands in the terms of that demand, which is primarily used to procure last minute inventories, manage the receivables if they are delayed from, you know, either of these marketplaces or directly to some distribution channels. So these are typical to use cases that they come to us because we can disburse money very quickly to them in this point in time.

Utsav Somani: And I mean, given that you have a I mean, a close view into the sales of many of these brands, I mean, you mentioned, I think, 700 brands that you work with or consumer businesses in terms of just Diwali spending last year versus this year. Are you observing an increased spend more muted? Like what's the sentiment overall amongst the brands and the consumers?

Eklavya Gupta (Founder, Recur Club): I think it's because we work with a lot of online first brands, right? Like I think so definitely there is a pickup in demand in online first brands. Can't really say much about offline, but if I were to use that as a proxy, we are seeing like at least just, you know, better consumer growth for online brands this year as compared to last year for sure.

Utsav Somani: Interesting. And the 50 million that you've raised, given that you mentioned that being a core piece of the business, most of it was just debt as Yeah.

Eklavya Gupta (Founder, Recur Club): So it was 8 million equity for 2 million debt from part of the round. Interesting.

Dhruv Sharma: Lots of serious questions and serious answers. Zeklavya, how was your GFF experience? Were you there?

Eklavya Gupta (Founder, Recur Club): Yeah, we were there. GFF was quite good. As a record, you know, we spent a lot on AI, right? Like, so we are, we are an AI first company. We met a lot of interesting fintechs doing a lot of things. It's an ecosystem where we met a lot of lenders, a lot of, you know, VCs, a lot of investors, a lot of partners, a lot of customers. So all at one place, it was really good. You know, from that point of view.

Dhruv Sharma: So two follow up questions there. Number one, where do you embed AI in your workflows and your technology? And number two, fintech is, no matter what someone might say, a very collaborative business. So you would just add GFF typically to, to build a business, bring it to the scale. Who are your different, who are the different partners you need to have on board?

Eklavya Gupta (Founder, Recur Club): Great. No, I think so. We leverage, you know, AI from data gathering point of view, because, you know, in the segment where we are, data takes a lot of time, right? Like to gather information, find out the missing information, right? Read those financial statements and give an output summary. Create an underwriting profile and then do an, you know, AI based matchmaking with multiple lenders, because we sit at the center as a platform, there are borrowers, you know, as stakeholders, you know, our customers primarily, and then there are lenders on the other side. So there's the two stakeholders of the platform and we use technology to actually, you know, speak to both of those parties, which is typically done offline and takes a lot of operational efforts. So we're bringing that operational efficiencies, plus from a credit risk and modeling point of view, you know, we use a lot to undermine what is the real truth, et cetera, from a technology point of view. So I think those are the two biggest use cases that help us actually disburse in Swift, let's say, and within 48 hours to get two term sheets, as well as in three weeks to, you know, for a secure transaction there.

Utsav Somani: And I mean, term sheet in 48 hours, but underwriting journey must have gone through a lot of changes, right? What are the learnings in the last, I think, say, two years?

Eklavya Gupta (Founder, Recur Club): So I think you're absolutely right, right? A, when we started versus the micro cycles, they significantly impact the growth of the growth journey of a brand, right? Especially when we fund typically between 12 to 18 months kind of products, right, for startups, especially. So we need to be very cognizant of the micro cycles that eventually impact, right, like also about unit economics from every brand, right? Like now we go into depth of unit economics of a sector, you know, like sometimes to check, you know, whether this was fake or not, we check margins across different companies in that particular sector, right, like, oh, and then benchmark it to create our own underwriting results and outputs. So that has taken a significant change that other than just the financial metrics of a company that, Hey, here is the revenue as your margin, et cetera. We were always doing due diligence off from bank statements, GST. That's very, very important, right. To determine what's actually the truth. Sometimes the founders even don't know what the cash cycles are, to be honest. Right. Like they believe everything is good. They're profitable, but they've spent a lot of money on working capital there. So that's also one of those problems. So definitely that is one of the things that has been taken into account for us from an underwriting point of view, quite a lot, plus whether people are selling online versus offline as a distribution channel and hence it determines their margins, ability to grow from a D2C band point of view significantly changes and AI, right? Like we've seen a lot of SaaS. We were very heavy on SaaS two years back. Those businesses have taken a tectonic shift, right? Like in terms of their viability, their existence, some of those models are irrelevant now, to be honest, right? Like people are pivoting, people are creating new things. So we have gone cautious on SaaS businesses till the time they figure out, right, like of the change and the impact that there is. Those are the three fundamental changes in the startup segment that we've seen.

