StanPlus to launch ambulance fleet in Bengaluru; To arrive within 15 minutes

Hyderabad-based ambulance service provider StanPlus is launching its Red Plus service in Bengaluru, with which it plans to put 100+ ambulances in the city, in the next 18 months, to respond to medical emergencies within 15 minutes.

The startup is already live with 33 ambulances and the top six hospitals in the city -- Fortis, Sakra, Ramaiah Medical College, South Columbia Asia hospital, Kempegowda Institute of Medical Sciences and Mallige Hospital. The cost of each ambulance amounts to Rs 30 lakh.

“The ambulance market in India is completely broken. It takes about 45 minutes for a patient to get an ambulance in India and two-third of the ambulances operated by the government do not work properly,” says Prabhdeep Singh, Co-Founder & CEO, StanPlus.

“We decided to bring new-age technology to the ambulance market. Our technology and our network enable patients to get ambulances faster.”

The company has an ‘Uber-like platform’ to aggregate all the existing ambulance operators and also has its own ambulance system on the ground that goes by the brand name Red Plus.

Bengaluru has one of the slowest ambulance systems in the country, says Singh. “For a place where you can dunzo your keys in 10 minutes, it’s a shame that it takes over an hour for an ambulance to arrive. The motivation for us was to come up with an ambulance system that takes less than 15 minutes to reach the patient.”

The startup provides ambulance service in Hyderabad, Raipur, Vizag, Bhubaneswar, Bengaluru and plans to expand to Mumbai, Kolkata, and Chennai in the next six months.

“Our effort is that in the time of need, wherever a person needs an ambulance, they’ll be able to find it. So they can call our centralised helpline; We answer every call in one second. We are also present on MyGate and Flipkart among others,” says Singh.

So far, StanPlus has raised $2 million and is set to raise $12 million in the next 3-4 months.

We have a target of 3,000 Red ambulances in 30 cities in the next three years. “Currently, we have about 130 Red ambulances with us and we already operate a network of over 3,000 ambulances, which we plan to scale to 100,000 ambulance aggregators across India, so we can have one private ambulance ecosystem that is able to manage emergencies at scale in every city.” The ambulance market in India is growing 30% year on year.

Singh also mentions that they have seen 10x more demand in April than they did in February. “Today we have the skillset, people, training, and resources to handle the second Covid-19 wave. There is a 5x increase in transport required now as compared to last year. The difference this time is that younger people are in need of transport and non-Covid cases have not stopped coming. In the first wave, lockdown happened, so road accidents went down, but this time, it’s both Covid and non-Covid cases seeking medical transport.”

Singh highlights that the immediate focus at StanPlus is to continue reducing the ETA from 15 minutes to 12 minutes to 8 minutes.