Utsav Somani: More of a macro perspective as well in the SaaS thing.

Eklavya Gupta (Founder, Recur Club): Absolutely.

Utsav Somani: He's getting affected, but I mean, so RBI as a regulator also keeps a close check on the credit in the system, right? Sometimes tightening it, sometimes loosening it. What's your read on the credit market right now?

Eklavya Gupta (Founder, Recur Club): So I think I really respect RBI as a regulator, to be honest, individually, even when, you know, I was earlier working before Rekha and now I've closely seen them, I feel being two steps ahead, right, like while it may feel restrictive at times, but personally, if you compare it to other regulators, we have always, maybe a little conservative, you know, one can argue, but they've been on the right side, whether you see the 2008 economic crisis, right, like India was still safeguarded and that was primarily due to, you know, RBI's monetary policy at that point in time. From a credit growth point of view, we are at an interesting phase, right? Like commodities going high, one needs to check on inflation, et cetera. Now they've cut down repo rates significantly in the last six to nine months to boost growth, right? Which will inflation had come down, et cetera. So I think they're playing it well from, you know, our perspective, credit demand is slowly picking up for sure. If you see last quarter versus the previous quarter, it was 10% higher from a credit growth point of view. So it's slowly picking up, but it's still not the best, right? Like people are still on the wait and watch more from a global macro point of view, there was an impact on tariffs, exports to a few companies. So if I see the overall credit demand, there's definitely a mix and match. But I think RBI to me or to us at Rekha seems to be, you know, quite transparent and clear, right? Like, and wanting to get things in the right manner.

Dhruv Sharma: The final question before we let you go, what can customers expect from Rekha club, you know, in the final months of 2025 going into 2026, what's new? What's going to be new?

Eklavya Gupta (Founder, Recur Club): So I think more capital, we are trying to get it, you know, even faster than, you know, 48 hours or three weeks for various products. Plus we are opening up a segment where customers can come and take advice from our capital stack point of view, right? Like I think, so even if you don't want money, you want to be debt ready, you know, you can knock our doors, we'll be happy to help buy our product and our team to help you guide what is the right, because this is the time when people start thinking of AOPs, et cetera, from next year point of view. So we will be happy to do that. And we'll be opening our doors for that.

Utsav Somani: Awesome. I know. Thank you so much. Thank you so much for coming on the show. Really appreciate it.

Dhruv Sharma: Thank you so much for joining us. All the best. All right.

Utsav Somani: All right, folks. We've heard about debt. Now let's focus on Sahil Jain, who's going to tell us more about his journey and Dineout and also the new company that he's raised capital for. Sahil, welcome to the show.

Sahil Jain (Co-founder & CEO, TMTC): Hey, hi Utsav, how are you?

Utsav Somani: Good to have you on the show. Hey Sahil. Quickly, for, I mean, our listeners who are tuning in, you've announced a seed round, what's the story? What does the business do?

Sahil Jain (Co-founder & CEO, TMTC): So basically the medical travel company is a platform that we built to bridge a medical travel as a category from the Western world to India. So what you all might know is that a lot of people in India come for medical travel, majorly from countries like Africa, the Middle East, Bangladesh, Afghanistan, and it's pretty unorganized. It's been happening for the last sort of 20, 25 years. So I think post our acquisition and while we were at Swiggy, both me and Ankit got thinking as to what's the next thing that we want to build. And I think healthcare had been on our minds for the last three, four years, especially post COVID and we, I think did a bunch of research in terms of what is it that we want to build? And we realized that we looked at, you know, the verticalized healthcare sort of opportunities, whether it's pain management, diabetes, those are big categories as well. But I think from our strength perspective, we realized we wanted to build a global platform and we saw medical travel as a massive need, right? It's a hundred billion dollar industry, completely unorganized, no full stack solution available to patients and people are struggling. And from our days, you know, having spent time in the US and UK respectively, we realized that medical outcomes or healthcare was a big challenge even 10, 15 years back, but what has happened is it has accelerated further and the healthcare crisis in the Western world has gone from X to 10X, right? Probably especially post COVID, right? I think India handled COVID really well. Whereas if you look at a country like UK, for example, COVID and Brexit hit them really hard. And today the NHS is struggling, right? So there are more than 8 million people on the NHS waitlist to get a elective surgery done. A simple knee or a hip replacement is a two to three year wait in the UK right now, right? So the option as a patient you have is to either wait two or three years, get your surgery done for free by NHS or go private and spend 25,000 pounds, right? Which a lot of people can't sort of afford. That's when we saw that there's this opportunity to build a Western world to India sort of a bridge. And we're starting off with UK, India, where we're focusing on a few categories like orthopedic, IVF and gynecology, dental, aesthetics, urology, et cetera, where we are doing a full stack solution. And I can talk a bit more about it, where we've got doctors in UK who are looking at patients before they travel and after they travel for pre care and post care because the biggest problem in medical travel we saw is that once people travel and they come back to the home country, if something goes wrong, even if there's a 1% chance, right? Nobody wants to look at them. So that's where we built a platform where we brought home country doctors to be an essential part of the patient journey before they even travel. And once they come back, they're available to them as well.

Utsav Somani: What's the price difference between like some of the categories or the average price difference or cost save?

Sahil Jain (Co-founder & CEO, TMTC): If I were to say just the surgery piece of it, India is only about 20% of what it would cost in the UK right now. So UK would be, but if I take the combined, you know, cost, which includes the travel and the accommodation associated with medical travel, it would still be 50, 60% cheaper versus what you would pay in private in the UK with almost better, if not, you know, if equivalent, if not better sort of outcomes compared to the UK, because we've got the best doctors in India right now. Right.

Utsav Somani: But India may, I mean, the number of beds per patient or per hundred patient is already strained, right? We're already, I mean, very much under capacity. I mean, do you think like this will strain the system even more?

Sahil Jain (Co-founder & CEO, TMTC): Not really. You see, the thing is, uh, what, what is the tourism in general?

Sahil Jain (Co-founder & CEO, TMTC): See what is strained in India is the lower segment, right? So when you go below a certain segment where you've got your public hospitals and, you know, uh, rooms, which are of lower categories, et cetera, that is where the capacity is strained. Right. But if you go higher up where you've got the private hospitals, where there are single rooms and better quality rooms, et cetera, there is enough capacity to take in more patients. Right.

Dhruv Sharma: Are you mostly focused on elective surgeries and elective procedures in private health care?

Sahil Jain (Co-founder & CEO, TMTC): In private health care. See, because emergency, you can't get them to India, right? That's going to happen in your home country, right?

Dhruv Sharma: So that's an airlift business. That's a different business.

Sahil Jain (Co-founder & CEO, TMTC): Yeah, that's a completely different business. So we're focused on elective surgeries because that's where the market is for medical travel, right? Nobody's going to travel, um, when there's an emergency.

Dhruv Sharma: What's a breakdown for us that for incoming medical tourist in the host country, beyond the point of care, what other needs do they have? Exactly.

Sahil Jain (Co-founder & CEO, TMTC): So that's a very good question. So the problem is that today a person who's coming for medical travel spends only 20% of their time in the hospital, right? 80% of their time is spent outside the hospital. And that is what most people miss, right? So if you're coming for a knee replacement to India, and let's say you go to a max or a bolo, you're spending four days in the hospital, but you're spending 20 days outside the hospital. And that's where the experience breaks for the patient. Right. And that's what we've seen with the medical travel company, uh, because we built our own aftercare center or a step down facility where people can sort of, uh, you know, recover in peace. Right. So today, uh, people have to go to a hotel or to a guest house where there's hardly any medical service available. Uh, whereas what we built at the aftercare center is that you've got a 24 seven doctor, a nurse, a physiotherapist, a chef, a nutritionist. So you get a full VIP service. You get picked up from the airport with a chauffeur driven car. You don't have to worry about anything. Right. And when you go back, uh, what we built, uh, which is something new is for the first time, a post-surgery insurance product. Now, the biggest problem is once you go back to your home country, like I said, nobody wants to look at you. Something goes wrong. Right. And that's what we've taken care of where once you go back, uh, the body part, you came to India for it's covered for the next 12 months back in the UK. Right. So if you come for a knee replacement and your knee is insured back in the UK for 12 months or something as small as a physiotherapy session to the worst case, if you need a resurgery, you can go to a private hospital in UK, no additional costs, and it gets covered for you with no waiting. Right. So that's a massive piece of mind. You're offering to the patient, which they usually don't have if they travel of their own accord. Right. Uh, there are multiple cases of people traveling from UK to Turkey, Poland, Lithuania, coming up, coming back with botched up surgeries and the UK media is full of it. And that is where they face a challenge. That's where the negative publicity comes in. Right. And that's where we are trying to come in and sort of change it and do it in a full stack manner.

Dhruv Sharma: And can you take us behind the scenes? What did it take to get these sort of cross-border partnerships and assuming it wasn't easy?

Utsav Somani: No, I think all of these markets will be different. I think you've mentioned Australia and Canada and other markets as well. At Dineout, you were focused purely on India restaurants, one single market, but here I think you're just, uh, we'll run into different healthcare systems. Right.

Sahil Jain (Co-founder & CEO, TMTC): Absolutely. See, while the regulatory issues and the regulations could be different in every country, the problems remain the same. So what we realized is that it realizes that whether it's the UK, the US, Canada, or Australia, the challenge remains the same, right? That, um, there is very limited either infrastructure or staff available in these countries, uh, to deliver point of, uh, you know, point of health services. At the point of delivery, there's lack of staff or lack of infrastructure, which increases the cost. That's where all the healthcare inflation is coming from, right? For the insurer, for the patient, everyone, right? So the common problems remain the same for the patient or for the healthcare providers, right? What changes is the regulatory landscape. And that's why we're picking one country at a time. And we've picked UK at the moment where we've figured out the entire regulatory structure where we can do it in a very regulated manner. Why, why nobody hasn't touched UK till now is because of this, because regulations are extremely hard going to Africa and building a business is much easier because the regulatory structure just does not exist over there. Anybody can go and do it. So I think that's why we've chosen some of these markets, which is our moat.

Utsav Somani: And you've raised from in, uh, cricketer there, uh, Ben Stokes and KL Rahul.

Sahil Jain (Co-founder & CEO, TMTC): Yes. So we've got Ben Stokes and KL Rahul and Dr. Archer who've come in, uh, to invest with us.

Utsav Somani: Okay. And I mean, just strategic investors, they're becoming brand ambassadors.

Sahil Jain (Co-founder & CEO, TMTC): So along with Nexus, they've come in in this round as strategic investors, because he, the primary reason is, right. Um, you know, these guys come to India for IPL, right. And they understand the Indian hospitality, the quality of service that they get everything. Right. Uh, and that is the reason why they know that the quality of healthcare infrastructure in India is great. And the kind of hospitality and the full stack service we can give, they truly believe in it. Right. And that's why they sort of come in and sort of, uh, you know, supported us.

Dhruv Sharma: And so you clear from day zero that this your second business was going to be a global business.

Sahil Jain (Co-founder & CEO, TMTC): Absolutely. See, after we worked on Dineout and we got the exit with Swiggy, right. We realized that we built a massive business in India and with millions of users, right, who've been using and loving the product, the next step for me and Ankit was to build something which is global in nature, much larger. And I think the dream is to probably ring the bell at the NSC or the NASDAQ. So I think, I think building a global business was something that was on the cart and healthcare was something that was close to our hearts. And that's why we sort of figured out we pick something in the healthcare space.

Utsav Somani: And why was it close to heart? I know. I mean, health, uh, healthcare touches everyone, but you chose restaurants first and now healthcare. So any personal motivation as well?

Sahil Jain (Co-founder & CEO, TMTC): Oh, yes. There, there were personal motivations. I think both me and Ankit saw some personal experiences with friends and families abroad where there had been a lot of negative experiences that we saw. Uh, in fact, it was, uh, one of Ankit's very close friends in UK where he was having his baby and, and saw that, you know, um, in this day and age, um, in the last two months, they hardly got to see a doctor and there was a stillbirth. Right now, that was something that we couldn't imagine in India. I had my second, um, uh, child and you were practically visiting the doctor every sort of second week and having all the scans with all the facilities available and not having that there in the UK was something that was a bit of a shock or a surprise to us. We never realized that something like this is possible. In fact, we were there and we met one of the professors in university of Essex, and he said he had to wait two years for his wife's gallbladder surgery. And I was like, I've not seen this in India what's happening. Right. And I think that's a massive issue, which people brush under the carpet in the UK and other parts of the world, because that's how they've been attuned to, uh, believe by the governments over the last sort of, uh, 30, 40, 50 years. Right. But I think the world is changing the new generation, the Gen Z or whatever you want to call it. They're not going to wait for healthcare if it's not available in their own country. So I think over the next sort of decade or two, people are going to travel for better healthcare, which is more affordable with better clinical outcomes. And I think that's what we are building for. Right. What we think is that like 2000 to 2010 was like the call center outsourcing era for the world. 10 to 20 was a tech outsourcing era for the world. The next decade will be around healthcare outsourcing and India will play a key role front and center in terms of managing that load for the world. And we just want to be like first movers and build it in the right manner. Because as you know, healthcare is a very different space compared to restaurants, right? It's about someone's life. It's trust, right? It's a slower business, right? And being second time founders, I think we thought you want to build a business where we're not just chasing some hyper, uh, hyper growth, right? Something where we really build trust with the consumer and a long-term business. Right. And that's the reason why we sort of chose this space.

Dhruv Sharma: Sahil in your view, what is it about Indian healthcare in particular, Indian private healthcare that even makes this opportunity possible while global healthcare systems are just crumbling under complexity?

Sahil Jain (Co-founder & CEO, TMTC): A lot of macros, right? So if you look at the private equity money, which is coming into Indian healthcare, it's insane. Practically top five or six of your, uh, hospital chains are all completely private equity owned right now. And they're bringing in more money. If you look at max Apollo, Medanta, all of them are adding about 2000 beds each over the next three, four years. Uh, across the country. Right. So, so you're getting, you're going to get 10, 15,000 new beds, at least across the major cities by these top five groups, um, and they will want to sort of fill these beds, right? So they need more business and they are investing in quality infrastructure. Right. So you're getting the best of robotic surgery. You're getting the best of equipment, the best of doctors. So they're exporting doctors back from the UK and us back to India. Most of the doctors now in all these top institutes are people or doctors who worked in the U S UK, Canada, Australia for the last 15, 20 years. And I just coming back. So the whole reverse brain drain is very real, right. And it's happening right now. I've met like so many doctors from UK of Indian origin who probably went there in the eighties and the nineties and half of them are ready to come back. So everybody wants to be back in India. That's the bottom line.

Utsav Somani: Are they better paid here?

Sahil Jain (Co-founder & CEO, TMTC): Doctors now they are compared to what they're paid there. So when they went in the nineties, obviously the pay was better in UK, but now the top doctors in India are much better paid than what they can be paid in the UK or anywhere else. And it's just sort of a pay, right. It's just even about just the whole, you know, the recognition that they canvas and everything, everything, it just all adds up. Right.

Dhruv Sharma: So, so I had, we focused, you know, the bulk of a conversation on, on the incoming opportunity. Is there an outgoing opportunity for Indian medical tourists traveling overseas? I hear Turkey is one place people go sometimes.

Sahil Jain (Co-founder & CEO, TMTC): What we're trying to beat. So, so a lot of people from UK are going to Turkey majorly for hair transplant. It's more aesthetic, right? So that's what Turkey, and I think they've done a great job building Turkey as the hair transplant destination for the world is one of the reasons why we felt that why can't we build India as the elective surgery capital for the world, right? So Turkey was a inspiration for us. In fact, the way they've built it as a, you know, the complete package, right. Whether it is tourism, just aesthetics or whatever you want to call it, they've done it the right way. And I think they've done a good job. I think India can build itself into the elective surgery capital for the world. Um, in terms of outward, I think that niche is always there. Um, so there, from an HNI perspective, there will be certain sort of surgeries or complex surgeries around oncology, where there's a lot of R and D, let's say in the U S et cetera, where people might want to go for, but I think beside out, maybe some stuff around IVF in people from India, probably going to a bone Bangkok or a Cyprus because sex determination is a big thing. So in India, it's not allowed a lot of people again, for different reasons, people may be going out, but I don't think there is a major macro trend where Indians need to go outside of India for any medical travel. Right. I don't think that need exists. It's for these niche categories where you might see some people traveling, but, um, for 95% of the people or 99% of the people, I don't think there's a big need to travel outside of India at the moment.

Dhruv Sharma: So maybe final question. How do people get to know more about the travel medical company, um, both within India and so they can recommend it to their friends overseas and people overseas, uh, itself.

Sahil Jain (Co-founder & CEO, TMTC): No, no. Uh, so basically we've just started a marketing, I would say about six months back, we just started off in the UK and we will be expanding to other markets also pretty soon. In India, we haven't really started marketing the business as such, but we will be to, uh, sort of cater to the earlier doctors, especially in the NRI segment, right, where people in India have their relatives abroad and they might want them to come here for certain surgeries, et cetera. Um, that can be a digital push that we will be doing. So a lot of content marketing, a lot of partnerships with the right hospitals, building a lot of content with the hospitals and the doctors. I think that will be the key sort of channel for us. And look outside India, we're doing a lot of offline stuff as well, because again, it's healthcare. It cannot be just digital over Facebook or an Insta ad, right? You need to meet people. So you're participating in a lot of events in the UK, uh, whether they are customer facing event or doctor facing event, because you're building a lot of B2B doctor partnerships as well in the UK, where we get a lot of patients.

Utsav Somani: Awesome. So thanks for coming on the show and, uh, looking forward to you crossing many more milestones and coming, uh, to discuss all of that with us as well at D1. Thank you all the best.

Utsav Somani: All right, listeners, uh, one week to go for Diwali. This was the final stream that we do before Diwali. We want you to have a fun filled Diwali with your loved ones. We'll be back on October 24th. Today. You've heard from two solid founders who came and unpacked what's happening behind the headlines. And that's what we strive to do best at D1. Please leave us feedback and have a good Diwali. Cheers. Bye-bye. Cheers.

Dhruv Sharma: Happy Diwali.